24/06/2022

Sustainable management of water and soil resources is key to combating desertification in Spain

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The Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), has organized a new #Biodirectos, the fourteenth in the series, which has addressed the presentation of the National Strategy to Combat Desertification (ENLD), approved by the Government in the Council of Ministers last Tuesday, June 21. This document updates the National Programme of Action to Combat Desertification published in 2008.

This #Biodirectos has made it possible to stress the importance of recovering the balance between the production capacity of the land and the demand for use derived from human activity. In addition, it has also made it possible to share the need to strengthen coordination in a transversal way and integrate all social sectors to achieve a change in the models of management and sustainable use of water and soil resources to combat desertification and drought.

The meeting was attended by Víctor Manuel Castillo, CSIC Research Professor and Technical Advisor to the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge; Jaime Martínez-Valderrama, researcher at the Multidisciplinary Institute for the Study of the Environment of the University of Alicante; Remedios Arrés Casanova, president of the Alvelal Association; Roberto García Torrente, Director of Sustainable Development of the Cajamar Cooperative Group and Luis Suárez, Conservation Coordinator of WWF Spain.

During his speech, Castillo stressed that land management is at the centre of all solutions to the global environmental and sustainable development crisis. “By achieving the objectives of combating desertification, we also contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. We preserve the habitats of terrestrial ecosystems, but also aquatic ecosystems, fundamentally, continental,” he said.

Martínez-Valderrama pointed out that the conflict “between economy and ecology, which has been going on for decades, is what the new proposal of the Convention” (of the United Nations to Combat Desertification) tries to resolve with neutrality in land degradation. In addition, he states that this proposal “breaks with the definition of desertification” and transcends arid or dry areas. “It is an issue that must work at a global level, because globalization makes all territories connected to each other,” says the researcher.

Likewise, Arrés Casanova stressed that in order to fight climate change and achieve real change, it was important to integrate a system in which ecology, economy and society coexist in its activity and support for the agricultural sector; “We use the model we call 4 returns, 3 zones and 20 years, created by the Comola Foundation”.
García Torrente stressed the need to contemplate global planning, discarding the problem of desertification as a partial, sectoral or territorial issue. “We should be aware that a country like Spain has special characteristics. Either we manage it globally, or we will not find a definitive solution,” he says.

For his part, Suárez insisted on the integration of nature in all elements and practices derived from human activities and stressed the importance of sustainable water management. To this end, he stated that the essential thing is the proper functioning of natural ecosystems, such as wetlands or rivers. “We cannot continue with a model that is out of hand and that has a brutal impact.”

KEY FRAMEWORK TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION IN SPAIN
The new Strategy ensures compliance with Spain’s commitments as part of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), while establishing a framework for policies and initiatives to combat this threat in Spain, ensuring coordination between them and their effectiveness. Its publication also coincides with a year in which desertification is having special global and national relevance with the celebration of the fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD last May in Abidjan (Ivory Coast).

The general objective of the ENLD is to contribute to the conservation and improvement of the natural capital associated with the lands of the arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones of Spain and to move towards neutrality in land degradation through the prevention and mitigation of desertification and the restoration of degraded areas.

The Strategy includes the proposal of numerous actions and measures to be carried out until 2030 around three axes: Territory, Institutional Training and Governance and Actions for the improvement of knowledge, transfer and participation of society. In addition, the implementation of the ENLD will be developed through two four-year National Action Programs. The first work programme will cover the period 2023-2026, while the second is planned to take place in the period 2027-2030.
The document has been prepared in a participatory way with the collaboration of other ministries, the autonomous communities, scientific institutions and non-governmental organizations.

74% OF SPAIN’S TERRITORY AT RISK OF DESERTIFICATION
Desertification and land degradation particularly affect Africa, but they also threaten Europe, particularly the Mediterranean region. 74% of the Spanish territory is located in arid, semi-arid or dry sub-humid lands and, therefore, susceptible to being affected by desertification processes.

The Strategy, in its diagnosis, identifies numerous drivers of desertification in Spain, including economic causes, such as the intensification of agriculture and livestock, and the overexploitation of water resources; social, such as the depopulation of rural areas and the abandonment of forest land; and environmental, such as climate change and forest fires.

Likewise, the impacts of desertification also entail economic, social and environmental costs: from the loss of soil productivity or the decrease in agricultural benefits to the aggravation of depopulation, the reduction of cultural heritage, the loss of biodiversity or the exacerbation of climate change. The ENLD identifies five main scenarios affected by desertification in Spain: crops affected by erosion, irrigated areas affected by desertification, landscapes associated with unsustainable livestock intensification, abandoned agricultural land and forests with insufficient management.