The Business Sector is an important stakeholder in global efforts to combat Desertification Land Degradation and Drought (DLDD). Business is a key driver of DLDD and can be an agent of change.
Unsustainable economic behaviour is a key cause of DLDD: over cultivation, overgrazing, deforestation, lack of irrigation, resource extraction that lowers water tables and degrades land. All of these drivers are based on inadequate business rationale. The scale can vary from subsistence farmers in rural Asia to large scale multinational agricultural producers in Africa but the answer is the same. The soil is being mismanaged and this needs to change. There are massive incentives.
- It is anticipated 80% of the world population will become ‘consumers’ by 2030. Those additional 2 billion people will demand products and services (the demand for agricultural products alone is expected to double).
- There are around 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land available for restoration and regeneration worldwide.
Small farmers, medium sized miners, or multinational insurance companies all need to be engaged in changing to sustainable land management practices and committed to zero-net land degradation.
Our partnership with business is just starting to take shape. Our very first proposition to business
(Business Proposition) which explains the social and economic rationale of working on SLM and the value of working with UNCCD has been developed. We look forward to discussing this with business as we go forward.
As a first step, we are aiming to establish links with business networks and are a member of the Global Compact (
http://www.business.un.org/en)
At COP 10 in Changwon, Korea business leaders held the very first Sustainable Land Management Business Forum and issued the GyeongNam Declaration, which sets an ambitious agenda for business engagement on SLM issues and the secretariat will work diligently with business leaders to help achieve their ambitions.