This global media forum is entitled The Heat Is On. We literally experienced that this year and years past. Heat waves in summer will happen more frequently. In the South, long droughts are leading to land degradation, desertification and extreme poverty. “It is no longer the question whether we should act,” he said. “We only have to ask ourselves ‘Where is my place?’ and ‘the part where I can most efficiently support our common goal?’” In his capacity as vice chairman of the World Mayors Council on Climate Change, Nimptsch again advocated a new kind of pro-climate alliance, saying this conference is a major location to develop such a partnership.

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CHANGING LAND USE IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE AND NEGOTIATIONS HOSTED BY UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION (UNCCD) PANEL:
Ralph Ashton, head of International Advocacy, The Terrestrial Carbon Group, Australia
Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Bonn,
Germany
Maxwell Boykoff, environmental studies faculty member, University of Colorado, USA
Johan Schaar, director, Commission on Climate Change and Development, Sweden
MODERATION:
Ramesh Jaura, executive president, Global Cooperation Council (North-South Forum), Berlin,
Germany

The workshop sought to raise awareness on the links between climate change and land degradation and the potential in sustainable land management for mitigation and adaptation.

Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), began by stating that 12 million hectares of land are lost to land degradation every year.

This is an area the size of Benin. He speculated that little is known about this loss because desertification and drought creep up on us, silently, invisible. He suggested that another factor is prevailing misperceptions about the issue, and noted that the media perpetuates some of these misperceptions. He then took apart three of them: that desertification is a very distant problem that does not affect everyone; land degradation is less urgent than climate change; and drylands are marginal and unproductive.
Gnacadja noted that the media also have difficulties reporting the good news associated with the drylands. For example, he pointed to the significant potential in land improvement, 16% of which occurred in the drylands between 1981 and 2003, which has not been picked up by the media. He urged the media to ensure desertification is given due attention as funding gets increasingly influenced by interest in the climate change issue.

Ethiopia is very vulnerable to climate change (prone to drought, desertification). A lack of access to energy is a crucial
barrier to development (e.g. electrification rate is merely 15% (2000-2006, WB 2010). A boost in the energy sector is crucial to overcome poverty. Building on imported fossil fuels would further increase economic costs, political dependence and internal tension. Massive expansion of large hydropower generation is increasingly limited by climate change (droughts were driving forces of power cuts from 2006-08) and political tension with Nile River basin
states, such as Sudan and Egypt. The potential of other autonomous types of renewable energy needs to be exploited: small-scale hydro, geothermal energy, biofuels (incl. bagasse cogeneration), wind and solar energy.

Desertec aims to supply 15% of Europe’s total energy demand by 2050. Consumption in the Middle East and North Africa is projected to double by then, he added, “but the available renewable resource is more than a hundred times bigger in the Saharan Desert alone”. Aringhoff pointed out that the costs of the technology would soon reach a break-even point. Reference projects would soon be underway to demonstrate viability.

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IT’S ABOUT ATTITUDES: UNDERSTANDING AND REPORTING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The attitudes workshop opened with participants asked to complete a climate change attitudes questionnaire (see attachment) to tease out deeper assumptions about whether the human race in its present numbers and current civilisation can survive the coming century. Most were ambivalent, with scores around five out of 10, but there were notably few who were determinedly optimistic.