World Desertification Day 2023

World Desertification Day 2023

• World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought is observed every year on the 17th of June.
• The theme for this year is “Her Land, Her Rights” which focuses on women’s land rights, essential for achieving the interconnected global goals of gender equality and land degradation neutrality by 2030 and contributing to the advancement of several other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Desertification, along with climate change and the loss of biodiversity, were identified as the greatest challenges to sustainable development during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
• Two years later, in 1994, the UN General Assembly established the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the sole legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management and declared 17 June “World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought”.

What is Desertification ?

• About:
  • Degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. It is caused primarily by human activities and climatic variations.
• Causes:
  • Climate change
  • Deforestation
  • Overgrazing
  • Unsustainable Agricultural Practices
  • Urbanization

Indian Initiatives:

• Integrated Watershed Management Programme, since 2009-10:
  • It was launched by the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development that aims to restore ecological balance by harnessing, conserving and developing degraded natural resources with the creation of Rural Employment.
• Desert Development Programme:
  • Launched in 1995 by the Ministry of Rural Development to minimise the adverse effect of drought and to rejuvenate the natural resource base of the identified desert areas.
• National Mission on Green India:
  • It was approved in 2014 and implemented under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change with the objective of protecting, restoring and enhancing India’s diminishing forest cover with a deadline of 10 years.

Global Initiatives:

• Bonn Challenge:
  • The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.
  • At the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) 2015 in Paris, India also joined the voluntary Bonn Challenge pledge to bring into restoration 21 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by the year 2030.
  • The target has now been revised to restore 26 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030.

Practice Questions for Prelims

Given below are two statements, one is labeled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R). Choose the correct answer from the codes given below:
Assertion (A): Most of the hot deserts of the world are located on the western margins of the continents between 15 to 30 degrees north and south latitudes.
Reason ( R): Trade winds lose their moisture and humidity as it moves westward.

Codes:
a) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
b) Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
c) (A) is true but (R) is false
d) (A) is false but (R) is true

Ans. a)

Mains Practice Question

Climatic conditions are not necessarily to be blamed for Desertification. Justify with examples.

Chetan Bharat Learning is the best institute in Chandigarh for UPSC IAS ,PCS preparation. To know more about Chetan Bharat Learning’s Online & Classroom Courses, click on the following links: