THE planet Earth is facing a worsening natural environment based on climate change primarily triggered by deforestation and drought because of undisciplined acts of humans who extract timber from forests in a legal and illegal manner, expand public residential sites and farmlands and utilize water sources without limit.
Consequently, the peoples from global countries are unavoidably encountering the sufferings of their undisciplined acts causing environmental degradation. Although some of them understand the impacts of climate change, some are still committing acts of environmental deterioration in extracting natural resources without correct farsightedness for their future.
The environmental degradation may reflect the desertification and drought in respective regions, lessening the yield of crops and extraction of natural resources. That is why all global people are responsible for mitigating the impacts of desertification and drought in time. On 30 January 1995, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a solution to draft the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.
Hence, the 17th of June was set as a significant day to combat desertification and drought throughout the world with the purpose of raising the presence of desertification and drought, highlighting methods of preventing desertification and recovering from drought. The global observance of this year’s event will take place in Madrid, Spain, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has announced.
The theme of 2022 Desertification and Drought Day has been set as “Rising up from drought together”. Between 1900 and 2019, droughts impacted 2.7 billion people in the world and caused 11.7 million deaths. Currently, forecasts estimate that by 2050 droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population.
The UN General Assembly adopted three objectives related to mitigating the desertification and drought: to promote public awareness about desertification and drought as the first objective, to let people know that desertification and drought can be effectively tackled, that solutions are possible, and that key tools to this aim lay in strengthened community participation and cooperation at all levels as the second objective and to strengthen implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa as the third and last objective.
All in all, public awareness needs to be raised about the improvement of the natural environment in easing the impacts of desertification and drought throughout the world. If so, the environment will bring good results to the global people in the near future.
