World Desertification Day- Minister's Message

World Desertification day

"Land has a True Value, Invest in It"

Today we celebrate the World Desertification Day.  The World Desertification day has been observed by the United Nation since 1995, to create awareness about issues that affect the land.  The theme is “Land has True Value, Invest in It”. This year’s focus is how consumers can regenerate economies, create jobs and revitalize livelihoods and communities by influencing the market to invest in sustainable land management.

Desertification, is a form of land degradation, by which fertile land eventually becomes desert. Land degradation can occur as a result of natural forces such as extreme weather conditions particularly drought and coastal surges and anthropogenic factors such as combined pressures of agricultural and livestock production (over-cultivation, overgrazing, forest conversion), urbanization and deforestation.  These factors pollute or degrade the quality of soils thereby affecting food production, livelihoods and the production and provision of other ecosystem goods and services.  Land degradation has accelerated during the 20th century and as a result, a third of the planet’s land has become severely degraded with fertile soil being lost at an alarming rate in order to meet the continued demand for food and productive land for intensive agriculture.

A recent United Nations back up study has call on the global community to shift away from destructively intensive agriculture to sustainable agricultural and land practices as to reduce land degradation.  Although land degradation is considered to be low in the Seychelles, the country is still faced with major threats such as biodiversity loss, forest fires, climate change and erosion.  Recently, we witness a decrease in agricultural activity as a result of increased salinity in the soil on Praslin.  

We recognise the need and commend the positive actions being taken by all partners such as farmers to promote good and sustainable land use practices. Competition by the different land use sectors add further pressure on the limited land resource. As a result, Government has to develop sound strategies to actively and sustainably manage it.  Measures have been incorporated in the National Action Programme for Sustainable Land Management and the Seychelles Sustainable Development Strategy 2012-2020 to reduce land pollution, biodiversity loss as well as deforestation.  We hope to set out long term strategies for sustainable land management and fulfill our obligations under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. 

To show our commitment and our ambition to further reduce land degradation, we have set some voluntary targets to try and counterbalance the expected loss of productive land with the recovery of degraded areas.  The Ministry and other local partners are taking measures to conserve, sustainably manage and restore degraded land.   In so doing, we are also achieving various targets under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted in September 2015.

 As a small island, we are determined to protect the planet from further degradation by sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations.

We cannot do it alone.  This is why I am calling on everyone to adopt and use sustainable practice to protect the land, our planet and mother earth.  Every little efforts can make a big difference.