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Madrid/Geneva – 13 September 2007 (WMO): One of the most important issues facing the world today is the need to ensure food security through sustainable management of water and soil resources, Mr M. Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) stressed today in an address to the High-level Segment of the eighth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 8) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

 The Conference, which is being held in Madrid from 3 to 14 September 2007, adopted a new format for its future work on science and technology, inspired by an international workshop organized by WMO.

Noting that more intense, longer droughts had been observed over larger areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics, Mr Jarraud warned that the combination of those events could cause land degradation leading to desertification. Indeed, the year 2007 had already seen a high number of extreme events, such as droughts in parts of southern Africa leading to a reduction in maize production of about 40-60 % in Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. WMO contributed to the understanding of interactions between climate and land degradation through dedicated observations of the climate system; improvements in the application of agrometeorological methods and the proper assessment and management of water resources; advances in climate science and prediction; and promotion of capacity-building in the application of meteorological and hydrological data and information to drought preparedness and management.

The Conference recognized the usefulness of the work of WMO in this field by welcoming the conduct and outcome of the WMO International Workshop on Climate and Land Degradation held in Arusha in 2006, which it saw as a useful organizational model for the future operation of the UNCCD Committee on Science and Technology (CST), one of its main bodies, to achieve the goal of being a global authority on scientific and technical aspects of combating desertification/land degradation and mitigating the effects of drought.

The workshop focused on how climate induces and influences land degradation and what measures need to be taken to enhance the applications of weather and climate information to combat land degradation, in particular through innovative land management practices.

The recommendations adopted by the workshop highlighted, inter alia, the historical climate data and climate change scenarios required for future strategic planning, agrometeorological zoning and crop pattern rescheduling; targeted weather forecasts at all levels and at very local scales to help stakeholders make the appropriate decisions; improved spatial coverage of meteorological stations, especially in mountain areas which are highly vulnerable to land degradation, in particular as regards precipitation, temperature, soil moisture and temperature, and evaporation data; detailed, accurate and spatially distributed rainfall intensity data for use in surface erosion assessment and modelling, and draining structures design; capacity-building of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services in the acquisition, analysis and dissemination of data; and, in order to promote the effective use of climate and weather information for reducing land degradation, tailor-made products to be developed together with users and made available in a timely manner.

Other recommendations can be found in a publication released on the occasion of the UNCCD Conference in Madrid. The proceedings of the workshop were edited jointly by WMO and the UNCCD Secretariat and are published as a book by Springer. The 623-page book includes 34 chapters written by 58 experts from 26 countries: Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Ghana, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania and the United States of America.

The workshop was organized in cooperation with the UNCCD Secretariat and the Tanzania Meteorological Agency, and was co-sponsored by the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), UNDP and UNESCO.

Copies of the book are available for the media upon request.

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Ms Carine Richard-Van Maele, Chief, Communications and Public Affairs, WMO. Tel: +41 (0)22 730 83 15.