Celebration of World Day to Combat Desertification (in Mbour)
Like the international community, the NGO Enda Energie celebrates every June 17, the world day to combat desertification.
The theme of the celebration chosen this year focuses on the links between consumption, production and the earth, hence the slogan “Food-Fodder-Fibres: sustainable production and consumption”.
Consequently, Enda Energie will rely on one of its programs, in this case the Good Ecological Governance Program in the Intercommunal Agreement of the Petite Côte for Integrated Coastal Zone Management (EIPC-GIZC) in order to mark this day through reforestation in establishments and public sites in the locality.
One of the objectives of this EIPC program relates to sustainable citizen awareness among young people, students and journalists for the preservation of the coastline and biodiversity.
To achieve this objective, a partnership is established with a certain number of schools where gardens are set up for the benefit of the environment clubs of the selected schools. These market gardens provide food products to students and surrounding communities. Alongside these gardens, these environment clubs and communities in coastal areas have expressed the wish to have plants around the gardens and in the schoolyards.
Enda Energie was attentive to this request and chose the Mbour site to host a day of planting forest and fruit trees on June 17, 2020 in collaboration with the partners of the EIPC project and stakeholders in the environmental sector in Mbour.
This world day is an opportunity for all stakeholders involved in the fight against desertification to advocate and increase awareness among individuals on how to reduce their ecological footprint through behavioral changes in their modes of production and consumption.
In Senegal, we note that arable land continues to shrink and it is estimated that 34% of land is affected by desertification (CSE, 2011). This land degradation is reflected in reduced crop yields. Rain-fed crops such as millet and peanuts recorded losses of 26.36% and 21.56% respectively. The same is true for forest ecosystems whose losses are estimated at 30.88% for gum plantations, 25.27% for steppes and 16.47% for savannahs (ELD Initiative 2019).
This is consistent with the global observation of the unsustainable rate of land transformation and degradation harming production, ecosystems and biodiversity.
• More than two billion hectares of previously cultivable land are degraded.
• More than 70% of natural ecosystems have been transformed. This figure could rise to 90% by 2050.
• By 2030, food production will require more than 300 million hectares of additional land.
• In the same time frame, the fashion industry is expected to use 35% more land, or more than 115 million hectares.
A situation which pushes the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw, to warn “If we maintain our excessive consumption habits, requiring constant growth in production, we will exhaust Earth's resources, when we need them most. ". He also invites us to “make better food choices in order to contribute to the protection and restoration of the land”.
ENDA Energie is part of this process by contributing, among other things, to the rehabilitation of land as part of the Great Green Wall initiative, to the promotion of social entrepreneurship around value chains with high labor potential. - work, the development of local endogenous potential including the “balanites” and milk sectors.
This year's theme calls for a change in our consumption patterns and environment clubs in schools and community radio stations are the channels chosen to raise awareness during this period of COVID-19.
