This document contains the text of a speech given at a conference on beating famine in Lilongwe, Malawi. It discusses the challenges of land degradation and increasing population pressures on natural resources by 2050 if practices do not change. 2/3 of sub-Saharan Africa's arable land is already degraded, costing $68 billion annually. To meet growing food demands, an additional 4 million hectares would need to be converted to agriculture each year. However, 12 million hectares are lost annually to degradation. The speaker argues for land degradation neutrality and rehabilitating 2 billion hectares of degraded land through sustainable practices to boost food security and resilience. Building smallholder capacity is key to overcoming challenges and beating famine

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BEATING FAMINE
LILONGWE (14 April 2015).
Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
If you will allow, all protocols observed.
It really is a delight for me to be here and to address the
conference on behalf of Monique Barbut, the UNCCD Executive
Secretary. So thank you for inviting us.
I have been asked to give the global perspective this morning.
But, at the outset, I should declare a personal interest in Malawi.
My Uncle Paul lives and runs a restaurant in Mzuzu. He is married to
Charity and they have a gorgeous 2 year old son - John. I met Charity
and John for the first time last weekend and it got me thinking…
Malawi has been putting “the mother” at the heart of its
development plans. In only the last two or three years, maternal mortality
rates have dropped by 30% (from 675, to 460 deaths per 100,000 live
births). 12,000 Chiefs in the country are engaged in changing attitudes
and perceptions at grassroots level; infrastructure has been built up and
the capacity of community midwives enhanced. There is still a long way
to go. However, it does show what can be done - in a short timeframe -
with strategic investments, leadership and joined-up thinking.
And that is exactly what we will need in this sector too!
The mother is seen as key to a secure, stable family.
In the same way, MotherNature – especially the provisioning
services coming from healthy land and soil – is increasingly seen,
at international level, as key to any secure, stable food system.
And Mother Nature is going to need our help, visionary leadership
and joined up thinking because by 2050 the world and this Region will
look very different.
In sub-Saharan Africa, as much as 2/3rds of arable land is
degraded affecting 485 million, mostly very poor, people. Deforestation

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rates remain unacceptably high. The economic losses associated with
land degradation in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated at 68 billion dollars
per year.
That is a huge amount of wasted potential!
But in a world planning for 9.6 billion people by 2050, the situation
will deteriorate further. The population of Africa, for example, will double
to 2.4 billion people by 2050. This is a vast additional population that will
need food, water and jobs among other services.
Competitionfor access to finite natural resources - such as land for
food and water - is likely to be fierce. We will have less available land
because we are losing up to 12 million hectares of land from productivity
each year.
So it will get even tougher to meet our basic needs.
Population growth means the share of productive land available
per person will decrease. In 1960, there was about half a hectare of
farmland for every human on earth. Now, there is less than a third of
that. By 2050, it will fall further.
With increasing demand and falling supply, unless practices
change dramatically, we will need to expand on to an extra 4 million
hectares per year for food production to keep up. That is on top of the
up to 12 million hectares of land we are losing to land degradation
processeseach year. We may need a new farm the size of South Africa
every ten years.
This extra land will have to come from somewhere. It could
certainly drive ever more aggressive deforestation and land grabbing
here in Southern Africa.
It will exacerbate climate change and climate change will
exacerbate the problem. The IPPC is warning us to expect a further 2
percentdrop in median crop yields, per decade. By 2025, more than 2.5
billion people are likely to be living in areas of intense water scarcity. By
2050, 5 billion will live in drought prone areas.
As you can imagine, such massive natural resource degradation
and slow onset disasters like drought have wide consequencesfor
societyas a whole.

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Desperate people need some wayout.
It is estimated, up to 135 million people could move, permanently,
by 2045,as a result of desertificationprocesses.
And we have already seen natural resource competitionand
forced environmental migration becomeamplifiers of radicalization and
conflictin Darfur, the Lake Chad basin and Syria for example.
But other potential hot spots are emerging.
So sub-Saharan Africa’s farmers are going to find themselves on
the frontline of a hotter, hungrier world.
It is increasingly recognized they and other land users will need to
be better equipped – with the right knowledge and skills - to deal with the
new realities.
So where do we stand?
Globally, the uptake of appropriate land management practices
remains low. But they are starting to gain ground in some forward
thinking communities.
Concerns over tenure, along factors such as limited access to
markets and credit, promptfarmers to make short-term trade-offs.This is
limiting progress. And there is a huge temptation to harness high tech,
costly solutions to boost production.
This is tragic when, as we have seen, the range of often traditional,
sustainable land management techniques available is vast. These can
boost yields sustainably, are cost effective and employment generating.
So what is happening in the international community?
Well, the next six months is going to be critical!
The Sustainable Development Goals are taking shape.
The SDGs should be universal in nature; do-able but ambitious.
UNCCD and our partners are focusing on goal 15 - in particular target
15.3 on achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030. But as Dennis
noted, most of the current SDGs would benefit from better land
management.

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Land Degradation Neutrality simply means stopping the drivers of
negative land degradation trends and ramping-up the rehabilitation of
degraded land so the amount of healthy and productive land stabilizes or
improves.
And the potential is huge.
Two billion hectares of degraded terrestrial ecosystems are
available worldwide for rehabilitation. 75% of this is in working
landscapes – perfect for proven approaches like agroforestry or farmer
managed natural regeneration.
Rehabilitation and sustainable management of this degraded land
is a win-win-win situation.
Scaling up and scaling out good practice would certainly increase
food security - UNEP estimates restoring degraded agricultural land
could boost food productivity up to 79% - or feed up to 2.25 billion
people.
It could secure vital ecosystems services such as water regulation.
Resilience to climate change related natural disasters especially drought
and flood would be a particular benefit.
And it could secure the lives and livelihoods of 500 million
smallholder farmers worldwide. It could create employment in areas of
high population growth and diffuse conflict over natural resources.
In a parallel but equally important political process, for the first
time, land and land use can feature in the Intended National Determined
Contributions of many countries and in the upcoming climate deal - as
both a mitigation and adaptation measure. The soil and land sector
could help store up 30% of annual CO2 fossil fuel emissions, every year
to help mitigate climate change.
Ensuring land is fully incorporated into these 2 critical processes
should be a priority – including for this conference - and success will
secure access to new streams of blended financing (public and private)
for implementation.
But then to deliver these gains and to drive implementation on the
ground, people need to become stewards of their land and agents of
change. A real movement.

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For this we are going to need community levelengagement and
mobilization. Village level leadership and strengthened rights of land
users over the lands and assets that they cultivate.
We are going to need infrastructure such as drought early
warning systems or access to innovative financial services,especiallyfor
women, to expand.
But transferring the knowledge about the techniques that DO work
is perhaps the biggest bottleneck and most urgent, common task.
Smallholders provide over 80 per cent of the food consumed in large
parts of the developing world, particularly Southern Asia and sub-
Saharan Africa. They are on the front line.
Building their capacity to act will be decisive to beating famine,
fighting climate change and building a sustainable future.
If we can bring these elements together, we can beat famine in
Southern Africa and indeed deliver on Africa’s immense potential. If we
do that sustainably, in the face of climate change, Mother Nature and
future generations – in particular my very cute cousin John - will thank
you.
As I do now. Thank you and congratulations to the organizers. I
hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. We look forward to the
outcomes.