Desertification Control

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Desertification Control in Mediterranean
Europe The Challenges for Spatial Planning
and The Call for Policy Integration
Helen Briassoulis Department of
Geography University of the Aegean, Lesvos,
Greece
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Outline

• United Nations Convention to
• Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
• Desiderata for desertification control and
  policy
• Desertification control in the four Annex IV
• EU member states
• Desertification control in affected regions
• The planning problem
• A Desertification Policy Support Framework
• at the country level

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United Nations Convention to Combat
Desertification (UNCCD) Desiderata for
desertification control and policy
Integration of top-down with bottom up
approaches to environmental management
i.e. integration across sectors, environmental
media, spatial levels, stages of the policy
process, policy and planning
instruments Coordination of efforts and
cooperation among competent organizations,
communities, NGOs and landholders Participation
of local population, scientists and NGOs in
decision-making
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Long-term orientation Provision of an enabling
legal and institutional environment to
facilitate sub-national action Adding-value to
existing institutional capital through
combination of policies to achieve synergies
and to avoid conflicts and duplication of effort
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Desertification control in the four Annex IV EU
member states
The Annex IV EU member states Italy, Greece,
Spain, Portugal

• have drafted National Action Programmes (NAPs)
  
• a formal obligation as signatory parties to the
  UNCCD
• which are at different stages of preparation and
  
• implementation in each country at present
• whose implementation, although they are legal
• documents, is not guaranteed as it depends on
  available
• finances, coordination among policy measures and
• administering organizations, political bargaining
  and
• trade-offs with other goals

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The NAPs indicate broadly how the main sectors
mainly, agriculture, livestock, and forestry
as well as land (soil), water, forests and other
resources should be managed to harness land
degradation and achieve local sustainable
development They present suites of measures
ranging from technical through legislative and
financial to awareness raising to address
sector- and/or resource-specific problems
related to land degradation and
desertification They suggest broadly how to use
available legal and financial instruments
provided for other purposes and from various
sources to address land degradation issues
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The NAPs are indicative delegating the task of
devising concrete solutions to the problems of
affected areas to local level planning. Thus,
they recognize the critical importance of
spatially-explicit coordination of available
policy measures to cope effectively with the
complex task of combating desertification. Only
at the level of affected areas, where the actors
are concrete, the viability of proposed
solutions can be assessed, as far as violations
of the rights of resource users, promotion of
their interests and avoidance of conflicts are
concerned. To cope with uncertainty, the NAPs
favour flexibility and adaptation to local
socio-environmental conditions that are achieved
through participatory decision making.

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The NAPs can be considered as a first attempt
towards synthesizing and integrating various
existing European Union and national policies
that relate directly or indirectly to the
determinants of desertification
The most important EU policies which have
national level counterparts include
Common Agricultural Policy Structural
Funds/Cohesion Fund (Regional Policy) Horizontal
Environmental Policy (EIA, SEA, etc.) European
Water Framework Directive Biodiversity/nature
protection policy (Habitats and Birds
Directives, NATURA 2000 network)
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Desertification control in affected regions The
planning problem
At the level of affected areas, the general
planning problem is To determine the uses of
land that will protect their land resources
against desertification and will secure their
socio-economic vitality (economic welfare,
quality of life and social equity) i.e., will
promote their sustainable development

The situation that planning confronts is outlined
next
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In desertification-prone areas, the resources of
immediate interest are soil and water and, more
broadly, land and ecosystems (biodiversity)
The economic sectors involved primarily
are agriculture, livestock and forestry although
depending on the broader geographic context
recreation and tourism are also important as well
as transport, commerce and other services
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• The actors involved (directly and indirectly)
  are
• Local users of land and other resources
• (as owners, appropriators and consumers)
• Local and supra-local (regional, national)
  administrators
• Supra-local private interests individuals
  and/or groups

• They
• belong to various formal and informal groups
• (family, markets, professional groups,
  associations,
• public services)
• command particular natural, human, economic,
  political and other resources
• pursue the goals and are subject to the rules of
  the groups to which they belong and
• use the resources at their disposal to meet
  their needs

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• The availability of resources depends, among
  other things,
• on
• the policies in effect, which determine rules of
  
• resource availability and use and, most
  importantly,
• the implementation of these policies

Therefore, at the level of affected areas Actors
operate in an environment where, several plans
and programmes originating in diverse policy
and funding quarters apply, or will apply, such
as
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• Community Framework Programmes and
• the associated sectoral and regional
• Operational Programmes
• Community Directives and Regulations
• Regional, rural and local development plans,
• programmes and initiatives
• River basin management plans
• Forest management plans
• Biodiversity Action Plans
• National Action Programmes (for desertification)
• and many more ..

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• The multiplicity and diversity of actors
  involved in these policy initiatives and plans,
• Administrative compartmentalization and rivalry,
  
• Unclear organizational functioning and
• Power differences, among others

produce
Conflicts and/or overlaps among policy measures
The result is

• inaction , or
• misapplication of measures or, more generally,
• inefficient use of available resources of all
  kinds

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Therefore, the need emerges to coordinate
spatially all these policy instruments to promote
both individual and collective goals at the level
of affected areas
Spatial planning, by definition, offers this
coordinating function that ensures the
harmonious development of economic activities in
space within the carrying capacity of local
resource systems
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To be effective, planning requires various forms
of capital natural, financial, social,
political, institutional whose availability in
the right combinations, at the right time and in
the right sequence is controlled greatly by the
policies in effect These requirements are rarely
met in practice because policies are little
coordinated both when formulated and when
implemented
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Therefore, to support the planning function at
the local level of affected areas, policy
integration at the national and the EU level
should take place As a response to this
requirement, the design of a Desertification
Policy Support Framework at these levels is
proposed
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A Desertification Policy Support Framework at
the country level
The super goal of the Desertification Policy
Support Framework at the country level (DPSF-
country) is to provide an integrated, holistic
and strategic platform for policy synthesis that
addresses the present and future desertification
concerns of the affected and sensitive areas of a
country, facilitating, thus, the elaboration and
further refinement of the countrys NAP and,
consequently, the implementation of the UNCCD at
the national and the sub-national level.
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The repertoire of policies to be examined for
integration at the country level should contain
international, European Union and national level
policies. The proposed repertoire includes many
more policies than is currently the case because
effective control needs to address policies that
impinge on the deeper socio-economic driving
forces of the phenomenon among which the
rural-urban dynamics looms large.
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The choice of the final set of policies should be
decided after a careful analysis of their
relationships aiming at eliminating overlaps,
duplications and conflicts among them and among
the associated policy instruments
Indicatively, the repertoire should consider
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• Economic policies (fiscal, investment, income
  and employment)
• Regional development policies (CSF, ROPs, SOPs,
  other national)
• Rural development policies (CAP and other
  initiatives)
• Transport policies (TENs and national)
• Spatial policies and planning systems
• Tourism policies
• Social policies (labor market, poverty social
  exclusion, migration,
• social security, health, family)
• Horizontal environmental policies (EIA, SEA,
  national)
• Forest policies (incl. fire protection)
• Water resources policies (WFD and national)
• Biodiversity/nature protection policies
  (Habitats Birds directives
• and national Biodiversity
  Action Plans)
• Soil protection policies (in compliance with
  UNCCD, EU directives)

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At the country level, spatial policies and
planning systems are particularly important New
policies may have to be instituted to fill
existing policy gaps
The proposed DPSF-country comprises the
following elements
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• Lead organization and administrative structure
• Legal basis / institutional form
• Spatial level of reference and
• spatial classification system
• Temporal frame of reference
• Repertoire of policies considered
• The Desertification Policy Network (DPN)
• Design approach and principles
• Decision making processes and
• implementation mechanisms
• Information basis and monitoring system
• Future socio-economic and
• environmental change scenarios

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• Lead organization and administrative structure
• Agency with horizontal, spatial development and
• coordination competences e.g. Ministry of
  Environment,
• Spatial Planning or similar
• The National Committee to combat desertification
• (NC) might be situated within the lead
  organization
• and invested with considerable decision making
  powers
• (b) Alternatively, a Desertification Department
  could be
• established in the lead organization

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Legal basis/institutional form of the DPSF-country

• Horizontal legislation imposing specific
  obligations
• and harmonizing sectoral environmental policies
• (b) Amendments to existing legislation in various
  sectors
• (c) Codes of Good Practice
• (d) Transposition of a
• EU Framework Directive on Desertification

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Spatial level of reference and spatial
classification system
The national system of desertification-sensitive
areas
Repertoire of policies considered
The list proposed before
The Desertification Policy Network (DPN)
Given the decision on policies to be
considered, it consists of formal and informal
actors involved in policy formulation and
implementation
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Design approach and principles

• Emphasis on
• Strategic issues and
• Policy integration (related to these issues)
• Guiding principles
• Spatial integration/coordination of sectoral
  policies
• Geographic differentiation of policy instruments

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Information basis and monitoring system
Combination of extant and proposed environmental
and socio-economic information systems Assurance
of spatial, sectoral and conceptual
compatibility and consistency of data Indicator
systems integrated with needs of thematic
policies considered in the DPSF and customized to
the particularities of affected areas
Integrated assessment methods to assess and
evaluate potential effectiveness of proposed
combinations of policy measures
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Future socio-economic and environmental change
scenarios
Scenario-generating devices to obtain
snapshots of future environmental and
socio-economic conditions in affected areas as
well as at higher spatial levels and assess the
adequacy of extant policies to cope with them