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| Tuesday, 6 July 2004 |
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| Comprehensive action program to combat land degradation - Fowzie by Florence Wickramage SAARC countries in the 21st century are faced with the challenge of conservation of the changing environmental, social, economical and political conditions and to adopt policies and projects to conserve the changing environment, Environment and Natural Resources Minister A. H. M. Fowzie said in Colombo yesterday. The Minister was delivering his key note address at the three day International Conference on Development of the South Asia Sub-regional Action Programme (SRAP) for Combating Desertification which began sessions yesterday. The Minister advised the Conference that the most important need was to identify practical solutions and measures to combat land degradation in our region and to prioritize realistic and coherent goals within a framework for adequate joint action. Fowzie emphasised that the ultimate goal of this project was the utilization of land and land based resources of our region in a rational manner to combat land degradation and to mitigate the impacts of droughts in order to reduce poverty. The Minister said that the obvious symptoms of land degradation in our country were heavy soil losses, decline in soil fertility and reduction in crop yields; increased salinization and water logging; greater frequency of landslides and the degradation of forest cover. He added that in 1992 the loss of GDP due to environmental damages was around 2.4% in which 48% was due to land degradation by non-scientific agricultural practices and in the dry zone areas 30% of land has been degraded making it unsuitable for agricutlure. Minister Fowzie added that recognizing the magnitude of land degradation in our country the Environment Ministry in 2002 formulated a comprehensive National Action Program to combat land degradation and mitigate the impacts of droughts with the assistance of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Experts who addressed the conference were Programme Officer, UNCCD Secretariat Masanori Kobayashi, Director General SACEP Mahboob Elahi, and Deputy Resident Representative UNDP Colombo Ms. Christine Spoerel. Secretary Environment and Natural Resources Ministry Dharmasena Dissanayake welcomed the invitees and participants to the Conference/Workshop and Additional Secretary (Natural Resources) Ms. C. Udugampola. |
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