Ukraine, Gaza conflicts prioritized over African desertification — UNCCD conference

The international community must not neglect the climate emergency in Africa’s deserts amid the Israel-Hamas conflict and Russia’s war in Ukraine — this was the key message by African delegates attending the recent United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Uzbekistan.
African delegates said that conflicts around the world, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel-Hamas war, have diverted the world’s attention from other important issues, like desertification and the effects of climate change in Africa. They castigated world leaders for neglecting environmental issues and desertification in Africa, noting that funds originally earmarked for projects to mitigate desertification in the continent are being diverted to Ukraine and Israel. “They are not paying enough attention,” Habiba Ibrahim, a delegate from Nigeria, said and added that this is “because when you have issues of conflicts going on around the world, your mind tends to go there.”
Recent data provided by the UNCCD have demonstrated that the world is losing nearly 100 million hectares of healthy and productive land every year. “Droughts, wildfires, and heatwaves we have witnessed around the world are the symptoms of the deepening and interlinked climate and nature crises, with land at the heart of both,” UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw said in a statement. Over 110 million people in Africa, from the Central African Republic to Somalia and Sudan, were directly affected by weather, climate, and water-related hazards in 2022, causing damages of more than $8.5 billion, according to the data released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).