Workshop on desertification opens in Inner Mongolia

More than 40 Asian journalists and officials joined a forum on desertification that opened on Wednesday in Chifeng city in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The three-day Media Workshop on Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought in Asia will see them discuss how journalists can contribute to efforts to combat desertification.

Organized by the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the State Forestry Administration of China, and the Korea Forest Service, the event is a warm-up session for the Rio+20 Summit in Brazil in June.

Delegates in Chifeng will focus on what has been achieved over the last five years by the 195 parties to the UNCCD, which have adopted a 10-year strategy on combating desertification, how China has dealt with such challenges, and how the media can report and boost anti-desertification work.

The journalists from China, the Republic of Korea, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Vietnam and Uzbekistan will also join a field trip to see anti-desertification projects run by the local government.

Asia is the most severely affected continent in terms of the number of people affected by desertification, land degradation and the effects of drought (DLDD).

According to a government investigation in 2009, the total area of land suffering form DLDD accounts for about 2.62 million square km, or about 27 percent of China's land area.

"China has been battling desertification since the 1950s and taken effective actions to change the affected ecosystems," said Xu Qing, deputy director general of the National Bureau to Combat Desertification.

"The Media has the power to raise public awareness and motivate politicians to do more to tackle DLDD," according to Mansour N' Diaye, of the UNCCD Secretariat.

"The targets of the secretariat of the UNCCD are zero net land and forest degradation by 2030 and the drought preparedness policies implemented in all drought-prone countries by 2020," he added.

The upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, is scheduled to be held in Rio de Janeiro on June 20-22, marking the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit in the Brazilian city.

The conference is expected to provide the world with an opportunity to change its development model and set a new standard on sustainable development and green economy.