Cancun must be guided by Havana -- Zuma

01-Sep-2003: By GUY ROGERS at the 6th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Havana, Cuba

SOUTH African Deputy President Jacob Zuma says if land degradation is going to be seriously addressed then substantial progress on the issue of market limitations needs to be made at next week’s trade summit in Mexico next week.

Addressing delegates on the first day of the heads of state meeting within the framework of the conference here in Havana, Mr Zuma said about 12 million South Africans relied directly on natural resources for their survival and many were already experiencing the ravages of land degradation.

Referring to the opportunity to capitalise on the synergy between the Havana conference and next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in the Mexican city of Cancun as well as the World Parks’ Congress which begins in Durban on September 8, he said finding solutions to land degradation was in the interests of the developed as well as the developing nations.

The WTO conference especially needed to “take a step forward” on the vexed issue of agricultural subsidies and improving access to markets for the rural poor, he said.

European subsidies help farmers in EU countries produce cheaper food, allowing them, as Cuban President Fidel Castro put it earlier, “to flood the world with products, leaving the Third World with no future except to export raw materials and cheap labour”.

The SA government played a substantial role at the WSSD in Johannesburg in convincing the Global Environment Facility that desertification should be accepted as a focal point worthy of dedicated funding. The announcement two weeks ago of a R400 000 million Gef programme of action was one of only a handful of implementations that have come out of WSSD and a major talking point here. Yet the link with Africa’s flagship resuscitation plan Nepad, championed by South Africa, has received relatively little attention, disappointing the SA delegation.

Touching on the issue, Mr Zuma called for the link between the convention and the environmental component of Nepad to be strengthened.