10 July 2010: In a statement to the Third Annual Caux Forum for Human Security, which convened from 9-16 July 2010, in Caux, Switzerland, Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), discussed “Grounding Security: Soil security a prerequisite for human security.”

Gnacadja noted links between climate change and conflict, and challenged his audience to “pursue a decisive policy change in the way we perceive the drylands and address the issues of its people in order to avoid environmentally induced conflicts.” To do this, he called for efforts to “securitize the ground,” which he defined as “creating a wider global political awareness of DLDD [desertification, land degradation and drought] and their societal consequences. It is making combating DLDD a key international political commitment and upgrading DLDD to the security realm.” In this regard, he highlighted the importance of taking “reactive and proactive short-, medium and long-term strategies for coping with desertification (soil depletion/soil insecurity) by exposing its manifold societal, environmental and economic consequences.” [The Statement]