On Tuesday 18 December, the European Court of Auditors published a report criticising the lack of coherence of the strategy to combat desertification at the European level.
“The European Commission has no clear vision of the challenges posed by the growing threats to the EU from desertification and land degradation,” the auditors said.
Desertification is both a consequence and a cause of climate change: land degradation leads to greenhouse gas emissions, and degraded soil has a lower carbon storage capacity.
The Court of Auditors regrets the lack of a harmonised strategy despite the requirements of one of the United Nations' sustainable development objectives to achieve land neutrality by 2030 and the failure to fulfil the Commission's promise of concrete measures made in 2013 in its Seventh Environmental Action Plan.
“As auditors, it is our responsibility to draw attention to such risks, which are likely to put increasing pressure on public budgets, both at the EU and the national level,” explained Phil Wynn Owen, the Court of Auditors' member responsible for the report.
The report follows audit visits to five Member States affected by desertification: Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Portugal and Romania.
The thirteen EU Member States that have declared, within the framework of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), that they are affected by desertification are Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia.
In particular, the auditors recommend developing a methodology to assess the extent of desertification and land degradation in the EU and providing guidance to Member States on actions to be taken to achieve land degradation neutrality in the EU.
On the same day, the Commission published a roadmap to halt global deforestation and land degradation (see other news).
The full report is available in 23 languages at: https://bit.ly/2JgrdLe. (Original version in French by Mathieu Solal)