Keeping Deserts at Bay

Journalist William Shawcross coined the apt term “compassion fatigue” to describe the feeling of powerlessness that afflicts many of us when we hear the latest grim statistics about world poverty, like the recent UNICEF report that a record 7 million children die of malnutrition each year.

This week, however, the Senate should be anything but powerless. By becoming the last developed nation to sign a United Nations treaty to help farmers stop the erosion of arable land in Asia and Africa, the Senate could thwart a grim United Nations projection that in the next decade more than 135 million people will be forced to abandon their lands due to the direct and indirect effects of “desertification.”

The process, the loss of arable land, has reached crisis stage because expansion of single-crop farming has left fragile soil infertile. Meanwhile, climate changes like El Nino have spurred droughts and made traditional agricultural practices like slash-and-burn land clearing ecologically disastrous.

Next month, environmental experts from more than 200 nations will convene in Dakar, Senegal, to seek ways to avert the crisis. But if the Senate fails to OK the treaty, no Americans will be officially present; U.S. laws prohibit Americans from participating in any consultations on a treaty not approved by the Senate.

It would be unfortunate if Americans were not conference participants, for big U.S. companies like Cargill, Kraft and Monsanto are eager to help and Americans are recognized as the world’s experts on desertification, a problem they mastered in the 1930s when previously unsuccessful U.S. land-use policies help turn much of Middle America into a “dust bowl.”

Unlike some other environmental treaties that lack bipartisan backing, this one enjoys broad support because Republican and Democratic leaders know it could reduce foreign aid burdens.

Numerous studies show that desertification leads not only to famine but to social fragmentation. By establishing economical land-use policies and implementing accountability measures to prevent countries from squandering foreign aid (like the $30 million Congress already spends each year on desertification projects here and abroad), the treaty would help reduce social instability, potentially sparing taxpayers high-cost foreign aid intervention programs. That’s a commitment worth making, for the world’s sake.