Attendance was sparse at a press conference following last fall’s first ever U.N. General Assembly devoted to desertification, as the loss of fertile land in dry areas is known. “If this were about climate change, the room would be full,” Luc Gnacadja of Benin, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, began his remarks to the press. On the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, where the desertification convention was established, it remains a poor cousin to other groundbreaking treaties set up at ... Read More