While twenty heads of state and over 110 ministers gather in Havana for a key United Nations conference on Desertification, Friends of the Earth International has alerted them of the desertification that is triggered by World Trade Organization policies and the potential impacts of the trade negotiations on drylands that are currently taking place within the WTO. Desertification and land degradation are global environmental problems that devastate the livelihoods of millions of rural people, especially small-scale farmers.

It's estimated by the Secretariat of the Desertification Convention that the degradation of land is costing the world community up to 40 billion dollars a year. Friends of the Earth pointed out that official development aid to rural communities, where the majority of the world's poor lives, has been declining over the past decade, while droughts and other climatic extremes caused by climate change are taking a particularly heavy toll on dryland populations. It noted that agricultural trade liberalization as currently proposed by the US and European Union at the WTO will place an additional burden on dryland populations, whose small farmers are unable to compete on a world market.

Also noting that even the local markets of these small producers are nowadays rapidly being taken over by subsidized agricultural products from the EU, the US and other industrialized countries, the environmental group said that the trade proposals by the EU and US leave intact their direct and indirect subsidies for export-oriented agriculture, while they would force developing countries to open up their agricultural markets for these subsidized products. The results, it said, would be devastating for dryland producers and for the lands these communities manage. Friends of the Earth International called on the heads of state and ministers gathered in Cuba to ensure that desertification concerns, and the rights and interests of dryland communities are put in the forefront during the upcoming ministerial meeting of the WTO in Cancun, Mexico.