The first U.N. meeting to combat desertification to be held in Korea will focus on defining standards to measure progression of land degradation, a step essential to boost international support and funding, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification said.

The UNCCD said that starting Monday, the 12-day gathering of prominent desertification experts and government officials from 194 nations will stay in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, to discuss the definition of standards and other issues related to desertification.

The lack of agreed standards in measuring loss of soil nutrients has hampered global efforts to tackle the problem as investors and donors found it difficult to track the impact of their funding.

“Whenever we say land degradation is a problem, scientists contest it,” said UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja at a press conference on Thursday. “The goal for COP 10 (the 10th Conference of the Parties) is to have a consensus ... on the methodology of monitoring.”

Coming up with a world standard in measuring loss of soil which scientists can refer to could boost international efforts to tackle desertification, he said.

The UNCCD is the world’s first and only legally binding convention created to address the problem of desertification. It was established in 1997 and has held its annual forum in the Americas, Europe and Africa. Changwon’s hosting, an initiative suggested by the Korea Forest Services, is a first for Asia.

The organization has been facing difficulty in gathering international funding to combat desertification since it came into force.

Monitoring of the desertification process has so far focused mainly on measuring land with nutrient top soil for food production. But scientists demand to understand how the process affects poverty and child malnutrition.

“Donors must have a clear idea of how big the problem is and must be confident that we can measure progress in overcoming the problem,” William Dar, director-general of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Andhra Pradesh, India, was quoted as saying.

The UNCCD argues it is time for what it calls the Brown Revolution where the public and private sector wake up to the fact that productive land on the earth is diminishing while the world’s population is growing. It says the world is reaching a tipping point where the vital services provided by the soil, such as food, water and energy have become finite.

“We’ve been degrading usable land at 1 percent per year. Not for the sake of climate change, but for the sake of life. We must build a land degradation-neutral life,” Gnacadja said.

According to the UNCCD, the world is losing 24 billion tons of soil every year due to erosion, dead zones at the mouths of rivers and overgrazing. Land degradation affects 1.5 billion people.

According to the Global Risks Report 2011 of the World Economic Forum, the demand for water, food and energy is expected to rise by 30 to 50 percent in the next two decades. It predicts a severe shortage of resources to cause social and political instability, geopolitical conflict and irreparable environmental damage.

The UNCCD COP 10 conference, the main event, is expected to raise public awareness of desertification and land degradation. Changwon was chosen to host the 10th Session of the conference in 2009 Buenos Aires forum.

Attendees include three secretaries-general from the U.N. environmental organizations ― Gnacadja from the UNCCD, Ahmed Djoghlaf from the Convention on Biological Diversity, and Christiana Figueres from U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Along with them, the secretary-general of the UNEP and the head of other environment-related organizations plan to visit Changwon as well. Over 90 multinational companies from Korea and abroad, such as Unilever, Nestle, and Cargill, will be joining the forum. They will discuss environmental issues facing the earth.

By Cynthia J. Kim (cynthiak@heraldcorp.com)