Understanding, although desertification and erosion have taken place for eons beyond remembrance, where the activities of sapient beings exacerbate those processes or cause the expansion of drylands to take place where they otherwise would not, far reaching negative consequences can result.
Outlining the source of artificially caused desertification to include over-grazing, deforestation, the over-exploitation of soils from farming, and the loss of sufficient moisture in soils to prevent wind erosion after tillage or the removal of vegetation,
Highlighting the effects of artificial desertification to include the destabilisation of the local biosphere, diminished habitability and food production in the affected areas, as well as climate changes in the larger scope of the region when water cannot be dispersed into the atmosphere through transpiration from plants,
This General Assembly, in seeking to avoid such environmental repercussions, hereby:
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Establishes the Environmental Survey of the World Assembly (ESWA) as a research and advisory department within the World Assembly Scientific Programme, employing an appropriate number of scientists and support staff, and paid for by the WA general fund with no external sources for financial contribution permitted;
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Instructs the ESWA to:
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Conduct ground, water, and atmospheric surveys of member nations’ territories, as well as accessible international areas in order to collect data on their environmental situations.
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Keep and publish records of survey findings, develop estimations to the cause of any changes in a survey area over time, and create predictions of future trends.
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Alert member nations to at-risk areas of environmental degradation caused by their sapient inhabitants and issue recommendations for appropriate countermeasures.
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Identify areas in member nations’ territories as candidates for reforestation, land reclamation, and rehabilitation, where environmental degradation has been artificially made.
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Allow volunteer scientists with relevant expertise to assist with ESWA research under supervision.
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Instructs member nations to develop and implement curricula as a comprehensive component of existing education in geological sciences for their nation’s youth in order to understand the causes, consequences, and solutions for artificial desertification;
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Requires member nations to prohibit over-grazing and, instead, employ sustainable, targeted grazing practices, defined as the rotation of livestock between pastures with fallowing periods sufficient to allow plants to recover, unless the livestock is being used to maintain a controlled conservation area for the purposes of improving biodiversity, or unless the livestock is temporarily used to fertilise and prepare farmland;
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Orders member nations to install or plant windbreaks around farm fields in areas designated by the ESWA to be “at-risk” of wind erosion, in sufficient intervals to be effective;
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Requires member nations develop and implement legislation prohibiting the excessive removal or destruction of vegetation, defined as such removal or destruction resulting in exposed, unprotected soils creating a threat of artificial desertification or contributing to existing desertification in the local area;
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Mandates that member nations implement water control measures on their landscapes made artificially vulnerable to ecologically damaging levels of water erosion, with such measures able to channel surface runoff into swales, contour trenches, or other systems that preserve water, soil, and vegetation fertility;
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Recommends that member nations work in harmony to develop and contribute to reforestation projects in areas identified by the ESWA to be targets for rehabilitation.