By 2050 between 60 and 130 million people will leave zones affected by drought and aridity. Simply because those areas will become uninhabitable." Regeneration International interviews Patrice Burger, Director of the CARI Association, on the importance of maintaining and rehabilitating arid lands through regenerative agriculture and agroecology in order to help resolve the growing migration crisis. CARI is a French non-profit organization dedicated to dryland development and agroecology. CARI leads the Working Group on Desertification in France and coordinates a network of NGOs dedicated to safeguarding oases in the Maghreb (RADDO).

According to the UNCCD, 110 countries are hit by desertification and each year 12 million hectares of farmland disappear worldwide. It has become crucial for organizations such as CARI to increase and expand their activities in order to help prevent further desertification, future population displacements and conflicts over food and water scarcity.

On December 1st 2015, CARI became a member of the French “4 per 1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate,” which aims to demonstrate that agriculture, and agricultural soils in particular, can play a crucial role where food security and climate change are concerned.

More about Patrice Burger: Patrice Burger has over experience twenty years in rural development in sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb. Since 1996 he has been involved in the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. He has been designated as the spokesman for the civil society in the high level event on desertification at the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2011. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Intergovernmental Organization Observatory of the Sahara and Sahel (OSS). Since 2007, Patrice Burger represents CARI within the Drynet international network that represents an organized force of the civil society in the Convention to Combat Desertification and has to his credit several successes in terms of action on the ground or advocacy. In September 2013 Patrice Burger was elected as chair of the Drynet network.

http://regenerationinternational.org/2016/05/16/regenerative-agriculture-the-key-to-solving-desertification-and-migration-crises/