Falling on June 17 the day aims to raise public awareness on the international efforts to fight desertification and the need for stronger community participation to resolve the related environmental issues.

The theme of this year’s celebrations focuses on the issues of Food, Fodder and Fibres, and the relations between consumption and earth regarding changing the general trend towards the ways of production and excessive consumption, which are considered the main reason behind desertification.

The MME has exerted great efforts to fight desertification in the country through various programs, initiatives, projects, projects and related works to maintain the plant cover and rehabilitated the wild areas by planting the Qatari desert with various local plants, shrubs and trees, in addition to increasing the existing greenery across the country.

In 2019, the MME’s Environmental Affairs Sector planted 3,280 shrub seedlings to rehabilitate the Qatari lawns and transferred 1,773 trees from the sites of the infrastructure projects of the state in addition to accumulating large amounts of plant seeds and enhancing the strategic seed stock of the country at the genome bank, which include endangered species such ghaff trees and rare types such as the wild Cordiamyxa plants.

Besides, HE the Minister of Municipality and Environment issued a ministerial decision No 180 of 2019 extending the ban on camel grazing in the open lawns for two years, which has contributed considerably in reviving them and some trees, shrubs and plants have started to grow and flourish again. The minister also issued ministerial decision No 381 of 2018 to form a permanent work team to study the positive and negative impacts of the decision to ban camel grazing in the open on the plant cover and wildlife in the country as well as camels.

Further, a team was formed according to ministerial decision No 373 of 2017 to update the national strategy on fighting desertification. In the meantime, 16 wild lawns have been fenced completely across the country with some of them closed entirely to protect the endangered and rare varieties of plants while others were partially closed to enhance the planting process and rehabilitate them.

Source : Gulf Times 

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