Impact of Desertification

 

The consequences of desertification - the phenomenon of land degradation - depend on four factors that vary by region, country and year:

 

- the seriousness and extent of land degradation;
- the severity of climatic conditions at the lime (especially annual rainfall);
- the number and diversity of affected populations; and
- the level of development of the country involved.

The poorer the peoples and the less developed the countries involved, the more profound will be the future effects of desertification, and the greater the potential for tragedy when natural conditions, especially climatic, become difficult.

 

Desertification should be viewed as a breakdown of the fragile balance that allowed plant, human and animal life to develop in arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid zones. This breakdown of the equilibrium and of the physical, chemical and biological processes that sustain it, represents the start of a process of self-destruction for all elements of the life system. Thus soil vulnerability to wind and water erosion, the lowering of the water-table, the impairment of the natural regeneration of vegetation, the chemical degeneration of soils - themselves all immediate results of desertification - worsen the situation.

 

Desertification feeds on itself. Consequently, the effects of desertification are extremely serious and often dramatic for the poor populations of developing countries. By limiting natural potential desertification reduces production and makes it increasingly precarious. Forced to attend to the most urgent things first, populations resort to survival strategies that unfortunately make desertification worse and prevent any development.

 

The most immediate and generally widespread of these survival strategies is to intensify overexploitation of the most readily available natural resources, but at the cost of enormous effort. The second strategy is to sell off everything owned, including agricultural equipment, to cope with the monetary needs of development (e.g. schooling, social services, contributions to pump maintenance), or food crises (buying food). The third strategy is increasing rural migration: this may simply involve men and young people leaving for a seasonal or longer-term job in other areas of the country, particularly the towns, or going to other countries; or the migration may take on the proportions of a population exodus in search of better living conditions.

 

These survival strategies are often accompanied by breakdowns in the integrity of communities and sometimes of families. When survival is difficult, people become withdrawn and sometimes strongly individualistic, which leads to ethnic, family or individual conflict.

 

Finally, desertification exacerbates the effects of climatic (drought) and political (war) disasters, regularly leading to the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world.

 

All these factors weaken still further the economies of developing countries affected by desertification, particularly those countries that have no resources other than agriculture and those where almost all the territory is affected. In this respect, African countries in arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid zones are particularly prone to desertification and affected by its consequences. Their economies are powerless to break the fatal cycle of poverty that leads them to face up to emergencies by taking on more and more increasingly untenable debt. This in turn precludes any future possibility of productive investments to break the circle of underdevelopment.

 

However, desertification can lead to a positive change in some behaviour, especially that of women facing problems caused by the absence of men who have gone in search of work, and the aspirations of young people towards a less demanding life. This extra work and responsibility lead to two new attitudes:

 

requests for equal access to land, especially land managed by those concerned. Group approval is often the first step in achieving this aim. Women willingly look for compromises in accordance with the basic rules of the community. This is a powerful factor for mobilizing women, and one that should be neither ignored nor underestimated in the fight against desertification;

a growing awareness of the need to space out births; women are often eager to do this in many parts of the world, subject to men's approval and government support.

 

While desertification has brought about a sharp reduction in agricultural equipment, it has also helped to multiply and broaden technical knowledge, especially on the environment and its conservation. Micro-projects undertaken in many places over the last 15 years have resulted in a wealth of knowledge and some practical techniques. This is a starting-point that should not be neglected. Similarly, many rural people's perception of the environment and their relationship with it is changing, or has already changed in some places. The environment is increasingly being conceived as:

 

a sensitive area that has been overneglected and overexploited, requiring work and management efforts to repair the results of past mistakes and precipitate action; and
belonging to the rural peoples, whose wish to appropriate land and organize themselves into groups, cooperatives, village development associations, autonomous local associations, etc., is evolving and augurs well for the future.

 

Desertification reduces the land’s resilience to natural climate variability. Soil, vegetation, freshwater supplies, and other dryland resources tend to be resilient. They can eventually recover from climatic disturbances, such as drought, and even from human-induced impacts, such as overgrazing. When land is degraded, however, this resilience is greatly weakened. This has both physical and socio-economic consequences.

 

Soil becomes less productive. Exposed and eroded topsoil can be blown away by the wind or washed away by rainstorms. The soil’s physical structure and bio-chemical composition can change for the worse. Gullies and cracks may appear and vital nutrients can be removed by wind or water. If the water table rises due to inadequate drainage and poor irrigation practices, the soil can become waterlogged, and salts may build up. When soil is trampled and compacted by cattle, it can lose its ability to support plant growth and to hold moisture, resulting in increased evaporation and surface run-off.

 

Vegetation becomes damaged. The loss of vegetation cover is both a consequence and a cause of land degradation. Loose soil can sandblast plants, bury them, or leave their roots dangerously exposed. When pastures are overgrazed by too many animals, or by inappropriate types, edible plant species may be lost, allowing inedible species to invade.

 

Some of the consequences are borne by people living outside the immediately affected area. Degraded land may cause downstream flooding, reduced water quality, sedimentation in rivers and lakes, and siltation of reservoirs and navigation channels. It can also cause dust storms and air pollution, resulting in damaged machinery, reduced visibility, unwanted sediment deposits, and mental stress. Wind-blown dust can also worsen health problems, including eye infections, respiratory illnesses, and allergies. Dramatic increases in the frequency of dust storms were recorded during the Dust Bowl years in the US, in the Virgin Lands scheme area in the former USSR in the 1950s, and in the African Sahel during the 1970s and 1980s.

 

Food production is undermined. Desertification is considered a major global environmental issue largely because of the link between dryland degradation and food production. A nutritionally adequate diet for the world’s growing population implies tripling food production over the next 50 years. This will be difficult to achieve even under favourable circumstances. If desertification is not stopped and reversed, food yields in many affected areas will decline. Malnutrition, starvation, and ultimately famine may result. The relationship between soil degradation and crop yields, however, is seldom straightforward. Productivity is affected by many different factors, such as the weather, disease and pests, farming methods, and external markets and other economic forces.

 

Desertification contributes to famine. Famine typically occurs in areas that also suffer from poverty, civil unrest, or war. Drought and land degradation often help to trigger a crisis, which is then made worse by poor food distribution and the inability to buy what is available.

 

Desertification has enormous social costs. There is now increased awareness of the relationship between desertification, movements of people, and conflicts. In Africa, many people have become internally displaced or forced to migrate to other countries due to war, drought, and dryland degradation. The environmental resources in and around the cities and camps where these people settle come under severe pressure. Difficult living conditions and the loss of cultural identity further undermine social stability.

 

Desertification is a huge drain on economic resources. There is little detailed data on the economic losses resulting from desertification, although an unpublished World Bank study suggested that the depletion of natural resources in one Sahelian country was equivalent to 20% of its annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). At the global level, it is estimated that the annual income foregone in the areas immediately affected by desertification amounts to approximately US$ 42 billion each year. The indirect economic and social costs suffered outside the affected areas, including the influx of “environmental refugees” and losses to national food production, may be much greater.

 

 

 

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