Desertification as defined by the U.N.

Convention to
Combat Desertification is “land degradation in arid,
semiarid and dry sub humid areas resulting from various
factors, including climatic variations and unsustainable
human activities.”

Land degradation is in turn defined as the reduction or

loss of the biological or economic productivity of dry
lands.

Desertification is a complex process, involving multiple

causes. It takes place at different rates in various
climates. It can build up a general climatic trend toward
greater aridity, or it may initiate a change in local
climate.
Desertification occurs on all continents except
Antarctica and affects the livelihoods of millions of
people, including a large proportion of the poor in
drylands.

Desertification takes place worldwide in drylands, and

its effects are experienced locally, nationally, regionally,
and globally. Drylands occupy 41% of Earth’s land area
and are home to more than 2 billion people—a third of
the human population in the year 2000. Drylands
include all terrestrial regions where water scarcity limits
the production of crops, forage, wood, and other
ecosystem provisioning services.
Some 10–20% of drylands are already degraded
(medium certainty).

Based on these rough estimates, about 1–6% of the

dryland people live in desertified areas, while a much
larger number is under threat from further
desertification. Scenarios of future development show
that, if unchecked, desertification and degradation of
ecosystem services in drylands will threaten future
improvements in humanwell- being and possibly
reverse gains in some regions. Therefore,
desertification ranks among the greatest
environmental challenges today and is a major
impediment to meeting basic human needs in
drylands.
 Desertification is a historic phenomenon.

 Deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human

activities.

 Paleodeserts – inactive sand seas stabilized by

vegetation (Western Asian Deserts, Sahara)

 Faster rate of desertification today!

Desertification comes mainly
from variations in climate and
from human activities.

CLIMATIC VARIATIONS
High temperatures lasting for months create droughts
that prevent the vegetation from growing.

HUMAN ACTIVITIES
Human activities leading to desertification are mainly
related to agriculture.
Overgrazing removes the vegetation cover that
protects it from erosion.

Overgrazing has made the Rio Puerco

Basin of central New Mexico one of
the most eroded river basins of the
The result of overgrazing
American West and has increased the
on the outskirts of
Amman city, Jordan. high sediment content of the river.
Overcultivation exhausts the soil.

Deforestation destroys the trees that bind the land to

the soil. Wood is the principal source of domestic
energy for lighting and cooking in many arid areas.

Poor irrigation practices raise salinity, and sometimes

dry the rivers that feed large lakes: the Aral Sea and
Lake Chad have shrunk dramatically in this way.

When these practices coincide with drought, the rate of

desertification increases dramatically.
Other root causes, some of which originate outside
the drylands, include:

• Growing populations that increase pressure on fragile

land resources;
• Poverty that prevents people from investing in land
maintenance and rehabilitation;
• Policy and institutional shortcomings, such as
ambiguous land tenure, and policies that allow or even
encourage frontier expansion and over-mechanized
land-clearing;
• Inadequate infrastructure such as roads
• Limited market access
• Inappropriate technologies; and
• Insufficient research and development.
Poverty and desertification: the vicious circle

Economic pressures can lead to the over-exploitation of

land, and usually hit the poorest hardest. Forced to
extract as much as they can from the land for food,
energy, housing and source of income, they are both
the causes and the victims of the desertification.
International trade patterns are based on the short-term
exploitation of local resources for export, acting against
the long-term interests of the local people. Poverty
leads to desertification, which in turn leads to poverty.
 Reduced land resilience to natural climate variability

 Less soil productivity

 Damaged vegetation

 Some consequences borne by people living outside

immediately affected area

 Undermined food production

 Contribution to famine

 Enormous social cost

 Drain on economic resources

Around a third of the world’s land surface
is arid or semi-arid. It has been calculated
that global warming will increase the area
of desert climates by 17% in the next
century. Desertification around the world
makes approximately 12 million hectares
useless for cultivation every year.

During the 1980s, 61% of the 3257

million hectares of all productive
drylands were desertified.
 Desertification is associated with biodiversity loss
and contributes to global climate change through loss
of carbon sequestration capacity and an increase in
land-surface albedo.

 Biological diversity is involved in most services

provided by dryland ecosystems and is adversely
affected by desertification.
Figure 6.1. Linkages and Feedback Loops among Desertification,
Global Climate Change, and Biodiversity Loss
 Desertification
affects global climate
change through soil and vegetation
losses.

 The effect of global climate change on

desertification is complex and not
sufficiently understood.
Overgrazing and to a lesser extent drought in the 1930s
transformed parts of the Great Plains in the United
States into the”Dust Bowl.”

During that time, a considerable fraction of the plains

population abandoned their homes to escape the
unproductive lands. Improved agricultural and water
management have prevented a disaster of the earlier
magnitude from recurring, but desertification presently
affects tens of millions of people with primary
occurrence in the lesser developed countries.
Desertification is widespread in many areas of the
People’s Republic of China.

The populations of rural areas have increased since

1949 for political reasons as more people have settled
there. While there has been an increase in livestock, the
land available for grazing has decreased. Also the
importing of European cattle such as Friesian and
Simmental, which have higher food intakes, has made
things worse.
Human overpopulation is leading to destruction of
tropical wet forests and tropical dry forests, due to
widening practices of slash-and-burn and other
methods of subsistence farming necessitated by
famines in lesser developed countries. A sequel to the
deforestation is typically large scale erosion, loss of soil
nutrients and sometimes total desertification.

Examples of this extreme outcome can be seen on

Madagascar’s central highland plateau, where about
seven percent of the country's total land mass has
become barren, sterile land.
Another example of desertification occurring is in the
Sahel. The chief cause of desertification in the Sahel is
slash-and-burn farming practiced by an expanding
human population. The Sahara is expanding south at an
average rate of 30 miles per year.

The Sahelian drought that began in

1968 was responsible for the deaths
of between 100,000 and 250,000
people, the disruption of millions of
lives, and the collapse of the
agricultural bases of five countries.
The Desert of Maine is a 40 acre dune of glacial silt
near Freeport, Maine. Overgrazing and soil erosion
exposed the cap of the dune, revealing the desert as a
small patch that continued to grow, overtaking the land.
The site is maintained as a tourist attraction.

Ghana and Nigeria currently experience desertification;

in the latter, desertification overtakes about
1,355 square miles (3,510 km²) of land per year.
The Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are
also affected. More than 80% of Afghanistan’s and
Pakistan’s land could be subject to soil erosion and
desertification.

In Kazakhstan, nearly half of the cropland has been

abandoned since 1980. In Iran, sand storms were said
to have buried 124 villages in Sistan and Baluchestan
Province in 2002, and they had to be abandoned.

In Latin America, Mexico and Brazil are affected by

desertification.
Lake Chad in a 2001 satellite image, with the actual lake in blue.
The lake has shrunk by 95% since the 1960s.
 Restore and fertilize the land

 Combat the effects of the wind

Building barriers (fences) to prevent

advance of sand dunes at Gour, Niger.
Fences are mainly built with the local
bush or with dead palm leaves.
 Reforestation

 Develop sustainable agricultural practices

 Traditional lifestyles

Erosion control by planting grass in

rows on steep slopes in India
 Milestones: The response of the
international community to desertification

 1977 – United Nations Desertification

Conference, Nairobi
 1992 – United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro
 1994 – Adoption of the United Nations
Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
 2002 – World Summit on Sustainable
Development, Johannesburg
 References:
 Desert in Iceland: http://www.rala.is/desert/
 Deserts and Desertification: http://www.
didyouknow.cd/deserts.htm
 Desertification: http://www.botany.uwc.ac.za/
envFacts/facts/desertification.htm
 Desertification: http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip
/deserts/desertification/
 Desertification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
/Desertification