Desertification and drylands development: what can be done?

✍ Scribed by M. Mainguet; G. G. Da Silva

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 122 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1085-3278
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-145x(199809/10)9:5<375::aid-ldr304>3.0.co;2-2

✦ Synopsis

By analysing the concept of deserti®cation and the evolution of its de®nitions, ®ve main themes were selected. The perception of the causes of deserti®cation has shifted from blaming colonization to climate change and ®nally to the traditional land-use systems. In the 1960s in Africa, the trend was to attribute land degradation to sectorial development during colonization. During the 1970s, essentially because of UNEP eorts, middle-term climate changes and shortterm droughts were considered as causes of deserti®cation, while distinguishing meteorological, hydrological, edaphic and agricultural droughts. The consensus view of the last decades now is that deserti®cation is primarily human induced: among them the eects of traditional indigenous land management and of imported exogenous land management can be distinguished. To separate climate-induced, short-term environmental changes from land degradation induced by human activities is impossible.

What can be achieved in drylands? It is obviously erroneous to propose dry ecosystem development on the model of highly mechanized developed countries. Drylands development requires much more input, leading to accelerated waste production. It cannot follow the same scheme as in temperate or in wet-tropical ecosystems. They need higher investment and risk more irreversible land degradation. The drylands are ®nancial sinks. Rehabilitation of the environment together with demographic control should have priority. Finally, preference should be given to small projects of irrigation rather than huge complex plans.