Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Desert
Desertification land degrading into desert is often blamed on
mismanagement and misuse of land. Local people are allegedly guilty of
over-farming, over-grazing and allowing their populations to exceed the
environments capacity.
Debates concerning natural resources often pivot on a received wisdom
about environmental change and peoples role in this process. In the case of
the environment, the received wisdom is that people invariably degrade
natural resources. Outsiders, perceiving environmental change as
degradation, blame local land-use practices.
The dominant idea about desertification has been that dryland environments
are rapidly degraded by a combination of natural and human factors.
Desertification is defined as the degradation of drylands, involving loss of
biological or economic productivity and complexity.
From the 1930s, the blame was laid largely on the land use practices of
farmers and herders, and on increasing populations. This was reinforced in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in the UN Conference on
Desertification in 1977. Some scientists were uncertain about the causes and
extent of desertification, and expressed concern at the lack of long-term data.
Despite that, the Conference ended by stating that desertification was
threatening 19% of the earths surface, and that this threat came from
increased intensity of land use, overgrazing and inappropriate irrigation,
exacerbated by drought.
Such claims were reiterated by the UN Environment Programme, which was
the driving force for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD),
which entered into force in 1996. The rationale for the Convention is that
"over 250 million people are directly affected by desertification, and some
one thousand million (or one billion) are at risk. Over the past two decades,
the problem of land degradation in dryland regions has continued to worsen".
Yet, evidence has been mounting that some of these assertions are
unfounded. Most received wisdom on desertification and land degradation
assumes an equilibrium environment with linear development. Thus,
observations of expanding desert at certain periods and certain locations are
extrapolated as ongoing, even accelerating, desertification.
For instance, work in northern Sudan that estimated the desert edge had
Saharas edge, in Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Kenya, integrated
farming, mixed cropping and traditional soil and water conservation methods
are increasing per capita food production several fold, keeping well ahead of
population growth.
For example, the use of sheep manure for fertiliser has allowed increased
yields for farmers in Kano, Nigeria. Additionally, planting leguminous crops
increases nutrient levels in the soil by fixing nitrogen from the air. Integration
of crops and livestock enhances nutrient cycling legumes and manure
return to the soil what crops take out.
A 4-year study in eastern Burkina Faso found that despite declining rainfall
since the late 1950s and increasing populations, there is no evidence of land
degradation connected to human activities nor a decline in food productivity.
Conversely, yields of many crops have risen. The study found no proof of soil
fertility decline over 30 years.
Farmers have not achieved environmental sustainability through a capitalintensive or high-tech path. In Burkina Faso, the increased yields of sorghum,
millet and groundnuts is hardly attributable to increased external inputs,
because these crops receive little fertiliser and are largely based on hand hoe
cultivation.
Farmers have a rich repertoire of soil and water conservation technologies,
such as crop sequencing, crop rotation, fallowing, weeding, selective clearing,
intercropping, appropriate crop & landrace selection, adapted plant spacing,
thinning, mulching, stubble grazing, weeding mounds, paddocking, household
refuse application, manure application, crop residue application and compost
pits. They use many mechanical practices too.
Perhaps more important than the practices is the selective way they are
used, which vary with different field types, allowing optimal adjustment of
limited labour and inputs to the requirements of different crops and soils. If
land becomes limited, farmers do not need to invent new management
systems; they apply these soil and water conservation practices more
intensively, and only when and where needed.
High local population densities, far from being a liability, are actually
essential for providing the necessary labour to work the land, dig terraces
and collect water in ponds for irrigation, and to control weeds, tend fields,
feed animals and spread manure. As population densities increase, farmers
intensify their cooperation systems, grouping to tend each others fields at
busy periods, lending and borrowing land, livestock and equipment, and
swapping seed varieties.
People thus invest heavily in creating and maintaining social networks, such
as land networks, labour networks, womens natal networks, cattle networks,