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What is desertification?
One quarter of the earth's land is threatened by desertification, according to estimates by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The livelihoods of over 1 billion people in more than 100 countries are also jeopardized by desertification, as farming and grazing land becomes less productive.
Desertification does not mean that deserts are steadily advancing or taking over neighbouring land. As defined by the UN Convention, desertification is a process of "land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities."
Patches of degraded land may develop hundreds of kilometers from the nearest desert. But these patches can expand and join together, creating desert-like conditions. Desertification contributes to other environmental crises, such as the loss of biodiversity and global warming.
Most of the endangered dryland regions lie near the world's five main desert areas:
- The Sonoran Desert of northwest Mexico and its continuation into the southwest United States
- The Atacama Desert, a thin coastal strip in South America between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean
- A large desert area running eastward from the Atlantic Ocean to China, including the Sahara desert, the Arabian Desert, the deserts of Iran and the former Soviet Union
- The Great Indian Desert (Thar) in Rajasthan, and the Takla-makan and Gobi Deserts in China and Mongolia
- The Kalahari Desert in southern Africa
- Most of Australia.
There are some other areas of major concern:
- In Africa, 66 per cent of the total land area is arid or semi-arid; in North America, the figure is 34 per cent.
- About 40 per cent of the continental United States is considered vulnerable to desertification by the US Bureau of Land Management. At least 40 per cent of Texas pasture land is already too parched for grazing.
- Drylands cover more than a third of the earth's total land surface, while deserts account for about 7 per cent. Activities to counter desertification focus on preventing the creation of "desert-like conditions" in dryland areas.
- The Roman Empire's breadbasket in North Africa, which once contained 600 cities, is now a desert.
Drought often triggers desertification, but human activities are usually the most significant causes. Over-cultivation exhausts the soil. Overgrazing removes vegetation that prevents soil erosion. Trees that bind the soil together are cut for lumber or firewood for heating and cooking. Poorly drained irrigation turns cropland salty, desertifying 500,000 hectares annually, about the same amount of soil that is newly irrigated each year.
Significant underlying causes include social and economic factors in developing countries, such as poverty, high population growth rates, unequal land distribution, refugee flows, modernization that disrupts traditional farming practices, and government policies that encourage the growing of cash crops on marginal land to pay off foreign debts.
Life on earth depends on the layer of soil that is the source of nutrients for plants, crops, forests, animals and people. Without it, ultimately none can survive. Although topsoil takes a long time to build up, if mistreated it can vanish in just a few seasons due to erosion by wind and water.
The Economic Problem
If properly cared for, drylands can contribute significantly to economic growth by serving as a base for agriculture, grazing and human habitation and activity. Yet these areas are vulnerable to drought and the results of unsustainable human activity. A few facts:
- Of the world's 5.2 billion hectares of agriculturally used drylands, 69 per cent is degraded or subject to desertification, according to UNEP.
- In Africa, 73 per cent of the drylands used for agriculture is already degraded; in North America, the figure is 74 per cent.
- World food production must increase by more than 75 per cent over the next 30 years to keep up with population growth, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Yet an area about the size of China and India combined -- 1.2 billion hectares -- has experienced moderate to extreme soil deterioration in the past 50 years, mostly in arid or semi-arid regions in developing countries.
- UNEP estimates that desertification costs the world US$ 42 billion a year. Of the total, Africa loses some US$ 9 billion a year, Asia US$ 21 billion, North America US$ 5 billion, Australia and South America US$ 3 billion each, and Europe US$ 1 billion.
Political and Social Problems
In addition to its negative economic and environmental impacts, desertification is partially responsible for population migration. Although no one knows for sure how many people have had to abandon their land when it turned to dust, it appears to be in the millions. One sixth of the population of Mali and Burkina Faso has already been uprooted because of desertification. It is also a factor in the immigration of Mexicans into the United States.
Poverty forces poor people to wring as much as possible from the land in order to feed, house and warm their families. Unfortunately, over-cultivation, deforestation and other unsustainable practices degrade the land, forcing people to look elsewhere to support themselves. Poor people are highly vulnerable to the effects of weather, as drought can cause famine, while good rains can cause precipitous drops in crop prices. Politically, the poor are also vulnerable, often relegated to the most marginal land.
Desertification has played a part in armed conflict in arid lands, having contributed to political instability, starvation and social breakdown in places such as Somalia.
Click to watch a film on Desertification which we produced during the FCD conference tour to the Negev.
http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-4747-israelnews-kkl-jnf-fights-desertification
More than 60 per cent of Israel’s area, in the country’s southern Negev Desert and Arava Valley, is arid and semi-arid, with an average annual precipitation ranging between 250mm and less than 50mm.
Over the years JNF has invested extensive resources in a broad ecological and environmental program to combat desertification and to upgrade degraded lands by:
- Developing agroforestry and properly managing grazing lands by planting rows of individual trees along earthen ridges to capture surface runoff and encourage the growth of savanna-style steppe;
- Planting “liman” tree clusters in banked-up water catchment depressions for shade and greenery;
- Fostering desert agriculture through support for R&D experimental programs to identify and develop new strains of crops suited to semi-arid and arid areas, to control pests and provide solutions to desert soil diseases;
- Building floodwater control dams in dry river beds to protect fields from soil erosion and facilitate the percolation of surface runoff waters harvested from surrounding watersheds to enrich underground aquifers;
- Building water storage facilities to store purified sewage effluent channeled from the Shafdan -Tel Aviv metropolitan and other urban areas to irrigate farms in Israel’s southern expanses;
- Sponsoring ecological R&D programs in collaboration with Israeli universities and research institutes to foster desert management programs which enhance productivity and biodiversity, repair damaged arid lands and restore indigenous flora and fauna;
- Collaborating with the International Arid Lands Consortium comprising the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service and six American universities in advancing strategies for sustainable development of desert regions;
- Utilizing purified waste waters and collected surface run off to create recreational green belts near towns and rural communities for the benefit of their residents.
Afforestation to Combat Desertification
Conference Opens
New Joint Project - Olive Trees for Peace
On Monday morning, 16th April, 2007, the KKL-JNF & IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) Conference on Afforestation and Sustainable Forests as a Means to Combat Desertification was officially opened. Professor Alon Tal, chaired the Opening Plenary Session at Jerusalem’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, where participants from Israel and abroad assembled for what promised to be a fascinating four days of discussion about desertification, affording participants the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience in an international level.
Professor Tal, who lectures at the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, inter alia, and who is “proud to be a member of the KKL-JNF Directorate for the past five years,” opened his remarks by quoting the former British High Commissioner, who described the country under the British Mandate. “This country is the size of a small province but it has the bio-diversity of a continent.”
“As you must know,” Prof. Tal continued, “Israel has suffered from desertification from the time of the Roman Empire until the present era, as a result of deforestation and over-grazing. When the State of Israel was created, it signed a covenant with KKL-JNF, entrusting it with responsibility for care of Israel’s lands and open spaces. After 1948, many refugees from Europe and the Arab countries immigrated to the new state, and KKL-JNF provided them with work planting forests from the north to the south. We hope to share some of our achievements and knowledge with you and look forward to learning from the expertise of our colleagues from abroad.”
Professor Tal introduced Shalom Simhon, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, who responded to his remarks. “In fact, I am the son of one of those immigrants who planted the first KKL-JNF forests. Since then, KKL-JNF has involved the entire Israeli populace and made them feel at home in the forests by means of the various activities it sponsors all year long, especially during holiday seasons. Ecology today is at the top of the global priority list and combating desertification, planting forests, protecting open spaces, landscaping and preserving soil infrastructure are major aspects of the international ecological agenda. In Israel, although the Ministry of Agriculture is the official regulator of the State’s forests, KKL-JNF is responsible for implementation. Forests prevent floods, stop erosion, stabilize riverbanks, and thus are important for agriculture. I would like to take advantage of this auspicious occasion to announce a new plan and to invite my good friend, KKL-JNF World Chairman Mr. Efi Stenzler, to be a partner to this initiative. Together with the Ministries of Agriculture of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, we intend to plant four million olive trees along Israel’s eastern border. We will market olive oil produced from these trees under a joint label as a means of promoting peaceful cooperation."
KKL-JNF World Chairman, Efi Stenzler, opened his remarks by welcoming a very special guest, Russell Robinson, CEO of JNF America. “KKL-JNF has planted 230 million trees over the past century with the help of friends from abroad, transforming Israel’s landscape. Afforestation, pushing back the desert, research & development in the Negev, water works, reservoirs and sustainable development in general to these, we are committed. We see these projects as of utmost importance. We also believe in sharing our know-how with the world it is no longer a secret that we are working with Indonesia, inter alia, helping to make it greener, although there are no diplomatic relations between us. Such exchanges are an essential part of our vision and in fact, the subject of this conference.”
“I must also mention that today is not an ordinary day in Israel. It is Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we commemorate the murder of six million of our people. For me, planting trees and making the desert green symbolize renewed life and roots in the Land. When UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, recently visited Israel, I promised him that KKL-JNF would plant six million trees in memory of the six million Holocaust victims, as a means of combating global warming.”
Stenzler concluded his remarks by responding to Agriculture Minister, Simhon: “Olive trees symbolize peace and fertility. The historical, legendary King David was anointed with olive oil. KKL-JNF professionals are experts in growing olive trees in desert conditions, something previously thought to be impossible. On behalf of KKL-JNF, and in respect to Israel’s upcoming sixtieth birthday, KKL-JNF is honored to be partner to this project.”
Nir Atzmon, Chairman of the Conference Scientific Committee, concluded the Opening Plenary Session by noting that we need to emphasize the human aspects of combating desertification and that we need to develop a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to this issue.
