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10 Crazy Facts About Desertification

Facts About DesertificationDesertification has become a growing problem that the world faces today. It occurs on almost every continents. Millions of people are affected by this issue. The following will discuss facts about desertification, including the issues and the impact on people and their health.

What is Desertification?

Desertification can be defined as the degradation of land in areas that experience arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid climates. It is when fertile land becomes dry and unusable. Desertification is caused by a variety of human factors. These factors include unsustainable farming, clearing of forestation and trees, overgrazing and mining.

10 Facts About Desertification

  1. There are a variety of factors that cause the issue of desertification. Causes of desertification range from the removal of trees and plants to intensive farming that depletes the fertile soil. Other causes can be as simple as animals eating away all of the grass in the arid or drylands. Besides human activity, extreme weather such as droughts and excessive heat can attribute to the cause of desertification.
  2. United Nations predicts that within the next 10 years, 50 million people in the drylands will be displaced due to desertification. Drylands are areas that have a scarcity of water due to climate. Specifically, thousands of Sub-Saharan and South Asian peoples will be forced to migrate due to the impacts of desertification.
  3. Approximately 2 billion people rely on and live in dryland area climates. Ninety percent of those people are from developing countries. A developing country is a country that is not as industrialized as other developed countries. The FLEUVE Project aims to increase investments in local communities throughout areas impacted by drought and land degradation caused by desertification. The organization is financed by the European Commission and implemented under the Great Green Wall Initiative. The FLEUVE Project plans to create green jobs (jobs regarding the restoration of land). Since the launch of The Great Green Wall Initiative, twenty thousand jobs have been created in Nigeria.
  4. Overpopulation in drylands can also impact the soil of the area. For instance, the pressure of overpopulation can deplete the fertile soil and cause desertification. When soil becomes depleted and unusable for farming, mass migration to urban areas increase. Therefore, this results in overpopulating urban areas.
  5. According to the United Nations (another resource for facts about desertification), the rate of dryland desertification is approximately 30 to 35 percent higher than the historical rates. In 1991, land degradation was approximately 15 percent. This increased again in 2008 to 24 percent. Today, the rate of degradation is equivalent to the loss of 12 million hectares of land per year.
  6. Due to the depleted soil that is an impact of desertification, those living in affected areas are susceptible to malnutrition. Since the soil is no longer fertile, food insecurity subsequently rises. Those who relied on farming as a source of food can no longer continue to farm in those areas.
  7. Poor nutrition and a lack of clean water are one of the many issues of desertification. Moreover, these particular issues can lead to other health problems. The risk of water- and food-borne diseases, as well as respiratory diseases, increase in areas affected by desertification. Again, as people migrate to urban areas, diseases will spread rapidly throughout the population as they travel.
  8. Desertification does not just affect drylands. Areas that are several miles away from these arid areas can also be impacted by the issues of desertification. Impacts can range, from flooding to dust storms, in several non-dryland areas.
  9. Land and water management are methods used to prevent or lessen the impact of desertification. Water management can include saving water, harvesting water from rainfall, reusing water and the desalination of water. Desalination of water removes any saline from the water that is collected. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has been a sole international leader in the implementation of initiatives to aid those impacted by desertification. Additionally, it leads restoration projects for degraded land.
  10. The final of these ten facts about desertification is about The Great Green Wall Initiative. The Initiative was launched by the African Union in 2007. The goal of The Great Green Wall Initiative is to restore degraded land and transform the lives of those that are living in the conditions caused by desertification. The Initiative plans to revitalize 100 million hectares of degraded land. By doing so, 10 million jobs will be created, and 250 million tons of carbon will be created. Since the launch Nigeria has restored five million hectares of land, Sudan restored 2,000 hectares and Senegal planted 11.4 million trees. The organization has five main objectives:
    • grow fertile land,
    • increase economic opportunities (particularly for the youngest population),
    • support the growth of food security,
    • grow climate resilience and
    • “grow a wonder of the world spanning 8000 km across Africa”.

The Impact of Desertification

Overall, as the rate of desertification increases, thousands of people are impacted every day. These facts about desertification clearly show how desertification has become a global issue. They are certainly driven by multiple forces. The United Nations has deemed it one of the greatest challenges for our environment.

– Logan Derbes

Photo: Flickr

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What Are the Causes of Desertification?

Causes of Desertification
As the world continues to heat up from causes both natural and manmade, nations across the globe are seeing once fertile land becoming barren and unproductive. Some consider this process, known as desertification, irreversible. Officially, the United Nations defines desertification as “the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas.” The shrinking of arable land threatens food and water security for those in poor and rural areas. Poverty and desertification go hand in hand in a vicious cycle. It is important to understand where this phenomenon tends to occur and what the causes of desertification are.

Where Does Desertification Occur?

Desertification is most common in Africa. More specifically, areas of sub-Saharan Africa see the largest amount of devastation from this environmental issue. By 2030, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calculates that upwards of two-thirds of Africa’s fertile, productive soil will be lost if desertification continues.

In Ethiopia, FAO calculates that desertification causes the loss of 92,000 hectares of woodlands every year, along with 2 billion tons of fertile, productive soil. As a result, Ethiopian citizens cannot rely on food security. Senegal, a country all the way across the continent from Ethiopia, also struggles with the harsh effects of desertification. Here, desertification causes low productivity in agriculture and has forced Senegal’s citizens to migrate.

Africa is not the only victim, however. Mexico’s citizens are suffering, too. Many entering the U.S. from Mexico are fleeing poverty caused by land degradation, according to the Natural Heritage Institute. The state of Oaxaca, where fruit trees native to Mexico once flourished, possesses dry patches of land no longer useful for agriculture. Every year, nearly one million Mexican citizens have little choice but to migrate away from the barren land that threatens job opportunities and food security.

The Causes of Desertification

Desertification is caused by a number of different issues. Human hands or natural occurrences can exacerbate or spark desertification. In areas of low precipitation, like Sub-Saharan Africa, long droughts that turn arid land to unproductive, barren soil are a frequent cause of desertification. Drought alters just about everything including farming opportunity, food and water security, population growth and migration. Drought exacerbates poverty, which is already an issue in many Sub-Saharan countries like Ethiopia and Senegal. Many people in these areas are unable to confront what causes desertification without proper preparation.

Human activities are also what cause desertification in many cases. Overcultivation or overcropping occurs in population-dense areas around the globe. Soil nutrients deplete and become unproductive in areas where growers overuse and overharvest formerly arable land. In Nigeria, over cultivation is a major issue threatening the livelihood of its citizens who depend on the nearly infertile land for agriculture.

Overgrazing of livestock is another root issue of desertification. Farmers would formerly graze livestock by moving the animals around, but this is no longer the case. Cattle grazing in a permanent space prevents the regeneration of the plants the animals are feeding on. Overgrazing makes the soil unusable since the land is unable to keep up with the needs of the livestock. This is a large threat in the Central Asian rangelands, like Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

The Good News

The world can combat this phenomenon by understanding the causes of desertification and implementing various acts to aid in regenerating arable land. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), established in 1994, is working to improve conditions and increase productivity in vulnerable areas of the world. The organization created the Great Green Wall Initiative, in which the goals are to expand arable land, generate more economic opportunities and increase food and water security in struggling areas, among other objectives.

Action Against Desertification, an initiative built off of the Green Wall Initiative, is helping six African countries (Ethiopia, Senegal, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Niger and Nigeria) that struggle most profoundly with desertification by educating farmers about more sustainable agricultural practices, planting millions of seedlings to expand arable land and rehabilitating desertified forests.

In May of 2017, the China-U.N. Peace and Development Trust Fund created the Juncao Technology project to combat desertification, erosion and hunger in Asian and African countries. The project’s approach is to replace wood with grass. This, in turn, will help to soften the blow of overgrazing and generate clean energy, all while preventing soil erosion and desertification.

Further, the UNCCD is working to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN), which is defined as “a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems.”

– Anna Giffels
Photo: Flickr