DESERTIFICATION

The misuse of land and water in many parts of the world due to deforestation, agriculture, mining, urbanisation and not the least man-made climate change have led and are leading to large-scale land degradation in many parts of the world. Desertification is, as the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) puts it, the "land degradation in arid, semi-arid or sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities."

Although actual desertification is a local phenomenon, its occurrence can be traced to global trade and economic practices. For example, governments in poor countries encourage farmers to grow cash crops such as coffee, which generate foreign exchange to pay back national debt. But such crops also put an enormous strain on soil and water resources. If export prices of primary commodities exported by poor countries drop, there is a greater need to exploit more land. Caught in a cycle of debt and production, farmers tax the soil until it eventually loses all its nutrients and can no longer sustain agriculture.

Whereas desertification itself is local, its long term effects are not. There are one billion people directly affected by desertifcation. Being unable to live off their degraded land, they need to migrate to more favoured areas, adding to sustainability pressure already imposed by the people living there.

Desertification affects 41 per cent of the total land area on earth. The world’s poor are the worst hit. They depend on the soil for a livelihood but do not have the resources to reverse desertification. The livelihoods of more than 1 billion people in more than 110 countries are jeopardised. According to 1998 estimates, desertification costs the world US $42 billion a year.