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  • From: "Earth Passengers" <earthpassengers@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] COUNTRIES LOSING WAR WITH ADVANCING DESERTS
  • Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 21:05:18 +0800

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch05_ss5.htm


Lester R. Brown


Desertification, the process of converting productive land to
wasteland through overuse and mismanagement, is unfortunately all too
common. Anything that removes protective grass or trees leaves soil
vulnerable to wind and water erosion. In the early stages of
desertification, the finer particles of soil are removed by the wind,
creating dust storms. Once the fine particles are removed, then the
coarser particles--the sand--are also carried by the wind in localized
sand storms.

Large-scale desertification is concentrated in Asia and Africa--two
regions that together contain nearly 4.8 billion of the world's 6.5
billion people. Populations in countries across the top of Africa are
being squeezed by the northward advance of the Sahara.

In the vast east-to-west swath of semiarid Africa between the Sahara
Desert and the forested regions to the south lies the Sahel, a region
where farming and herding overlap. In countries stretching from
Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia in
the east, the demands of growing human and livestock numbers are
converting more and more land into desert.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is losing 351,000 hectares of
rangeland and cropland to desertification each year. While Nigeria's
human population was growing from 33 million in 1950 to 132 million in
2005, a fourfold expansion, its livestock population grew from roughly
6 million to 66 million, an 11-fold increase. With the forage needs of
Nigeria's 15 million cattle and 51 million sheep and goats exceeding
the sustainable yield of the country's grasslands, the northern part
of the country is slowly turning to desert. If Nigeria continues
toward 258 million people as projected by 2050, the deterioration will
only accelerate.

Iran is also losing its battle with the desert. Mohammad Jarian, who
heads Iran's Anti-Desertification Organization, reported in 2002 that
sand storms had buried 124 villages in the southeastern province of
Sistan-Baluchistan, forcing their abandonment. Drifting sands had
covered grazing areas, starving livestock and depriving villagers of
their livelihood.

Neighboring Afghanistan is faced with a similar situation. The
Registan Desert is migrating westward, encroaching on agricultural
areas. A U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) team reports that "up to
100 villages have been submerged by windblown dust and sand." In the
country's northwest, sand dunes are moving onto agricultural land in
the upper reaches of the Amu Darya basin, their path cleared by the
loss of stabilizing vegetation from firewood gathering and
overgrazing. The UNEP team observed sand dunes 15 meters high blocking
roads, forcing residents to establish new routes.

China is being affected by desertification more than any other major
country. Wang Tao, Director of the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental
and Engineering Research Institute, describes the country's
accelerating desertification. He reports that from 1950 to 1975 an
average of 1,560 square kilometers of land were lost to desert each
year. Between 1975 and 1987, this climbed to 2,100 square kilometers a
year. From then until the century's end, it jumped to 3,600 square
kilometers of land going to desert annually.

China is now at war. It is not invading armies that are claiming its
territory, but expanding deserts. Old deserts are advancing and new
ones are forming like guerrilla forces striking unexpectedly, forcing
Beijing to fight on several fronts. Wang Tao reports that over the
last half-century, some 24,000 villages in northern and western China
have been entirely or partly abandoned as a result of being overrun by
drifting sand.

People in China are all too familiar with the dust storms that
originate in its northwest and in western Mongolia, but the rest of
the world typically learns about this fast-growing ecological
catastrophe from the massive dust storms that travel outside the
region. On April 18, 2001, the western United States--from the Arizona
border north to Canada--was blanketed with dust. It came from a huge
dust storm that originated in northwestern China and Mongolia on April
5. Measuring 1,800 kilometers across when it left China, the storm
carried millions of tons of topsoil, a vital resource that will take
centuries to replace through natural processes.

Almost exactly one year later, on April 12, 2002, South Korea was
engulfed by a huge dust storm from China that left people in Seoul
literally gasping for breath. Schools were closed, airline flights
were cancelled, and clinics were overrun with patients having
difficulty breathing. Retail sales fell. Koreans have come to dread
the arrival of what they now call "the fifth season," the dust storms
of late winter and early spring.

These two dust storms, among the 10 or so major dust storms that occur
each year in China, are one of the externally visible indicators of
the ecological catastrophe unfolding in northern and western China.
Overgrazing is the principal culprit.

A U.S. Embassy report entitled "Desert Mergers and Acquisitions"
describes satellite images showing two deserts in north-central China
expanding and merging to form a single, larger desert overlapping
Inner Mongolia and Gansu provinces. To the west in Xinjiang Province,
two even larger deserts--the Taklimakan and Kumtag--are also heading
for a merger. Highways running through the shrinking regions between
them are regularly inundated by sand dunes.

In Latin America, deserts are expanding in both Brazil and Mexico. In
Brazil, where some 58 million hectares of land are affected, economic
losses from desertification are estimated at $300 million per year,
much of it concentrated in the country's northeast. Mexico, with a
much larger share of arid and semiarid land, is even more vulnerable.
The degradation of cropland now prompts some 700,000 Mexicans to leave
the land each year in search of jobs in nearby cities or in the United
States.

In scores of countries, the overgrazing, overplowing, and overcutting
that are driving the desertification process are intensifying as the
growth in human and livestock numbers continues. Stopping the
desertification process from claiming more productive land may now
rest on stopping the growth in human and livestock numbers.

# # #

This piece is adapted from Chapter 5, "Natural Systems Under Stress,"
in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a
Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006),
available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm.

Additional data and information sources at www.earthpolicy.org or contact
jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org

For reprint permissions contact rjk (at) earthpolicy.org




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