permaculture

[teresa naron <tenar54@yahoo.com>]

In the state of Texas the prickly pear cactus and several native trees are 
being bulldozed leaving parched countryside behind in the name of salvaging 
water tables which are rapidly diminishing also . ( all these native plants 
are sucking their environment dry?)  This movement is being conducted by the 
soil conservation groups of Texas? 
This movement has made parts of this state look as though it has been raped 
and left to die.  Junipers and cedar trees have also been victims of this 
bulldozing frenzy. This is a sad state of affairs.  Next thing you know, we 
too are under fire for increased desertification in the name of conservation? 
 
Trees in my own back yard are dying overnight and are toppling before my very 
eyes. My home is built just a few hundred feet from a primarily inactive 
creek  Last year the trees were green and thriving.  This year there has been 
so little rain that nothing  has helped the natural flow of green in my 
personal backyard.  As I drive north, a couple of hours from my home toward 
Oklahoma, trees in shelterbelts  all along the route are dry and browning 
when compared to last year, they were green and thriving, this time of year.  
Neighbors continue to water their lawns and wash their cars for hours on end 
; up and down most streets in my town there are no concerns for what goes on 
in the environment.  
Water, truly is a higher priced commodity than oil and  will be the subject 
of our next big war in the nearest future.  Everyone seems to be aware of 
water problems, but not soon enough, nor willing enough to become active 
quickly enough to make any changes or to salvage the damages already  
spiriling out of control.  No one in my area seems to take much interest in 
conservation.  Foreign desertification is a global problem that is also alive 
and well in our own domestic corners of the world...... From idle overtilled, 
unplanted farmland to water wasting everywhere I look, do we stand a chance 
of even thinking we might win such a rampant war?
Anyone have ideas on trees or vegetation in which I can replace so many dead 
trees in my personal small corner of this dying desert-like environment?
I do not want my property to be a desert wasteland, yet I do not want to 
plant anything to be long lived that requires over consumption of water in 
order to make my small world green.  I will not be guilty of robbing others 
of water as this society appears to be so increasingly famous for, in order 
to have a beautiful green oasis.
My home was insulated with beautiful green, healthy, established plantings 
when I moved in, almost five years ago.....now I face firewood potential in 
every direction  of my yard.  Any sound advice out there which will be 
protective, affordable, and use environmental savy  in order to alter the 
desertlike conditions I am witnessing daily in my own yard. 
I am studying Community Health education and a great deal of my studies have 
been environmental concerns. My greatest interest and desire is to specialize 
in environmental studies.  I would like to persue the permaculture concepts 
and practices as my focus for community education once I graduate with my 
degree.  My thought is that with a degree from a university, I may increase 
my credibility in  society and will hopefully have a better impact as well as 
open more doors to others, in order  for me to reach greater numbers of 
populations needing and requiring the education. Spreading the knowledge 
about sustainability  is the greatest gift I hope to leave for this planet 
when I depart. 
Teresa

Earth Passengers <earthpassengers@gmail.com> wrote: 
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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