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Desertification - Sahel case study

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Desertification in the Sahel region is a pressing environmental issue with far-reaching consequences. In this article, we will explore the causes, effects, and potential solutions to combat desertification, using a case study from the Sahel region. By examining the unique challenges faced in this area, we can gain insights into the broader fight against desertification and the importance of sustainable land management practices. The Sahel is a semi-arid zone stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa to the Red Sea in the East, through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, the great bend of the Niger River in Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, south-central Chad, and into Sudan ( Brittanica ).

It is a biogeographical transition between the arid Sahara Desert to the North and the more humid savanna systems on its Southern side.

Desertification in the Sahel has increased over the last number of years.  It has been increasingly impacted by desertification, especially during the second half of the twentieth century. The whole Sahel region in Africa has been affected by devastating droughts, bordering the Sahara Desert and the Savannas.

During this period, the Sahara desert area grew by roughly 10% , most of which in the Southward direction into the semi-arid steppes of the Sahel. 

Understanding desertification in the Sahel

The Sahel region, stretching across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, is characterized by fragile ecosystems and vulnerable communities. The combination of climate change, overgrazing, deforestation , and improper agricultural practices has resulted in extensive land degradation and desertification. The consequences of desertification in the Sahel are severe, including food insecurity, loss of biodiversity, and displacement of communities.

in the region, for around 8 months of the year, the weather is dry. The rainy season only happens for a few short months and only produces around 4-8 inches of water. The population growth over the years has caused illegal farming to take place over the last few years and has resulted in major soil erosion and desertification to take place. 

Examining a specific case study in the Sahel region sheds light on the complexities and impacts of desertification. In a particular community, unsustainable farming methods and drought have led to soil erosion and degradation. The once-fertile land has turned into arid, unproductive soil, forcing farmers to abandon their livelihoods and seek alternative means of survival. This case study highlights the urgent need for intervention and sustainable land management practices in the region.

Addressing the challenges

To combat desertification effectively, a multi-faceted approach is necessary. First and foremost, raising awareness about the issue and its consequences is crucial. Governments, NGOs, and local communities must collaborate to implement sustainable land management practices. This involves promoting agroforestry, conservation farming, and reforestation initiatives to restore degraded land and improve soil health. Additionally, supporting alternative income-generating activities and providing access to water resources can help alleviate pressure on the land and reduce vulnerability to drought.

Read more: Preventing desertification: Top 5 success stories

The impact of humans on the Sahel

The impact of humans on the Sahel region is a critical factor contributing to its current challenges and environmental changes. Human activities, including armed violence, climate change, deforestation, and overgrazing, have had significant consequences for both the ecosystem and the local communities. While the area of the Sahel region is already considered to be a dry place, the impact of the human population in the area has really affected how the area continues to evolve. Towns are popping up all over the place, and because of this, more land is being used than ever before. The ground that they are building their lives on quickly began to die and became extremely unhealthy for any type of growth. This has made headlines everywhere and even caught the attention of the United Nations. In 1994, the United Nations declared that June 17th would be known as the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. . This was a result of the large-scale droughts and famines that had been taking place and were at their height between 1968 and 1974.

In conclusion, the impact of humans on the Sahel is a multifaceted issue. The region faces a humanitarian crisis alongside security concerns, with climate change and human activities playing significant roles. Desertification caused by climate change, deforestation, and overgrazing has resulted in land degradation, loss of vegetation, and increased vulnerability to droughts and food insecurity. Implementing sustainable land management strategies is essential to mitigate the impact and promote the resilience of the Sahel's ecosystems and communities.

Droughts, grazing, and recharging aquifers

The Sahel’s natural climate cycles make it vulnerable to droughts throughout the year. But, during the second half of the twentieth century, the region also experienced significant increases in human population and resulting in increases in the exploitation of the lands through (cattle) grazing, wood- and bush consumption for firewood, and crop growth where possible.

These anthropogenic processes accelerated during the 1960s when relatively high rainfall amounts were recorded in the region for short periods of time, and grazing and agricultural expansion were promoted by the governments of the Sahel countries, seeing a good opportunity to use the region’s ecosystem for maximizing economic returns.

This resulted in the removal of large parts of the natural vegetation, including shrubs, grasses, and trees, and replacing them with crops and grass types that were suitable for (short-term) grazing.

The world effort for the Sahel:

Natural aquifers, which were previously able to replenish their groundwater stocks during the natural climate cycles, were no longer able to do so, and the regions closest to the Sahara desert were increasingly desertified.

Removing the natural vegetation removed plant roots that bound the soil together, with over-exploitation by grazing eating away much of the grass.

Agricultural activity disrupted the natural system, forcing significant parts of the Sahel region to become dry and barren. Before the particularly bad famine of 1984, desertification was solely put down to climatic causes.

As the Sahel dries, the Sahara advances : and it is estimated to advance with a rate of 60 kilometres the Sahel lost and the Sahara desert gained per year.  Human influence is an important factor in the Sahel’s desertification, but not all can be attributed to human behaviour, says Sumant Nigam, a climate scientist at the University of Maryland.

'There is an important anthropogenic influence there, but it is also being met with natural cycles of climate variability that add and subtract in different periods', Nigam said. 'Understanding both is important for both attribution and prediction.' Ecologists have been meeting all over the world to discuss the desertification of the Sahel at length. While many possible solutions have been proposed, a few goals have been established and are being worked on. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations has not become involved and is working to create a long-lasting impact on the Sahel Region. However, after the mid-1980s , human-caused contributions were identified and taken seriously by the United Nations and many non-governmental organizations. Severe and long-lasting droughts followed throughout the 1960s-1980s, and impacted the human settlements in the forms of famine and starvation, allowing the Sahara desert to continue to expand southward. As a result, a barren and waterless landscape has emerged, with the northernmost sections of the Sahel transformed into new sections of the Sahara Desert. Even though the levels of drought have decreased since the 1990s, other significant reductions in rainfall have been recorded in the region, including a severe drought in 2012. It is estimated that over 23 million people in the Sahel region are facing severe food insecurity in 2022, and the European Commission projects that the crisis will worsen further amidst rising social security struggles. Now, the goal is to see change take place by   2063,  a year that seems far away but is a start in the efforts to rebuild the Sahel Region. 

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Case Study: Sahel Desertification

What is desertification: It is the term used to describe the changing of semi arid (dry) areas into desert. It is severe in Sudan, Chad, Senegal and Burkina Faso

What are the causes:

• Overcultivation: the land is continually used for crops and does not have time to recover eventually al the nutrients are depleted (taken out) and the ground eventually turns to dust.
• Overgrazing: In some areas animals have eaten all the vegetation leaving bare soil.
• Deforestation: Cutting down trees leaves soil open to erosion by wind and rain.
• Climate Change: Decrease in rainfall and rise in temperatures causes vegetation to die

What is being done to solve the problem?

 Over the past twelve years Oxfam has worked with local villagers in Yatenga (Burkina Faso) training them in the process of BUNDING. This is building lines of stones across a slope to stop water and soil running away. This method preserves the topsoil and has improved farming and food production in the village.

Burkina Faso - desertification

This video shows the Sahel region south of the Sahara is at risk of becoming desert. Elders in a village in Burkina Faso describe how the area has changed from a fertile area to a drought-prone near-desert. The area experiences a dry season which can last up to eight or nine months. During this time rivers dry up and people, animals and crops are jeopardised.

This video showcases the Sahel region

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Halting Desertification in China

China has been severely impacted by desertification, with over one-quarter of the country affected by this challenge. While desertification has both natural causes, such as shifts in climate, and human-driven causes, such as the clearing of vegetation, overgrazing, and the depletion of water resources, challenges created by humans are the most prevalent in China, with change threatening to exacerbate these problems.  

In the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China, desert encroachment is a historical challenge, with overgrazing of vegetation causing many dunes to lose their protective vegetation cover and become mobile. By 2010, over 57 percent of Ningxia’s territory (2.97 million hectares) was affected by desertification, with more than 3 million people suffering the consequences - including sandstorms and dust pollution.

Desertification was also undermining agricultural output in the region, reducing soil fertility and threatening to bury fields and infrastructure in sand. The impacts were being felt well beyond Ningxia. Sediment from degraded land was flowing into the Yellow River, reducing water quality and increasing the risk of flooding downstream, while sandstorms affected increasingly larger areas of northern China.

（Sand dunes become mobile due to loss of vegetation cover. Photo: ©  Li Li/World Bank)

The Government of Ningxia requested World Bank support in 2010 to help improve the performance of desertification control and remediation efforts, which led to the Ningxia Desertification Control and Ecological Protection Project .

The project helped alleviate financing constraints faced by some of the counties in Ningxia which were being most severely affected by desertification - allowing for scaling up of pilot activities. Moreover, the project promoted technical advances by adopting improved restoration methods that introduced diversified indigenous grasses and shrubs to better control desertification, while simultaneously contributing to ecosystem resilience.

While such investment financing only addressed China’s desertification problem in selected areas, World Bank support generated other tangible impacts in other areas and influenced subsequent government projects through its innovation and demonstration effects.

The project was implemented from 2012 to early 2020. Through vegetation restoration and sand stabilization measures, the project protected infrastructure and farmland in selected areas of Ningxia and yielded broader impacts - such as reduced silt in the Yellow River and fewer sandstorms affecting northern areas of China. Moreover, the increased diversification of vegetation mainstreamed biodiversity at the landscape level, promoting a reversal of degradation processes and contributing to improved ecosystem resilience. More specific project results by the end of the project include:

• 32,351 hectares of degraded land were improved through vegetation restoration and natural regeneration promotion.
• Land degradation was reversed in the project area demonstrated by an increase of vegetation cover by 28 percentage points, greater vegetation diversity and improved soil quality with biocrust developed (a thin layer of lichens, cyanobacteria, arid land mosses and microorganisms that help to retain water and nutrients).
• Training was provided to officials, project staff and farmers to improve land management capacity and scale up the project's newly developed techniques. Consequently, the seeding survival rate of re-vegetation activities exceeded 70 percent, at least 5 percentage points higher than before the project.
• 8,158 people were employed planting, tending and patrolling forests, with per-capita income increasing by about $2,300 a year from these wages. Longer-term benefits are expected for the 3,809 farmers who participated in the multifunction shrub plantation pilot in Zhongwei, which established 2,134 hectares of Chinese dwarf cherry and wolfberry for commercial sale. Average per-capita income from these activities was $1,700 - US$2,400 per year, depending on the crops, with yields and incomes expected to grow as the plantation matures. In addition, more than 4,700 herders affected by grazing enclosures received farm machinery and other assets to support a livelihood transition.
• Total carbon sequestration at project closing was estimated to exceed 88,000 tons and is expected to grow substantially as vegetation matures.
• Wind erosion was reduced, due to increased vegetation cover, with an estimated 3,396 tons of soil conserved per year.
• 2,455 hectares of shelterbelt plantations were established, providing protection for 3,800 hectares of farmland and 514 kilometers of road and rail infrastructure.
• The Yellow River received protection through reduced silt and sediment, saving on removal costs estimated at $200 million. The number of days with windblown sand decreased from 12.4 to 9.1 per year, on average, across the three largest project counties.

hectares of degraded land were improved through vegetation restoration and natural regeneration promotion.

Bank Group Contribution

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) financed the project with a loan of $68.50 million. The Bank also brought experience from previous forest projects in China as well as global knowledge and good practices in revegetation and degraded land restoration - through innovative planting measures that reduced soil water loss, the selection of drought-tolerant species, and the design and roll out of ecologically sensitive planting models that led to significantly improved survival rates. Moreover, the project promoted use of diverse species to mainstream biodiversity at the landscape level, thereby contributing to ecosystem resilience. Furthermore, the technologies developed under the project continue to influence management of arid land across China and in other countries struggling with desertification.   

Ecologically friendly desertification prevention and control remains a core strategic priority for Ningxia’s regional development. As such, the regional government was strongly committed to the project, and relevant departments and project management offices at different levels worked closely with the Bank team to ensure effective implementation. In particular, project agencies dedicated significant efforts towards overcoming challenging natural conditions (very limited precipitation and poor soil nutrition) in project areas through the design of innovative and improved technical prescriptions to develop drought-tolerant vegetation restoration models, which were crucial to project success.

Moving Forward

Desertification control remains a key priority in the 14 th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) of Ningxia. Lessons from the project are expected to continue informing relevant government projects and programs. The project's technical developments – including species selection and planting methods – have had broader impacts on arid land management at the national level, as well as in other desert-prone countries. The lessons learned have been used as part of trainings on desertification control for international delegations and international workshops. A follow-on project, the proposed project for sustainable management of degraded land in the Yellow River Basin – financed by the European Investment Bank (EIB) – is incorporating the plantation models and techniques developed under this project.

Beneficiaries

Wang Wenqing, a farmer living in Lingwu County said, “it used to be all desert here and the dust storms were so strong that we couldn’t keep our eyes open.” He and his fellow villagers participated in the effort to control the desert and make the area green. Today he grows and sells desert chives. “I have four greenhouses and make more than 100,000 yuan ($14,886) a year,” said he.  

Farmers make straw checkerboards to stabilize sand. Photo: © Li Li/World Bank

• Feature story: Curbing Desertification in China
• Ningxia Desertification Control and Ecological Protection Project

Bringing dry land in the Sahel back to life

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Millions of hectares of farmland are lost to the desert each year in Africa’s Sahel region, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is showing that traditional knowledge, combined with the latest technology, can turn arid ground back into fertile soil.

Those trying to grow crops in the Sahel region are often faced with poor soil, erratic rainfail and long periods of drought. However, the introduction of a state-of-the art heavy digger, the Delfino plough, is proving to be, literally, a breakthrough.

As part of its Action Against Desertification (AAD) programme, the FAO has brought the Delfino to four countries in the Sahel region – Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal – to cut through impacted, bone-dry soil to a depth of more than half a metre.

The Delfino plough is extremely efficient: one hundred farmers digging irrigation ditches by hand can cover a hectare a day, but when the Delfino is hooked to a tractor, it can cover 15 to 20 hectares in a day.

Once an area is ploughed, the seeds of woody and herbaceous native species are then sown directly, and inoculated seedlings planted. These species are very resilient and work well in degraded land, providing vegetation cover and improving the productivity of previously barren lands. 

In Burkina Faso and Niger, the target number of hectares for immediate restoration has already been met and extended thanks to the Delfino plough. In Nigeria and Senegal, it is working to scale up the restoration of degraded land.

Farming seen through a half-moon lens

This technology, whilst impressive, is proving to be successful because it is being used in tandem with traditional farming techniques.

“In the end the Delfino is just a plough. A very good and suitable plough, but a plough all the same,” says Moctar Sacande, Coordinator of FAO’s Action Against Desertification programme. “It is when we use it appropriately and in consultation and cooperation that we see such progress.”

The half-moon is a traditional Sahel planting method which creates contours to stop rainwater runoff, improving water infiltration and keeping the soil moist for longer. This creates favourable micro-climate conditions allowing seeds and seedlings to flourish.

The Delfino creates large half-moon catchments ready for planting seeds and seedlings, boosting rainwater harvesting tenfold and making soil more permeable for planting than the traditional - and backbreaking – method of digging by hand.

“The whole community is involved and has benefitted from fodder crops such as hay as high as their knees within just two years”, says Mr. Sacande. “They can feed their livestock and sell the surplus, and move on to gathering products such as edible fruits, natural oils for soaps, wild honey and plants for traditional medicine”.

Women taking the lead

According to Nora Berrahmouni, who was FAO’s Senior Forestry Officer for the African Regional Office when the Delfino was deployed, the plough will also reduce the burden on women.

“The season for the very hard work of hand-digging the half-moon irrigation dams comes when the men of the community have had to move with the animals. So, the work falls on the women,” says Ms. Berrahmouni.

Because the Delfino plough significantly speeds up the ploughing process and reduces the physical labour needed, it gives women extra time to manage their multitude of other tasks.

The project also aims to boost women’s participation in local land restoration on a bigger scale, offering them leadership roles through the village committees that plan the work of restoring land. Under the AAD programme, each site selected for restoration is encouraged to set up a village committee to manage the resources, so as to take ownership right from the beginning.

“Many women are running the local village committees which organise these activities and they are telling us they feel more empowered and respected,” offers Mr. Sacande.

Respecting local knowledge and traditional skills is another key to success. Communities have long understood that half-moon dams are the best way of harvesting rainwater for the long dry season. The mighty Delfino is just making the job more efficient and less physically demanding.

Millions of hectares lost to the desert, forests under threat

And it is urgent that progress is made. Land loss is a driver of many other problems such as hunger, poverty, unemployment, forced migration, conflict and an increased risk of extreme weather events related to climate change.

In Burkina Faso, for example, a third of the landscape is degraded. This means that over nine million hectares of land, once used for agriculture, is no longer viable for farming.

It is projected that degradation will continue to expand at 360 000 hectares per year. If the situation is not reversed, forests are at risk of being cleared to make way for productive agricultural land.

Africa is currently losing four million hectares of forest every year for this reason, yet has more than 700 million hectares of degraded land viable for restoration. By bringing degraded land back to life, farmers do not have to clear additional forest land to turn into cropland for Africa’s rising population and growing food demands.

When Mr. Sacande talks about restoring land in Africa, the passion in his voice is evident. “Restoring degraded land back to productive good health is a huge opportunity for Africa. It brings big social and economic benefits to rural farming communities,” he says. “It’s a bulwark against climate change and it brings technology to enhance traditional knowledge.”

A version of this story first appeared on the FAO website .

• Burkina Faso
• agriculture
• Desertification

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• Published: 03 November 2015

What Has Caused Desertification in China?

• Qi Feng 1 ,
• Xuemei Jiang 3 ,
• Xin Wang 3 &
• Shixiong Cao 3  

Scientific Reports volume  5 , Article number:  15998 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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• Ecosystem ecology
• Environmental economics

Desertification is the result of complex interactions among various factors, including climate change and human activities. However, previous research generally focused on either meteorological factors associated with climate change or human factors associated with human activities and lacked quantitative assessments of their interaction combined with long-term monitoring. Thus, the roles of climate change and human factors in desertification remain uncertain. To understand the factors that determine whether mitigation programs can contribute to desertification control and vegetation cover improvements in desertified areas of China and the complex interactions that affect their success, we used a pooled regression model based on panel data to calculate the relative roles of climate change and human activities on the desertified area and on vegetation cover (using the normalized-difference vegetation index, NDVI, which decreases with increasing desertification) from 1983 to 2012. We found similar effect magnitudes for socioeconomic and environmental factors for NDVI but different results for desertification: socioeconomic factors were the dominant factor that affected desertification, accounting for 79.3% of the effects. Climate change accounted for 46.6 and 20.6% of the effects on NDVI and desertification, respectively. Therefore, desertification control programs must account for the integrated effects of both socioeconomic and natural factors.

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Drivers and impacts of changes in China’s drylands

Introduction.

Drylands cover about 54 million km 2 , which amounts to 40% of the global land area and are especially common in Asia and Africa, where they account for 58.5% of the world’s dryland area 1 . These regions have suffered from climate change, unfavorable hydrologic conditions, changes in vegetation composition, loss of soil services and desertification; the combination of these effects has generated many adverse consequences, including sandstorms that threaten ecosystem services and human life 2 . In recent years, more and more of the sandstorms that form in desert areas have swept into modern cities in areas such as northwestern China, Africa, the western United States and Australia 3 . In arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions, land degradation that results in a loss of vegetation cover is caused by several factors, including climatic change and human activities and has been defined as desertification . As desertified areas expand, the area of livable habitat will decrease and poverty will be exacerbated 4 . Desertification has become a crucial environmental problem at a global scale and has begun to affect the survival and socioeconomic development of humankind.

Research has suggested that both climate and human activities play important roles in the process of desertification, which is complicated and includes complex interactions between human and natural factors (e.g., climate) 5 . Because of this complexity, past research has generally focused on either simple climate factors or on human activities rather than trying to account for both factors simultaneously. Some studies concluded that climate change affected the soil quality, vegetation cover, species composition and hydrologic cycles in drylands and has therefore led to expansion of the desertified area 6 , 7 , 8 . Others have argued that unsustainable traditional practices such as grazing, logging and exploitation of underground water have created enormous pressures on ecosystems, leading to desertification 9 , 10 . Such human activities can eliminate the vegetation cover that protects the soil against erosion by water and strong winds 9 . However, without an understanding of how the interactions among the abovementioned factors affect desertification, it is difficult to reconcile the different research results. This creates a high risk of misunderstanding the current situation and adopting ineffective policies and programs to combat desertification 11 , 12 .

In northwestern China, desertification is a major ecological problem that has increasingly limited development of the local economy 13 . To control desertification, the Chinese government implemented a series of large-scale mitigation programs, including the Three Norths Shelter Forest Program and the Combating of Desertification Program 14 , 15 . These projects focus on increasing the vegetation cover by prohibiting grazing, planting trees and grasses and constructing shelter forests to protect farmland against blowing sand. The total desertified area has decreased in many areas, but in others, desertification has continued to expand 16 . Several researchers have therefore questioned the effectiveness of solutions such as afforestation in drylands and especially the practice of planting trees in arid areas that lack sufficient precipitation to sustain the trees in the long term, thereby requiring irrigation to ensure tree survival 11 , 17 , 18 .

Because the relative contributions of natural and human factors are unclear, the driving forces for desertification remain unclear. It is therefore urgently necessary to comprehensively study their interacting effects. Determining the relative contributions of natural and human driving forces to desertification would provide insights into the key mechanisms responsible for desertification, thereby leading to more effective responses. This approach is crucial because of the severity of the desertification problems that China faces and the large sums of money being spent to solve these problems. In the present study, we used the normalized-difference vegetation index (NDVI), obtained by means of satellite remote sensing, to monitor the progress of desertification in four regions of northwestern China: the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Gansu Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. We then combined this data with climate and socioeconomic data to investigate the relative contributions of climate change and human activities to desertification and its reversal. Based on the results of this analysis, we discuss the key driving factors that are contributing to desertification and its reversal and the lessons for planners of China’s ecological restoration strategy. This will provide important information on how to integrate the effects of climate change and human activities to develop solutions capable of mitigating the problems and promoting sustainable development in the regions that are facing desertification.

To represent vegetation cover over large areas using the available long-term data, it is necessary to use satellite remote-sensing data. Of the available indicators, we chose NDVI because it has been used successfully for many years, by many researchers and because it is a good proxy for the actual vegetation cover, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. The NDVI dataset used in this paper came from the AVHRR GIMMS group 19 at a spatial resolution of 8 km. We used the 15-day maximum-value composites (MVCs) for the period from 1983 to 2006. We also obtained monthly NDVI MVC data from 2000 to 2010 from the Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites ( http://glcf.umd.edu/data/ndvi/ ), at a spatial resolution of 500 m. We then converted the 2000 to 2010 NDVI data to use the same temporal and spatial resolution as the 1983 to 2006 NDVI data. To do so, we combined a 16 × 16 grid of EOS pixels to create a single AVHRR pixel and calculated the weighted mean value of the 256 pixels in the grid to represent the overall value for both halves of the month (i.e., the two 15-day products). We used the mean of these two values to represent the monthly mean and then selected the maximum value from monthly data to represent the year. We then performed simple linear regression to determine the relationship between the NDVI values in the AVHRR pixels and in the composite EOS pixels using data for the period of overlap from 2000 to 2006. The result was a moderately strong and statistically significant regression ( R 2  = 0.527, p  < 0.05). We then used that regression to convert the EOS data from 2000 to 2010 into the corresponding AVHRR values. The result was a unified NDVI time series from 1983 to 2010.

We obtained the areas of desertification from national monitoring data in 1990, 2000, 2005 and 2010. We also obtained data on nine factors that potentially affected desertification, which we grouped into two categories: socioeconomic factors (the rural population, rural net income, farmland area, number of livestock, area of forest in which agriculture and grazing were prohibited, afforestation area and the length of roads and railways) and climate factors (annual mean temperature and total annual precipitation). The socioeconomic data were obtained from the China Statistical Yearbook from 1983 to 2012 20 . The ecological restoration data were obtained from the China Forestry Yearbook from 1983 to 2012 21 . The meteorological data (annual mean temperature and total annual precipitation) were obtained from the China Climate Yearbook from 1983 to 2012 22 .

To understand how climate change and human activities have affected desertification, we established empirical models of the following form:

We analyzed panel data to identify the key factors and compared their contributions to the area of desertification and to the vegetation cover (as represented by NDVI) during the study period. To avoid the impact of overlapping factors on the results, we employed the regression analysis module of version 11 of the STATA software ( http://www.stata.com/ ) to calculate the regression coefficients for the relationships between all pairs of driving factors. The panel data model is:

where y it is the area of desertification or the vegetation cover for region i in year t , x it is the corresponding socioeconomic factor, u it is an error term and a and b are regression coefficients. To account for the possibility of autocorrelation among the factors analyzed in our regression, we performed the Breusch-Godfrey LM test and found no significant autocorrelation. Based on the results of an F -test, we selected a pooled regression model for calculating the effects of the abovementioned variables on the NDVI and area of desertification in four provinces (Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu and Inner Mongolia) located in arid and semi-arid areas of China.

In the pooled model:

We used the standardized regression coefficients to calculate the contribution of the different variables to the changes in NDVI or the area of desertification for the whole study region and for each province independently. The contribution is calculated as follows:

Table 1 summarizes the results of our analysis and the contributions of the driving factors to overall NDVI (for the four provinces combined) in arid and semi-arid regions of China. Based on the results for the pooled model, farmland area, forbidden area (the area in which grazing and agriculture were forbidden), cumulative afforestation area and total annual precipitation were significantly positively related to NDVI change. Their contributions to NDVI change were 16.9, 5.7, 2.9 and 30.0%, respectively, which suggested that precipitation had the strongest effect on vegetation cover change, followed by the area of farmland. Livestock number and the length of roads and railways were significantly negatively related to NDVI change, accounting for 15.9 and 5.8% of the total effect, respectively. Both factors had an effect similarly strong to that of farmland area, but grazing (which is proportional to the number of livestock) had the strongest negative effect on NDVI change. The rural population, rural income and mean annual temperature did not significantly affect NDVI change.

Table 2 summarizes the contribution of the driving factors to desertification change for the four regions. Livestock number, farmland area, road construction and mean annual temperature were significantly positively related to the change in the area of desertification, accounting for 30.8, 21.9, 4.1 and 14.6% of the total effect, respectively, though the contribution of temperature was only marginally significant. As in the analysis of NDVI, livestock increased desertification (probably through vegetation loss caused by grazing). The rural population (10.6%), rural net income (7.8%), area in which grazing and agriculture were forbidden (4.2%) and total annual precipitation (6.0%) were significantly negatively related to the change in the area of desertification, though the contribution of annual precipitation was only marginally significant. However, the afforestation area was not significantly correlated with desertification dynamics, which suggests that afforestation did not contribute to desertification control in the long term.

The contribution of each variable to the change in the area of desertification in the four provinces ( Fig. 1 ) differed among the provinces, suggesting that the drivers are specific to the context of each province. The rural population and livestock numbers in all four provinces were positively related to increases in the area of desertification, but the other variables showed different effects in different regions. In Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, afforestation was the most important contributor to desertification, accounting for 41.2 and 24.2% of the total effect, respectively, whereas afforestation resulted in restoration in Gansu and Ningxia, accounting for 56.1 and 14.1% of the total effect, respectively. Remarkably, forbidding agriculture and grazing was associated with decreased or only slightly increased desertification in all four regions, which means that this approach is potentially effective for ecological restoration. The effects of road construction also differed among these provinces. For Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, road construction decreased desertification, possibly because vegetation restoration and irrigation projects tend to be associated with additional road construction in arid regions such as Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.

Our results demonstrate that the combination of significant rural socioeconomic factors and significant climatic factors had an important effect on vegetation cover (as measured by NDVI) and on the area of desertification in the four arid and semiarid areas of China that we studied. In these regions of China, the high level of human activities and the strength of the associated impacts result from cultivation, grazing, destruction or harvesting of herbaceous vegetation and logging forests to produce firewood and rural construction materials. The local crops are mainly wheat, potato and cotton and their areas can be detected using NDVI data during their growing seasons; this may partly explain why the area of farmland had a positive effect on NDVI ( Table 1 ). The expansion of crops can potentially increase the vegetation cover, but this increase is temporary; for most crops, the soil remains uncovered during the fallow season. If the farmland is abandoned without the implementation of effective protection of the soil, desertification will accelerate due to increased erosion by the wind 22 . As the rural population decreased during the study period 19 , the pressure from the demand for land should also have decreased. Although the rural population is often considered to be a major driving force for environmental damage, it is also an important force for managing farmland and grazing to avoid damage to vegetation.

Rural poverty alleviation is as important as desertification control and ecological restoration 23 , 24 . Even though the rural net income gradually increased every year during the study period 19 , it has been difficult to raise farmers and herders out of poverty. The first problem is that the harsh environment and the large population of impoverished rural residents make the income from traditional farming highly vulnerable to natural disasters such as drought and to fluctuations of market prices 25 , 26 . Second, the study region’s simple economic structure makes it difficult to provide alternative forms of employment that would improve rural incomes. Third, the burden on residents of national efforts to control desertification is too heavy. The subsidies provided by the government to compensate residents for grazing and farming prohibition are less than the increasing cost of production and household expenses that result from these government policies 22 , 27 .

For rural residents in the arid and semiarid areas of China, their income mainly comes from the land and the harshness of the environment (particularly the lack of water) means that earning this income jeopardizes the ecological environment; in particular, it can lead to soil erosion and an expansion of desertification. As our analysis revealed, the contribution of livestock is considerable. This is likely to be because poor communities must increase their livestock numbers to provide income or a food source; as this occurs at the expense of the environment, it exacerbates desertification. Our study confirmed that grazing and farmland expansion were important drivers of land degradation for all four provinces. Although the policy that restricts grazing has been implemented for almost a decade, livestock remain a significant cause of desertification. Analyses such as the present study reveal important impacts of such socioeconomic factors on desertification and government ecological restoration policy that is implemented to counteract desertification must account fully for the economic losses of local residents under new policies by providing adequate subsidies or alternative means of employment. Without such efforts to protect the livelihood of these people, they have no ability to protect their environment, even when they understand that their activities are causing significant damage to that environment 24 .

The arid and semiarid areas of China, which occupy half of China’s total land area, are likely to face increasing stress from climate change, which will exacerbate existing water shortages and place additional stress on vegetation communities that are already being stressed by regional warming 28 . In our study, rural socioeconomic factors had a slightly stronger effect than climate factors on NDVI, accounting for 53.4% of the total effect. However, the statistically significant climatic factor (total annual precipitation) had a cumulative effect (30%) similar to that of the statistically significant socioeconomic factors (27.2%) on vegetation restoration. The cumulative values for these two groups of factors were sufficiently close that climate change and human activities appear to have accounted for similar proportions of the overall changes in vegetation cover.

For the factors that controlled desertification, the contribution of socioeconomic factors was clearly dominant (79.4% of the total effect for all factors, versus 79.3% for only the significant factors; Table 2 ); natural factors (temperature and precipitation) accounted for a much smaller portion of the total effect. Thus, human activities have had the dominant effect on desertification, but climatic factors have been significant and their effect will become increasingly significant as a result of the warmer and drier climate produced by global warming. Based on the warming trend in northwestern China 28 , agriculture, grazing and afforestation, which are sensitive to climate, must be carefully assessed to predict the effects of changes in temperature and precipitation on their impacts.

Some researchers have questioned the effects of planting trees in restoration projects to control desertification because this approach has not performed as well as expected 11 , 27 . In the present study, our results show that the contribution of the area of forest in which agriculture and grazing were prohibited (the “forbidden” area) and of the afforestation area averaged only 4.3% of the total effect for NDVI and only 2.1% for the area of desertification. The complexity of ecosystems and the even more complex interactions between humans and nature 29 , 30 mean that the simplistic solution of planting trees in arid regions is unlikely to be a broadly applicable way to restore degraded dryland ecosystems. For example, planting trees (which often have low water-use efficiency) in arid regions often requires supplemental irrigation, which exacerbates the stress on an already limited water resource 12 , increases evapotranspiration and can even exacerbate soil erosion if the trees outcompete herbaceous vegetation for water, leading to decreased vegetation cover at the soil surface 5 , 18 . The lack of a significant impact of the cumulative afforestation area on desertification means that the positive effects of afforestation in the short term may be compromised by the negative effects of afforestation on water availability in the long term. The low survival rate of the trees 11 can also represent a large waste of labor and money. In many arid regions, restoration using herbaceous vegetation will produce better results than using trees or shrubs 31 . Although China’s huge national ecological restoration policies, such as the Three Norths Shelterbelt Project, have improved the vegetation cover in many areas, the potential risks should receive more attention from policy makers and restoration managers. The large variation among regions shown in Fig. 1 provides additional support for this recommendation, since these results demonstrate the strong effect of differences in local conditions.

The effects of ecological restoration in desertified areas result from the interactions among multiple factors. In the arid and semiarid areas of China, our results show roughly comparable impacts of socioeconomic factors and climate change for NDVI but stronger socioeconomic effects on the area of desertification. However, the strengths of the impacts varied widely among the four parts of our study area. This means that it will be difficult to fully understand the driving forces responsible for desertification in China without understanding the unique context of each region and that monolithic policies will work less well than adopting policies that address the most significant driving factors for each region. It is evident that the relationships between the driving factors and the changes in NDVI and the area of desertification are complicated. The most important driving factors varied among the regions ( Fig. 1 ). Thus, despite the significant impacts of several driving factors for the overall study area ( Tables 1 and 2 ), policy development must be based on a careful examination of each individual region using a method similar to the one developed in the present study to identify the most significant driving factors for that region. Only then will it become possible to develop solutions that attack the most relevant problems. This finding has significant implications for achieving ecologically sustainable development in the degraded lands of China.

One limitation of our study is that we did not account for the sociological factors that underlie the human factors that we included in our analysis. This suggests that interdisciplinary research will be required to fully understand the sociological factors and their interaction with natural factors so that appropriate policy measures can be developed to focus on those factors and interactions. Although we made an effort to control for the uncertainty in our analysis by including the error term u it in the regression analysis, an additional area for future research will be to more precisely determine the error and uncertainty that are associated with the socioeconomic factors. This will allow future researchers to better control this error term and more precisely estimate the impacts of individual factors. In addition, the regression relationship we developed will need to be validated by means of a pilot study that provides more detailed information. The results of our NDVI analyses are not surprising, since similar conclusions have been published by many researchers. For example, overgrazing and road construction are likely to result in decreased vegetation cover, as Li and Li 32 found in their study of a government policy to end the traditional nomadic culture; the resulting sedentarization contributed to overgrazing, which in turn led to grassland degradation. Deng et al. 33 found that road construction may lead to ecosystem degradation in high-quality grassland.

Although our method of identifying the contributions of each driving factor is defensible for providing a broad overview, it is likely that there is a better method for this kind of analysis that will support more precise analyses for individual regions. This method should be identified in future research to improve the ability of this research to support restoration planning.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Key Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZZD-EW-04-05). We thank Geoffrey Hart of Montréal, Canada, for his help in writing this paper. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the government of China or of any other organization.

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S.C. designed the research; H.M. and X.J. analyzed the data; Q.F., H.M., X.W. and S.C. wrote the main manuscript text; and X.J. prepared Figure 1 and Tables 1–2 . All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Contributions (%) of the driving factors to changes in the area of desertification based on the results of the regression analysis.

The data have been broken down for the four study areas and are based on the relationships among the values of the driving forces. “Forbidden” represents the area of forest in which agriculture and grazing were prohibited and “Road” represents the length of roads and railways. We created this figure in using ArcGIS 10.0 for maps.

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Situating china in the global effort to combat desertification.

1. Introduction

2.1. before the unccd (1977–1991): the first international political will, 2.2. unccd during 1992–1996: new approach, new focus, 2.3. first 10 years of the unccd (1997–2006): institutions matter, 2.4. unccd before the sustainable development goals (2007–2014): channeling science to policymakers, 2.5. unccd in the era of sdgs (2015-present): the approach matters, 3.1. before 1977: how to fix the problem, 3.2. before the unccd (1977–1991): china’s perspective on desertification, 3.3. china during 1992–1996: joining the effort, 3.4. china during the first 10 years of the unccd (1997–2006), 3.5. china before the sdgs (2007–2014): continuing the effort, 3.6. china in the era of sdgs (2015-present): advancing the effort.

Click here to enlarge figure

4. Discussion

4.1. political will and financial support matter, 4.2. “bottom-up” or “top-down”, 4.3. institutions matter, 4.4. channel science to policy makers, 5. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Kong, Z.-H.; Stringer, L.; Paavola, J.; Lu, Q. Situating China in the Global Effort to Combat Desertification. Land 2021 , 10 , 702. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10070702

Kong Z-H, Stringer L, Paavola J, Lu Q. Situating China in the Global Effort to Combat Desertification. Land . 2021; 10(7):702. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10070702

Kong, Zheng-Hong, Lindsay Stringer, Jouni Paavola, and Qi Lu. 2021. "Situating China in the Global Effort to Combat Desertification" Land 10, no. 7: 702. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10070702

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• Introduction

The global reach of desertification

Causes and consequences of desertification, irrigated croplands.

• Rain-fed croplands
• Grazing lands
• Dry woodlands
• Solutions to desertification

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• UC Berkeley - Ecohydrology and Water and Society Lab - Desertification
• Academia.edu - Desertification: Description, Causes and Impacts
• Nature - Scientific Reports - Desertification of Iran in the early twenty-first century: assessment using climate and vegetation indices
• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Analysis of desertification combating needs based on potential vegetation NDVI—A case in the Hotan Oasis
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desertification , the process by which natural or human causes reduce the biological productivity of drylands (arid and semiarid lands). Declines in productivity may be the result of climate change , deforestation , overgrazing, poverty , political instability, unsustainable irrigation practices, or combinations of these factors. The concept does not refer to the physical expansion of existing deserts but rather to the various processes that threaten all dryland ecosystems , including deserts as well as grasslands and scrublands .

Slightly less than half of Earth’s ice-free land surface—approximately 52 million square km (about 20 million square miles)—is drylands, and these drylands cover some of the world’s poorest countries. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) notes that desertification has affected 36 million square km (14 million square miles) of land and is a major international concern. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification , the lives of 250 million people are affected by desertification, and as many as 135 million people may be displaced by desertification by 2045, making it one of the most severe environmental challenges facing humanity.

Africa is the continent most affected by desertification, and one of the most obvious natural borders on the landmass is the southern edge of the Sahara desert . The countries that lie on the edge of the Sahara are among the poorest in the world, and they are subject to periodic droughts that devastate their peoples. African drylands (which include the Sahara, the Kalahari , and the grasslands of East Africa) span 20 million square km (about 7.7 million square miles), some 65 percent of the continent. One-third of Africa’s drylands are largely uninhabited arid deserts, while the remaining two-thirds support two-thirds of the continent’s burgeoning human population. As Africa’s population increases, the productivity of the land supporting this population declines. Some one-fifth of the irrigated cropland, three-fifths of the rain-fed cropland, and three-fourths of the rangeland have been at least moderately harmed by desertification.

In general, desertification is caused by variations in climate and by unsustainable land-management practices in dryland environments . By their very nature, arid and semiarid ecosystems are characterized by sparse or variable rainfall. Thus, climatic changes such as those that result in extended droughts can rapidly reduce the biological productivity of those ecosystems. Such changes may be temporary, lasting only a season, or they may persist over many years and decades. On the other hand, plants and animals are quick to take advantage of wetter periods, and productivity can rapidly increase during these times.

Since dryland environments are used for a variety of human purposes (such as agriculture , animal grazing, and fuelwood collection), the various activities undertaken in them can exacerbate the problem of desertification and bring about lasting changes to dryland ecosystems. In 1977, at the United Nations Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) in Nairobi , Kenya , representatives and delegates first contemplated the worldwide effects of desertification. The conference explored the causes and contributing factors and also possible local and regional solutions to the phenomenon. In addition, the delegates considered the varied consequences of desertification, such as crop failures or decreased yields in rain-fed farmland, the loss of perennial plant cover and thus loss of forage for livestock , reduced woody biomass and thus scarcity of fuelwood and building materials, a decrease in potable water stocks from reductions in surface water and groundwater flow, increased sand dune intrusion onto croplands and settlements, increased flooding due to rising sedimentation in rivers and lakes , and amplified air and water pollution from dust and sedimentation.

Four areas affected by desertification

To better understand how climatic changes and human activities contribute to the process of desertification, the consequences listed above can be grouped into four broad areas:

• Irrigated croplands, whose soils are often degraded by the accumulation of salts .
• Rain -fed croplands, which experience unreliable rainfall and wind-driven soil erosion .
• Grazing lands, which are harmed by overgrazing, soil compaction , and erosion.
• Dry woodlands, which are plagued by the overconsumption of fuelwood.

Nearly 2,750,000 square km (about 1,062,000 square miles) of croplands are irrigated. Over 60 percent of these irrigated areas occur in drylands. Certainly, some dryland areas have been irrigated for millennia, but other areas are more fragile. Of the irrigated dryland, 30 percent (an area roughly the size of Japan) is moderately to severely degraded, and this percentage is increasing.

The main cause of declining biological productivity in irrigated croplands is the accumulation of salts in the soil. There is an important difference between rainwater and the water used for dryland irrigation . Rainwater results from the condensation of water evaporated by sunlight . Essentially, rainwater is distilled seawater or lake water. In contrast, water used for irrigation is the result of runoff from precipitation . Runoff percolates through the soil, dissolving and collecting much of the salts it encounters, before finding its way into rivers or aquifers . When used to irrigate crops, runoff evaporates and leaves behind much of the salts that it collected. Irrigated crops need an average of 80 cm (about 30 inches) of water annually. These salts can build up in the soil unless additional water is used to flush them out. This process can rapidly transform productive land into relatively barren salt flats scattered with halophytes (plants adapted to high levels of salt in the soil).

Most salt-degraded cropland occurs in Asia and southwestern North America , which account for 75 and 15 percent of the worldwide total, respectively. In Asia, Iraq has lost over 70 percent of its irrigated land to salt accumulation. In Russia, much of the irrigated land located where the Volga River runs into the Caspian Sea may last only until the middle of the 21st century before the buildup of salts makes it virtually unusable. Such losses are not restricted to developing countries. In the United States , salt accumulation has lowered crop yields across more than 50,000 square km (19,000 square miles), an area that is about a quarter of the country’s irrigated land.

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The environmental, economic, and social development impact of desertification in Iraq: a review on desertification control measures and mitigation strategies

• Published: 20 May 2022
• Volume 194 , article number  440 , ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Jameel R. Al-Obaidi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5705-0223 1 ,
• Mohammed Yahya Allawi 2 ,
• Bilal Salim Al-Taie 2 ,
• Khalid H. Alobaidi 3 ,
• Jameel M. Al-Khayri 4 ,
• Sumaiyah Abdullah 5 &
• E. I. Ahmad-Kamil 6  

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The threat of desertification is considered a global concern that occurs in many environments in different parts of the world, where extensive lands are transformed gradually into desert or semi-desert areas, and this causes economic and health issues. Iraq and many other parts of the Middle East are facing desertification threats in the last twenty years. Despite the significance of this issue, relevant reviews are scarce. The removal of vegetation cover, overgrazing, deforestation in times of war, poor irrigation practices and water scarcity are some of the main causes of desertification in Iraq. Fighting desertification requires cooperative efforts including the utilization of innovative practices, biotechnological approaches, restoration of oases, continuous reforestation, and rehabilitation of agricultural lands. The objective of this review article is to discuss the causes of desertification and land degradation in Iraq, highlighting the main natural and human factors involved, and the consequent impact on the national security, economy, society, and health. In addition, it suggests recommendations for policies and actions that can be integrated to mitigate this problem.

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Al-Obaidi, J.R., Yahya Allawi, M., Salim Al-Taie, B. et al. The environmental, economic, and social development impact of desertification in Iraq: a review on desertification control measures and mitigation strategies. Environ Monit Assess 194 , 440 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-10102-y

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Sand dunes show the increasing desertification of the Tibetan Plateau, as land dries out and vegetation cover vanishes due to human activity.

• ENVIRONMENT

Desertification, explained

Humans are driving the transformation of drylands into desert on an unprecedented scale around the world, with serious consequences. But there are solutions.

As global temperatures rise and the human population expands, more of the planet is vulnerable to desertification, the permanent degradation of land that was once arable.

While interpretations of the term desertification vary, the concern centers on human-caused land degradation in areas with low or variable rainfall known as drylands: arid, semi-arid, and sub-humid lands . These drylands account for more than 40 percent of the world's terrestrial surface area.

While land degradation has occurred throughout history, the pace has accelerated, reaching 30 to 35 times the historical rate, according to the United Nations . This degradation tends to be driven by a number of factors, including urbanization , mining, farming, and ranching. In the course of these activities, trees and other vegetation are cleared away , animal hooves pound the dirt, and crops deplete nutrients in the soil. Climate change also plays a significant role, increasing the risk of drought .

All of this contributes to soil erosion and an inability for the land to retain water or regrow plants. About 2 billion people live on the drylands that are vulnerable to desertification, which could displace an estimated 50 million people by 2030.

Where is desertification happening, and why?

The risk of desertification is widespread and spans more than 100 countries , hitting some of the poorest and most vulnerable populations the hardest, since subsistence farming is common across many of the affected regions.

More than 75 percent of Earth's land area is already degraded, according to the European Commission's World Atlas of Desertification , and more than 90 percent could become degraded by 2050. The commission's Joint Research Centre found that a total area half of the size of the European Union (1.61 million square miles, or 4.18 million square kilometers) is degraded annually, with Africa and Asia being the most affected.

The drivers of land degradation vary with different locations, and causes often overlap with each other. In the regions of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan surrounding the Aral Sea , excessive use of water for agricultural irrigation has been a primary culprit in causing the sea to shrink , leaving behind a saline desert. And in Africa's Sahel region , bordered by the Sahara Desert to the north and savannas to the south, population growth has caused an increase in wood harvesting, illegal farming, and land-clearing for housing, among other changes.

The prospect of climate change and warmer average temperatures could amplify these effects. The Mediterranean region would experience a drastic transformation with warming of 2 degrees Celsius, according to one study , with all of southern Spain becoming desert. Another recent study found that the same level of warming would result in "aridification," or drying out, of up to 30 percent of Earth's land surface.

A herder family tends pastures beside a growing desert.

When land becomes desert, its ability to support surrounding populations of people and animals declines sharply. Food often doesn't grow, water can't be collected, and habitats shift. This often produces several human health problems that range from malnutrition, respiratory disease caused by dusty air, and other diseases stemming from a lack of clean water.

Desertification solutions

In 1994, the United Nations established the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), through which 122 countries have committed to Land Degradation Neutrality targets, similar to the way countries in the climate Paris Agreement have agreed to targets for reducing carbon pollution. These efforts involve working with farmers to safeguard arable land, repairing degraded land, and managing water supplies more effectively.

The UNCCD has also promoted the Great Green Wall Initiative , an effort to restore 386,000 square miles (100 million hectares) across 20 countries in Africa by 2030. A similar effort is underway in northern China , with the government planting trees along the border of the Gobi desert to prevent it from expanding as farming, livestock grazing , and urbanization , along with climate change, removed buffering vegetation.

However, the results for these types of restoration efforts so far have been mixed. One type of mesquite tree planted in East Africa to buffer against desertification has proved to be invasive and problematic . The Great Green Wall initiative in Africa has evolved away from the idea of simply planting trees and toward the idea of " re-greening ," or supporting small farmers in managing land to maximize water harvesting (via stone barriers that decrease water runoff, for example) and nurture natural regrowth of trees and vegetation.

"The absolute number of farmers in these [at-risk rural] regions is so large that even simple and inexpensive interventions can have regional impacts," write the authors of the World Atlas of Desertification, noting that more than 80 percent of the world's farms are managed by individual households, primarily in Africa and Asia. "Smallholders are now seen as part of the solution of land degradation rather than a main problem, which was a prevailing view of the past."

Related Topics

• AGRICULTURE
• DEFORESTATION

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