A PROJECT REPORT

ON

COMBATING DESRTIFICATION – GLOBALLY AND IN INDIA

COMBATING DESERTIFICATION

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INTRODUCTION

Desertification is a historic phenomenon; the world's great deserts were formed by natural
processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have
grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts are large sand seas now
inactive because they are stabilized by vegetation, some extending beyond the present
margins of core deserts, such as the Sahara. Many deserts in western Asia arose because of an
overpopulation of prehistoric species and subspecies during the late Cretaceous era.

Dated fossil pollen indicates that today's Sahara desert has been changing between desert and
fertile savanna. Studies also show that prehistorically the advance and retreat of deserts
tracked yearly rainfall, whereas a pattern of increasing amounts of desert began with human-
driven activities of overgrazing and deforestation.

A chief difference of prehistoric versus present desertification is the much greater rate of
desertification than in prehistoric and geologic time scales; due to anthropogenic
influences.Also another reason for desertification is the Sahara Desert. This desert is
spreading at its fastest rate.

Desertification is the degradation of land in arid and dry sub-humid areas due to various
factors: including climatic variations and human activities. A major impact of desertification
is reduced biodiversity and diminished productive capacity, for example, by transition from
land dominated by shrublands to non-native grasslands .

For example, in the semi-arid regions of southern California, many coastal sage scrub and
chaparral ecosystems have been replaced by non-native, invasive grasses due to the
shortening of fire return intervals. This can create a monoculture of annual grass that cannot
support the wide range of animals once found in the original ecosystem In Madagascar's
central highland plateau 10% of the entire country has desertified due to slash and burn
agriculture by indigenous peoples.

MEANING

Desertification is not the advance of deserts, though it can include the encroachment of sand
dunes on land. Rather, it is the persistent degradation of dryland ecosystems by human
activities and climatic variations. Because of its toll on human well-being and on the
environment, desertification ranks among the greatest development challenges of our time.

Desertification is defined by the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification as “land

degradation in arid, semiarid and dry subhumid areas resulting from various factors,
including climatic variations and human activities.” Land degradation is in turn defined as the
reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity of dry lands. This report
evaluates the condition of desertification in dry lands , including hyper-arid areas, by asking

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pointed questions and providing answers based exclusively on the reports generated for the
MA.

Desertification occurs on all continents except Antarctica and affects the livelihoods of
millions of people, including a large proportion of the poor in dry lands . Desertification takes
place worldwide in dry lands , and its effects are experienced locally, nationally, regionally,
and globally. Dry lands occupy 41% of Earth’s land area and are home to more than 2 billion
people—a third of the human population in the year 2000. Dry lands include all terrestrial
regions where water scarcity limits the production of crops, forage, wood, and other
ecosystem provisioning services. Formally, the MA definition encompasses all lands where
the climate is classified as dry sub -humid, semiarid, arid, or hyper-arid. Please see Appendix
A for more details about their geography and demography.

Some 10–20% of dry lands are already degraded (medium certainty). Based on these rough
estimates, about 1–6% of the dry land people live in desertified areas, while a much larger
number is under threat from further desertification. Scenarios of future development show
that, if unchecked, desertification and degradation of ecosystem services in dry lands will
threaten future improvements in human well-being and possibly reverse gains in some
regions. Therefore, desertification ranks among the greatest environmental challenges today
and is a major impediment to meeting basic human needs in dry lands.

Persistent, substantial reduction in the provision of ecosystem services as a result of water

scarcity, intensive use of services, and climate change is a much greater threat in dry lands
than in non-dry land systems. In particular, the projected intensification of freshwater scarcity
as a result of climate change will cause greater stresses in dry lands. If left unmitigated, these
stresses will further exacerbate desertification. The greatest vulnerability is ascribed to sub-
Saharan and Central Asian dry lands . For example, in three key regions of Africa—the
Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Africa—severe droughts occur on average once
every 30 years. These droughts triple the number of people exposed to severe water scarcity
at least once in every generation, leading to major food and health crises.

Desertification is a result of a long-term failure to balance demand for and supply of

ecosystem services in dry lands . The pressure is increasing on dry land ecosystems for
providing services such as food, forage, fuel, building materials, and water for humans and
livestock, for irrigation, and for sanitation. This increase is attributed to a combination of
human factors and climatic factors. The former includes indirect factors like population
pressure, socioeconomic and policy factors, and globalization phenomena like distortions to
international food markets and direct factors like land use patterns and practices and climate-
related processes. The climatic factors of concern include droughts and projected reduction in
freshwater availability due to global warming. While the global and regional interplay of
these factors is complex, it is possible to understand it at the local scale.

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Historical and current desertification

Overgrazing and to a lesser extent drought in the 1930s transformed parts of the Great Plains
in the United States into the "Dust Bowl" During that time, a considerable fraction of the
plains population abandoned their homes to escape the unproductive lands. Improved
agricultural and water management have prevented a disaster of the earlier magnitude from
recurring, but desertification presently affects tens of millions of people with primary
occurrence in the lesser developed countries.

Desertification is widespread in many areas of the People's Republic of China. The

populations of rural areas have increased since 1949 for economic reasons as more people
have settled there. While there has been an increase in livestock, the land available for
grazing has decreased. Also the importing of European cattle such as Friesian and Simmental,
which have higher grazing intensity, has exacerbated matters.

uman overpopulation is leading to destruction of tropical wet forests and tropical dry forests,
due to widening practices of slash-and-burn and other methods of subsistence farming in
lesser developed countries. A sequel to the deforestation is typically large scale erosion, loss
of soil nutrients and sometimes total desertification. Examples of this extreme outcome can
be seen on Madagascar's central highland plateau, where about seven percent of the country's
total land mass has become barren, sterile land.

Another example of desertification occurring is in the Sahel. The chief cause of

desertification in the Sahel is described to be slash-and-burn farming in which soil degration
is increased do to winds removing unprotected topsoil. Decreases in rainfall are also a cause
as well as destruction of local perennials. The Sahara is expanding south at a rate of up to 48
kilometres per year.

Ghana and Nigeria currently experience desertification; in the latter, desertification overtakes
about 1,355 square miles (3,510 km2) of land per year. The Central Asian countries,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, are also
affected. More than 80% of Afghanistan's and Pakistan's land could be subject to soil erosion
and desertification. In Kazakhstan, nearly half of the cropland has been abandoned since
1980. In Iran, sand storms were said to have buried 124 villages in Sistan and Baluchestan
Province in 2002, and they had to be abandoned. In Latin America, Mexico and Brazil are
affected by desertification.

CAUSES OF DESERTIFICATION

Desertification occurs when the tree and plant cover that binds the soil is removed. It occurs
when trees and bushes are stripped away for fuel wood and timber, or to clear land for
cultivation. It occurs when animals eat away grasses and erode topsoil with their hooves. It
occurs when intensive farming depletes the nutrients in the soil. Wind and water erosion
aggravate the damage, carrying away topsoil and leaving behind a highly infertile mix of dust

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and sand. It is the combination of these factors that transforms degraded land into desert.
There are many factors that contribute to desertification. Prolonged periods of drought can
take a severe toll on the land. Conflict can force people to move into environmentally fragile
areas, putting undue pressure on the land. Mining can cause damage. In the coming years,
climate change will accelerate the rate of desertification in some areas, such as the drier areas
of Latin America.

Desertification is caused by a combination of factors that change over time and vary by
location. These include indirect factors such as population pressure, socioeconomic and
policy factors, and international trade as well as direct factors such as land use patterns
and practices and climate-related processes.

Desertification is taking place due to indirect factors driving unsustainable use of scarce
natural resources by local land users. This situation may be further exacerbated by global
climate change. Desertification is considered to be the result of management approaches
adopted by land users, who are unable to respond adequately to indirect factors like
population pressure and globalization and who increase the pressure on the land in
unsustainable ways. This leads to decreased land productivity and a downward spiral of
worsening degradation and poverty

Social, economic, and policy factors that contribute to desertification

1. Social, Economic, and Policy Factors

Policies leading to unsustainable resource use and lack of supportive infrastructure are major
contributors to land degradation. Conversely, this makes public policies and physical
infrastructure useful intervention points. Thus agriculture can play either a positive or a
negative role, depending on how it is managed. This in turn depends on the socioeconomic
resources available, the policies adopted, and the quality of governance. Local institutions,
such as community-based land-use decision-making bodies and social networks, can
contribute to preventing desertification by allowing land users to manage and use ecosystem
services more effectively through enhanced access to land, capital, labor, and technology.

Policies to replace pastoralism with sedentary cultivation in rangelands can contribute

to desertification.Policies and infrastructure that promote farming in rangelands that cannot
sustain viable cropping systems contribute to desertification. The majority of dryland areas
(65%) are rangelands that are more suited to sustainable pastoralism than crop production.
For example, nomadic pastoralism is a rangeland management practice that over the centuries
has proved to be sustainable and suited to the ecosystem carrying capacity. Sedentarization of
nomads in marginal dry lands and other limitations to their transboundary movement lead to
desertification because they reduce people’s ability to adjust their economic activities in the
face of stresses such as droughts .

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Land tenure practices and policies that encourage land users to overexploit land
resources can be important contributors to desertification. When farmers and herders lose
control or long-term security over the land they use, the incentives for maintaining
environmentally sustainable practices are lost. Problems of water scarcity, groundwater
depletion, soil erosion, and salinization have all been recognized as outcomes of deeper
policy and institutional failures. Security of tenure does not necessarily imply private
property rights; many long-established collective and community-based management
practices have operated quite effectively.

2. Globalization Phenomena

Many ongoing processes of globalization amplify or attenuate the driving forces of

desertification by removing regional barriers, weakening local connections, and
increasing the interdependence among people and between nations. Globalization can
either contribute to or help prevent desertification, but it creates stronger links between local,
national, sub-regional, regional, and global factors related to desertification. Studies have
shown that trade liberalization, macroeconomic reforms, and a focus on raising production
for exports can lead to desertification. In other cases, enlarged markets can also contribute to
successful agricultural improvements. For example, a large share of the European Union
flower markets is supplied with imports from dryland countries (such as Kenya and Israel) .

Global trade regimes and linked government policies influence food production and
consumption patterns significantly and affect directly or indirectly the resilience of
dryland ecosystems.Improved access to agricultural inputs (like fertilizers, pesticides, and
farm machinery) and export markets typically boosts productivity. Opportunities to gain
access to international markets are conditioned by international trade and food safety
regulations and by a variety of tariff and nontariff barriers.

3. Land Use And Desertification

Land use changes are responses to changes in the provision of ecosystem services, and
they also cause changes in this provision. Historically, dryland livelihoods have been based
on a mixture of hunting, gathering, cropping, and animal husbandry. This mixture varied in
composition with time, place, and culture. The harsh and unpredictable climate combined
with changing socioeconomic and political factors has forced dryland inhabitants to be
flexible in land use. Population pressure, however, has led to a growing tension between two
main land uses: pastoral rangeland and cultivated land use. In some areas, this led to
intercultural conflicts and desertification as herders and farmers claim access to and use of the
same land. In other cases, it led to synergistic interaction and integration between the two
land uses, with herders cultivating more land, farmers holding more livestock, and an
increased exchange of services between the two groups.

Irrigation has led to increased cultivation and food production in dry lands, but in
many cases this has been unsustainable without extensive public capital investment.

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Large-scale irrigation has also resulted in many environmental problems— such as
waterlogging and salinization, water pollution, eutrophication, and unsustainable exploitation
of groundwater aquifers—that degrade the dry lands’ service provisioning. In such irrigation
approaches, rivers are often disconnected from their floodplains and other inland water
habitats, and groundwater recharge has been reduced. These human-induced changes have in
turn had an impact on the migratory patterns of fish species and the species composition of
riparian habitat, opened up paths for exotic species, changed coastal ecosystems, and
contributed to an overall loss of freshwater biodiversity and inland fishery resources.

Frequent and intensive fires can be an important contributor to desertification, whereas

controlled fires play an important role in the management of dryland pastoral and
cropping systems. In both cases, the use of fire promotes the service of nutrient cycling and
makes nutrients stored in the vegetation available for forage and crop production. For
example, dryland pastoralists use controlled fire to improve forage quality, and dryland
farmers use fire to clear new land for cultivation. Conversely, fires can be an important cause
of desertification in some regions when they affect natural vegetation. Excessive intensity
and frequency can lead to irreversible changes in ecological processes and, ultimately, to
desertification. The consequences of such changes include the loss of soil organic matter,
erosion, loss of biodiversityand habitat changes for many plant and animal species.

DESERTIFICATION AND ITS EFFECT

The effects of desertification can be devastating. Desertification reduces the land’s resilience
to natural variations in climate. It disrupts the natural cycle of water and nutrients. It
intensifies strong winds and wildfires. The effects of dust storms and the sedimentation of
water bodies can be felt thousands of kilometres away from where the problems originated.
The cost of desertification is high, and not just in economic terms. Desertification is a threat
to biodiversity. It can lead to prolonged episodes of famine in countries that are already
impoverished and cannot sustain large agricultural losses. Poor rural people who depend on
the land for survival are often forced to migrate or face starvation.

Desertification not only means hunger and death in the developing world, it also increases
threats to global security for everyone. War, social disorder, political instability and
migration can all result from scarce resources. For millions of people, halting desertification
is a matter of life and death.

Desertification is not always inevitable. Human factors, such as overgrazing and clear-cutting
of land, can be controlled by improving agricultural and grazing practices. Other factors, such
as rising temperatures, can be predicted and dealt with proactively. Degraded land can
sometimes be rehabilitated and its fertility restored. In many cases, the best methods of
rehabilitating land involve using traditional or indigenous knowledge and land management
techniques. But rehabilitation efforts can fail or eventually have a negative impact on

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ecosystems, human well-being and poverty reduction. It is less costly, and less risky, to limit
the damage in the first place.

Geographical Extent of Desertification

Desertification is occurring in dry lands all over the world. Estimates for total global dry land
area affected by desertification vary significantly, depending on the calculation method and
on the type of land degradation included in the estimate. Despite the importance of
desertification, only three exploratory assessments of the worldwide extent of land
degradation are available.

 The most well known study is the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation from 1991
that estimated soil degradation based on expert opinion. It reported that 20% of the
dry lands (excluding hyper-arid areas) were suffering from human-induced soil
degradation.

 Another estimate from the early 1990s, based primarily on secondary sources,
reported 70% of dry lands (excluding hyper-arid areas) were suffering from soil and
or vegetation degradation.

 A partial-coverage assessment from 2003, developed as a desk study from partly

overlapping regional data sets and remote sensing data, estimated that 10% of global
dry lands (including hyper-arid areas) are degraded.

Poverty and Vulnerability of the Affected Population

Dry land populations, at least 90% of who live in developing countries, on average lag far
behind the rest of the world in human well-being and development indicators. Compared
with other systems studied in the MA, dry land populations suffer from the poorest economic
conditions. The GNP per capita of OECD countries exceeds that of developing dry land
countries almost by an order of magnitude. Similarly, the average infant mortality rate (about
54 per 1,000) for all dry land developing countries exceeds that for non-dry land countries
(forests, mountains, islands, and coastal areas) by 23% or more. The low level of human
well-being and high poverty of dry land populations vary according to level of aridity and
global region. This is further exacerbated by high population growth rates in dry lands. For
example, the population in dry lands grew at an average rate of 18.5% during the 1990s—the
highest growth rate of any MA system. A number of policy factors also contribute to the poor
human well-being, such as political marginalization and the slow growth of health and
education infrastructure, facilities, and services.

Dry land populations are often socially and politically marginalized due to their
impoverishment and remoteness from centers of decision-making. This holds true even in
some industrial countries. As a consequence, these dry land populations are frequently unable
to play a significant role in political decision-making processes.

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Regional and Global Consequences of Desertification beyond Dry lands

Desertification has environmental impacts at the global and regional scale. Affected areas
may sometimes be located thousands of kilometers away from the desertified areas.
Desertification-related processes such as reduction of vegetation cover, for instance, increase
the formation of aerosols and dust. These, in turn, affect cloud formation and rainfall patterns,
the global carbon cycle, and plant and animal biodiversity.

An increase in desertification-related dust storms is widely considered to be a cause of ill

health (fever, coughing, and sore eyes) during the dry season. Dust emanating from the East
Asian region and the Sahara has also been implicated in respiratory problems as far away as
North America and has affected coral reefs in the Caribbean. (Dust storms can also have
positive impacts, however; for example, air-transported dust deposits from Africa are thought
to improve soil quality in the Americas). Finally, reduction of vegetation cover in dry lands
leads to destructive floods downstream and excessive clay and silt loads in water reservoirs,
wells, river deltas, river mouths, and coastal areas often located outside the dry lands .

The societal and political impacts of desertification also extend to non-dry land areas.
Droughts and loss of land productivity are predominant factors in movement of people from
dry lands to other areas, for example (medium certainty). Such migration may exacerbate
urban sprawl and by competing for scarce natural resources bring about internal and cross-
boundary social, ethnic, and political strife. Desertification-induced movement of people also
has the potential of adversely affecting local, regional, and even global political and
economic stability, which may encourage foreign intervention

DESERTIFICATION AND HUMAN WELL-BEING

Desertification is potentially the most threatening ecosystem change impacting livelihoods of

the poor. Persistent reduction of ecosystem services as a result of desertification links land
degradation to loss of human well-being.

The basic materials for a good life for most dry land people have their origin in biological
productivity. More people in dry lands than in any other ecosystem depend on ecosystem
services for their basic needs. Crop production, livestock and dairy production, growth of fuel
wood, and construction materials all depend on plant productivity, which in dry lands is
constrained by water availability. Thus it is the dry land climate that constrains viable
livelihood opportunities. Practices like intensified cultivation in areas that do not have an
adequate level of supporting services (soil fertility, nutrients, and water supply) thus require
adjustments in management practices or costly imports of nutrients and water .

Fluctuation in the supply of ecosystem services is normal, especially in dry lands, but a
persistent reduction in the levels of all services over an extended period constitutes

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desertification. Large inter-annual and longer-term climatic variations cause fluctuations in
crop, forage, and water yields.

CONSEQUENCES OF DESERTIFICATION

Manifestations of Desertification

The manifestations of desertification are apparent in all categories of ecosystem services:

provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting. Some of these services are typically
measured and quantified, such as food, forage, fiber, and fresh water; others may be inferred
or implied through qualitative analysis. In desertified areas, people have responded to
reduced land productivity and income by either increased use of other relatively marginal
land (not yet degraded but having lower productivity) or by transforming more rangeland to
cultivated land. Since policies to promote alternative livelihood opportunities are commonly
not in place, migration to unaffected areas subsequently occurs. Initially it is from rural to
urban areas, and then to locations of greater economic opportunity in other countries. These
migrations sometimes exacerbate urban sprawl and can bring about internal and cross-
boundary social, ethnic, and political strife.

In many semiarid areas, there is a progressive shift occurring from grassland to shrubland that
exacerbates soil erosion. During the second half of the nineteenth century, large-scale
commercial stockbreeding quickly spread over the semiarid dry lands of North and South
America, South Africa, and Australia. Both the kind of imported herbivore and type of
grazing management (including fire prevention) were not adjusted to the semiarid
ecosystems. The resulting disturbance was therefore a “transition trigger” that, combined
with drought events, led to a progressive dominance of shrubs over grass (sometimes called
“bush encroachment”).

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COMBATING DESERTIFICATION

“The human community faces an array of choices about the quality of our lives and the
state of the global environment. Each of those choices will help to determine what kind
of world our children and grandchildren will live in”.
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General.

Measures to combat desertification should have and social objectives. Here is a checklist
of how to achieve more sustainable land-uses.

Solution: Raising awareness of the problem

The Convention to Combat Desertification was adopted on 17 June 1994 and in

commemoration of this event “World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought,” is
observed every year on 17 June. The purpose of the World Day is to raise awareness of
desertification and to encourage actions that would remedy some of the consequences of
desertification and prevent further degradation and loss of soil and water. At the 2002 World
Summit on Sustainable Development, the Convention to Combat Desertification was singled
out as a key instrument for poverty eradication in dry land rural areas. The degradation of dry
lands is hindering efforts to overcome poverty and hunger and if not reversed will impede the
attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. The declaration of 2006 as the
International Year of Deserts and Desertification (IYDD) highlighted the concern about
desertification. All countries were encouraged to undertake special initiatives to mark the
Year and through these efforts to raise awareness of desertification. The International Film
Festival entitled ‘Desert Nights - Tales from the Desert’ in Rome in December 2006 is an
example of one such awareness–raising initiative.

Solution: Planting and protecting indigenous trees and shrubs

The benefit of trees is enormous when it comes to preventing desertification or restoring

already degraded land. The first step in halting desertification is usually the planting of trees
to:
• stabilise the soil
• protect it from excessive sunshine, strong winds and the progression of sand
• intercept the rainfall and protect the soil from splash erosion
• retain moisture and help local recycling of rainfall – water trickles down through the canopy
and is absorbed by the humus layer
• replenish soil nutrients
• absorb carbon dioxide

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The over-exploitation of indigenous trees and the introduction of non-native species can lead
to ecological disturbance. Indigenous trees and plants have special adaptations to local
situations and benefit local wildlife. In Ireland, for example, the Oak tree can host up to 400
different insects and it is the climax vegetation in the Irish oakwood ecosystem. The
introduction of Rhodendrum has upset this balance in some native oakwoods. In dry lands
woody desert trees, such as acacias, evade drought by shedding their leaves as the dry season
sets in. Many dry land species have deep taproots that explore deep underground water layers
and many are leguminous* species which improve soil fertility. Regeneration of endangered
indigenous species is important. One method of encouraging natural regeneration is through
the establishment of temporary enclosures. It is essential that this plan is in harmony with the
wishes of the users. Another method is the establishment of seed or gene banks, places where
seeds are stored for short-term use in farming or for long-term preservation. When attempts
to introduce exotic species into Tunisia as a way of improving degraded soil were
unsuccessful attention turned to indigenous pastoral plants. A gene bank of indigenous arid
and desert rangeland plant species was created in the Arid Regions Institute in Tunisia in
1986. This gene bank has been included within the national programmes to combat
desertification and the national programmes for biodiversity.

Community Forests
The objective of community forestry is to meet the needs of people in a way that is
sustainable by making forest products available to them. Local people gain rights to use and
manage the forest for their own benefit. The community projects can also include roadside
planting, and planting around homesteads, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, sacred
areas, parks and riverbanks. The involvement of schools helps to raise awareness of tree
planting. Trees and shrubs while playing an important role in improving soils, protecting
watersheds, reducing salinisation and modifying climate are also producing food and high-
value forest products for local communities.

Solution: Developing sustainable agricultural practices

By increasing the number of trees in agricultural areas, farmers live in harmony with their
environment. The land benefits from the farmers’ presence and the farmers benefit from their
own control of desertification. Agro forestry is a practice which integrates high-value multi-
purpose trees and shrubs into farming systems. Agro forestry systems include alleycropping,
windbreaks, riparian buffer strips, and forest farming. The trees shelter land and livestock,
provide wildlife habitat and control soil erosion. Leguminous species improve soil fertility,
fruit trees provide nutrition, trees, like the Acacia Senegal, provide gum and medicine and
different palatable trees provide fodder.

Solution: Using alternative sources of energy

Sustainable energy use means ensuring enough energy supply for present and future
generations, while at the same time protecting the environment. This can be done by using
renewable sources of energy, and by being more careful about energy use. Fast-growing,

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drought-and salt-tolerant, and with remarkable coppicing power, prosopsis is a natural fuel
wood in arid and semi-arid areas. The wood has been called “wooden anthracite”, because of
its high heat content. The pressure on natural vegetation cover can be reduced through the
development of alternative sources of energy and through improving the efficiency of
existing energy use. Improved ovens with slow-burning wood are one way to save energy. In
Eritrea Concern promoted the use of fuel saving stoves, known as mogogos.

Coppicing is the art of cutting of trees and shrubs to ground level allowing vigorous regrowth
and a sustainable supply of timber for future generations.

Solution: Mobilizing and involving people

The Convention stresses that people who suffer the impact of desertification, and who best
understand the ecosystems in which they live, must be involved in decisions about how to
restore damaged land and prevent further degradation. The Convention calls for the building
of partnerships comprising affected populations and their representatives, the national
government, and bilateral and multilateral donors. The purpose of the partnerships is to
develop National Action Programmes to tackle the problem of desertification. The
Convention states that traditional and local technologies and know-how should be protected.
Local populations should benefit directly from any commercial use of their techniques. Over
the years local populations in Africa have developed techniques for managing soil and water,
domesticating plants and animals, and for forecasting the weather. Technical innovations are
often brought in from more humid environments without regard for the equilibrium of
dryland ecosystems.

Solution: Development of local crops and rural markets

The convention proposes the promotion of drought-resistant and salt-resistant crops and the
development of rural markets. Attention should be paid to local plants whether they have
already been domesticated or not. It is important to grow a wide variety of plants that are
suited to local conditions. Bio-diversity of crops helps to ensure both healthy soil and food-
security. Organic growing should also be encouraged as this system reduces the damage to
the land and alleviates some of the negative impacts of monocropping. Local markets are
needed to encourage local trade and the production of local goods, both agricultural and non-
agricultural. An emphasis on the export of unprocessed commodities has a detrimental effect
on local economics. If this situation could be changed more income could be earned without
so much damage to the soil. As part of Concern’s Livelihoods Programmes in both the
Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone access to markets has been improved
through the provision and rehabilitation of bridges and feeder roads.
National Action Programmes should give particular attention to protecting lands not yet
degraded, and devise early drought-warning systems.

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ACTIONS THAT CAN BE TAKEN TO AVOID DESERTIFICATION

The creation of a “culture of prevention” can go a long way toward protecting dry lands
from the onset of desertification or its continuation.The culture of prevention requires a
change in governments’ and peoples’ attitudes through improved incentives. Young people
can play a key role in this process. Evidence from a growing body of case studies
demonstrates that dryland populations, building on long-term experience and active
innovation, can stay ahead of desertification by improving agricultural practices and
enhancing pastoral mobility in a sustainable way. For example, in many areas of the Sahel
region, land users are achieving higher productivity by capitalizing on improved organization
of labor, more extensive soil and water conservation, increased use of mineral fertilizer and
manure, and new market opportunities .

Integrated land and water management are key methods of desertification prevention.
All measures that protect soils from erosion, salinization, and other forms of soil
degradation effectively prevent desertification. Sustainable land use can address human
activities such as overgrazing, overexploitation of plants, trampling of soils, and
unsustainable irrigation practices that exacerbate dryland vulnerability. Management
strategies include measures to spread the pressures of human activities, such as transhumance
(rotational use) of rangelands and well sites, stocking rates matched to the carrying capacity
of ecosystems, and diverse species composition. Improved water management practices can
enhance water-related services. These may include use of traditional water-harvesting
techniques, water storage, and diverse soil and water conservation measures. Maintaining
management practices for water capture during intensive rainfall episodes also helps prevent
surface runoff that carries away the thin, fertile, moisture-holding topsoil. Improving
groundwater recharge through soil-water conservation, upstream revegetation, and floodwater
spreading can provide reserves of water for use during drought periods .

Protection of vegetative cover can be a major instrument for prevention of

desertification. Maintaining vegetative cover to protect soil from wind and water erosion is a
key preventive measure against desertification. Properly maintained vegetative cover also
prevents loss of ecosystem services during drought episodes. Reduced rainfall may be
induced if vegetation cover is lost due to overcultivation, overgrazing, overharvesting of
medicinal plants, woodcutting, or mining activities. This is usually coupled with the effect of
reduced surface evapotranspiration and shade or increased albedo..

In the dry subhumid and semiarid zones, conditions equally favor pastoral and
cropping land use.Rather than competitively excluding each other, a tighter cultural and
economic integration between the two livelihoods can prevent desertification. Mixed farming
practices in these zones, whereby a single farm household combines livestock rearing and

14
cropping, allows a more efficient recycling of nutrients within the agricultural system. Such
interactions can lower livestock pressure on rangelands through fodder cultivation and the
provision of stubble to supplement livestock feed during forage scarcity (and immediately
after, to allow plant regeneration) due to within- and between-years climatic variability. At
the same time, farmland benefits from manure provided by livestock kept on fields at night
during the dry season. Many West African farming systems are based on this kind of
integration of pastures and farmland.

Use of locally suitable technology is a key way for inhabitants of dry lands at risk of
desertification to work with ecosystem processes rather than against them. Applying a
combination of traditional technology with selective transfer of locally acceptable technology
is a major way to prevent desertification. Conversely, there are numerous examples of
practices—such as unsustainable irrigation techniques and technologies and rangeland
management, as well as growing crops unsuited to the agroclimatic zone—that tend to
accelerate, if not initiate, desertification processes. Thus technology transfer requires in-depth
evaluation of impacts and active participation of recipient

Local communities can prevent desertification and provide effective dryland resource
management but are often limited by their capacity to act. Drawing on cultural history
and local knowledge and experience, and reinforced by science, dryland communities are in
the best position to devise practices to prevent desertification. However, there are many
limitations imposed on the interventions available to communities, such as lack of
institutional capacity, access to markets, and financial capital for implementation. Enabling
policies that involve local participation and community institutions, improve access to
transport and market infrastructures, inform local land managers, and allow land users to
innovate are essential to the success of these practices. For example, a key traditional
adaptation was transhumance for pastoral communities, which in many dryland locations is
no longer possible. Loss of such livelihood options or related local knowledge limits the
community’s capacity to respond to ecological changes and heightens the risk of
desertification

Desertification can be avoided by turning to alternative livelihoods that do not depend

on traditional land uses, are less demanding on local land and natural resource use, yet
provide sustainable income. Such livelihoods include dryland aquaculture for production of
fish, crustaceans and industrial compounds produced by microalgae, greenhouse agriculture,
and tourism-related activities. They generate relatively high income per land and water unit in
some places. Dryland aquaculture under plastic cover, for example, minimizes evaporative
losses, and provides the opportunity to use saline or brackish water productively. Alternative
livelihoods often even provide their practitioners a competitive edge over those outside the
dry lands, since they harness dryland features such as solar radiation, winter relative warmth,
brackish geothermal water, and sparsely populated pristine areas that are often more abundant
than in non-dry lands. Implementation of such practices in dry lands requires institution
building, access to markets, technology transfer, capital investment, and reorientation of
farmers and pastoralists.

15
Desertification can also be avoided by creating economic opportunities in dry lands
urban centers and areas outside dry lands. Changes in overall economic and institutional
settings that create new opportunities for people to earn a living could help relieve current
pressures underlying the desertification processes. Urban growth, when undertaken with
adequate planning and provision of services, infrastructure, and facilities, can be a major
factor in relieving pressures that cause desertification in dry lands. This view is relevant when
considering the projected growth of the urban fraction in dry lands, which will increase to
around 52% by 2010 and to 60% by 2030.

KEY CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE

Persistent, substantial reduction in the provision of ecosystem services as a result of water

scarcity, intensive use of services, and climate change is a much greater threat in dry lands
than in non-dryland systems. The greatest vulnerability is ascribed to sub-Saharan and
Central Asian dry lands. For example, in three key regions of Africa—the Sahel, Horn of
Africa, and Southeast Africa—severe droughts occur on average once every 30 years. These
triple the number of people exposed to severe water scarcity at least once in every generation,
leading to major food and health crises. Unconditional, free supply of food or water to the
vulnerable dryland people can have the unintended effect of increasing the risk of even larger
breakdowns of ecosystem services.

The projected intensification of freshwater scarcity will cause greater stresses in dry lands. If
left unmitigated, these stresses will further exacerbate desertification. Water scarcity affects
approximately 1–2 billion people today, most of them in dry lands. This leads to
overexploitation of surface and ground-water resources and eventually magnifies problems
related to desertification. Freshwater availability in dry lands is projected to be further
reduced from the current overall average of 1,300 cubic meters per person per year. While
this average figure masks great variations, it is already well below the lowest threshold of
2,000 cubic meters required for human well-being and sustainable development .

The prospects for implementing the UNCCD differ significantly under the four MA
scenarios. Implementation will be the most difficult in a regionalized-reactive world, while
prospects improve in a more globalized world and with proactive ecosystem management.
The four MA scenarios give an indication of how effectively the UNCCD directives can be
implemented by the affected countries when operating under broadly different management
approaches. In a regionalized world with only reactive environmental management, the scope
for global environmental agreements is rather poor. In this reactive management mode,
desertification will likely increase further before its impacts—massive famines and
environmental and hunger refugees—trigger a significant response. A globalized world
provides a more favorable situation for implementation of the UNCCD at the global scale
through facilitation in the flow of resources and technologies, but here too it will depend
which kind of overall management approaches are favored

16
LINK BETWEEN DESERTIFICATION, GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, AND
BIODIVERSITY LOSS

Desertification is associated with biodiversity loss and contributes to global climate

change through loss of carbon sequestration capacity and an increase in land-surface
albedo.

Biological diversity is involved in most services provided by dryland ecosystems and is

adversely affected by desertification. Most important, vegetation and its diversity of
physical structure are instrumental in soil conservation and in the regulation of rainfall
infiltration, surface runoff, and local climate. Different plant species produce physically and
chemically different litter components and, together with a diverse community of micro- and
macro-decomposers, contribute to soil formation and nutrient cycling. The species diversity
of vegetation supports both livestock and wildlife. All plants support primary production that
ultimately provides food, fiber, and fuelwood and that sequesters carbon, thus regulating
global climate. Excessive exploitation of vegetation leads to losses in primary production and
hence also to reduced carbon sequestration. It is the disruption of the interlinked services
jointly provided by dryland plant biodiversity that is a key trigger for desertification and its
various manifestations, including the loss of habitats for biodiversity (See Figure 6.1). The
major components of biodiversity loss (in green) directly affect major dryland services (in
bold). The inner loops connect desertification to biodiversity loss and climate change through
soil erosion. The outer loop interrelates biodiversity loss and climate change. On the top
section of the outer loop, reduced primary production and microbial activity reduce carbon
sequestration and contribute to global warming. On the bottom section of the outer loop,
global warming increases evapotranspiration, thus adversely affecting biodiversity; changes
in community structure and diversity are also expected because different species will react
differently to the elevated CO2 concentrations.

Desertification affects global climate change through soil and vegetation losses. Dryland
soils contain over a quarter of all of the organic carbon stores in the world as well as nearly
all the inorganic carbon. Unimpeded desertification may release a major fraction of this
carbon to the global atmosphere, with significant feedback consequences to the global
climate system. It is estimated that 300 million tons of carbon are lost to the atmosphere from
dry lands as a result of desertification each year (about 4% of the total global emissions from
all sources combined) (medium certainty)

The effect of global climate change on desertification is complex and not sufficiently
understood.Climate change may adversely affect biodiversity and exacerbate desertification
due to increase in evapotranspiration and a likely decrease in rainfall in dry lands (although it
may increase globally). However, since carbon dioxide is also a major resource for plant
productivity, water use fiefficiency will significantly improve for some dryland species that
can favorably respond to its increase. These contrasting responses of different dryland plants

17
to the increasing carbon dioxide and temperatures may lead to changes in species
composition and abundances. Therefore, although climate change may increase aridity and
desertification risk in many areas (medium certainty), the consequent effects on services
driven by biodiversity loss and, hence, on desertification are fidifficult to predict (C22.5.3).

Due to strongly interlinked issues and policies between desertification, biodiversity loss,
and climate change, joint implementation of the UNCCD, the Convention on Biological
Diversity, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change can yield multiple
benefits. Environmental management approaches for combating desertification, conserving
biodiversity, and mitigating climate change are linked in numerous ways. Typically, these
issues were dealt with separately by different conventions and policy fora, which were
negotiated and implemented independently of one another, often by different departments or
agencies within national governments. Thus, joint implementation and further strengthening
of ongoing collaborations can increase synergies and effectiveness.

improvement. Their long-term implementation may be facilitated by globalization trends

through greater cooperation and resource transfer.

On the whole, combating desertification yields multiple local and global benefits and
helps mitigate biodiversity loss and human-induced global climate change.
Environmental management approaches for combating desertification, mitigating climate
change, and conserving biodiversity are interlinked in many ways. Therefore, joint
implementation of major environmental conventions can lead to increased synergy and
effectiveness, benefiting dryland people.

Effectively dealing with desertification will lead to a reduction in global poverty.

Addressing desertification is critical and essential for meeting the Millennium Development
Goals successfully. Viable alternatives must be provided to dryland people to maintain their
livelihoods without causing desertification. These alternatives should be embedded in
national strategies to reduce poverty and in national action programs to combat
desertification.

GLOBAL

EXTENT OF DESERTIFICATION AROUND THE WORLD

The transformation of soils and vegetation as a result of human use and climatic events is
common to all ecosystems, for example, when soils are ploughed and pasture lands grazed.
Dry land areas are considered particularly likely to suffer adverse impacts from human
activity, because these areas also experience low and highly variable levels of rainfall. Thus,
for example, soils are exposed to high risk of wind erosion during the long dry season, due to

18
low levels of vegetation cover. Equally the violent storms at the start of the rainy season can
provoke rapid floods and washing away of topsoil. Dry land soils are often thin with little
organic matter, rendering them of low fertility and poor at holding moisture. Erratic and
unpredictable rainfall also creates difficulties for human and animal populations dependent
on these ecosystems since, in years of drought, reliance on other sources of food and income
must be sought. As a result of their low productivity, dryland areas are often politically and
economically marginal to most governments, and receive little attention.

At the same time, the dry lands of the world have been of enormous importance to many
major civilisation over past millennia, who were able to make a good living from combining
irrigated farming with animal rearing and trade. Equally many of the most valued crops of
today stem from dry land areas. Currently, an estimated 900 million people across the world
live in areas considered ‘dry lands’ which make up as much as 30% of the earth’s land
surface. These environments include the Sahelian and savannah plains of Africa, the plateau
lands of southern India, arid parts of China and central Asia, much of the Mediterranean and
Middle East region and the ‘cerrados’ or scrublands of South America.

Some examples of desertification trends

Kenya At Lake Baringo, an area of 360,000 ha, the annual rate of land degradation
desertification between 1950 and 1981 was 0.4%. At Marsabit, an area of 1.4
million ha, it was 1.3% for the period 1956-1972.
Mali In the three localities of Nara, Mordiah, and Yonfolia, with a total area of some
195,000 ha, the average annual rate of loss during the past 30-35 years has been of
the order of 0.1%.
Tunisia The annual rate of desertification during the past century was of the order of 10%
and about 1 million ha were lost to the desert between 1880 and the present.
China The present average annual rate of desertification/land degradation for the country
is of the order of 0.6%, while in such places as Boakong County, north of Beijing
in Hebei Province, it rises to 1.3%, and to 1.6% in Fenging County.
USSR The annual desertification/sand encroachment rate in certain districts of Kalmykia,
north-west of the Caspian Sea, was recently estimated at a level as high as 10%,
while in other localities it was 1.5-5.4%. The desert growth around the drying-out
Aral Sea was estimated at about 100,000 ha per year during the past 25 years,
which gives an annual average desertification rate of 4%.
Syria An annual rate of land degradation of 0.25% was found in the 500,000 ha area of
the Anti-Lebanon Range north of Damascus for the period 1958-1982.
Yemen The country's average annual rate of abandonment of cultivated land owing to soil
degradation increased from 0.6% in 1970-1980 to about 7% in 1980-1984.
Sahara An analysis using a satellite-derived vegetation index shows steady expansion of
the Sahara between 1980 and 1984 (an increase of approximately 1,350,000 km�)

19
 followed by a partial recovery up to 1990 (Tucker et al., 1991).

COMBATING DESERTIFICATION GLOBALLY

Globally, desertification has reached 3.6 billion hectares, which accounts for 25 percent of
the Earth’s terrestrial land mass. Desertification threatens the livelihoods of nearly a billion
people in some 100 countries, causing US$42 billion in losses every year. In 1994, the United
Nations General Assembly declared June 17 the World Day to Combat Desertification and
Drought to promote public awareness of the issue, and the implementation of the United
Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in those countries experiencing
serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa. n Kenya’s Machakos district,
the government has worked hand in hand with local farmers to improve farming practices to
combat the effects of desertification resulting from the erosion on hillside farms and cleared
dry woodlands. Thousands of kilometers of farm terraces and field drains were constructed
and new crop-livestock systems were put in place. In 40 years, land degradation was
reversed. On a per capital basis, a doubling in output occurred even as the population grew
fivefold from the 1940′s to the 1980′s. China is a country that is battling land degradation on
a huge scale. Nearly 400 million people nationwide live under the threat of desertification,
and half of the population in desertified areas live under the poverty line. Ningxia is one of
the Chinese provinces hit hardest by desertification.

Today, Ningxia is the first province in China to achieve a complete reversal of desertification.
The Machakos District and Ningxia Province’s success has taken time and tremendous effort
but the positive results are obvious, making this a crucial lesson for others to follow. The
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has, in support of the UN Convention to
Combat Desertification (UNCCD), been for many years assisting countries to enhance
cooperation in controlling land degradation and the resultant desertification. Recently, an
online reporting system has been designed to monitor performance and impacts in member
states. UNEP has been one of the lead UN agencies in transmitting this experience to the
global community.

Desertification in Europe

In Europe, dry land areas cover more than two thirds of Spain, the Algarve and Alentejo
regions of southern Portugal, the Mezzogiorno regions of Italy, most of mainland and island
Greece, as well as the island of Corsica and southern départements of France. In these
regions, rural areas can suffer desertification on a significant scale as a result of changing
patterns of land use combined with harsh climatic events.
Over the centuries, human communities whether hunters, herders or farmers have structured
and restructured the physical environment creating the current familiar images associated
with the Mediterranean landscape - terraces and orchards, pasture and scrub on dry hillsides,
etc. In recent years, however, several factors have combined to increase the risk of land
degradation. Greatly intensified agricultural production has often involved unsustainable

20
exploitation of limited sources of water, an increased risks of soil erosion from patterns of
grazing and tillage.

Conversely, abandonment of land can also lead to increased risk of damage caused by fires
and loss of vegetation cover. Urban and tourist developments along the coastline have shifted
population densities causing the exodus of people from rural areas. In addition, new urban
centres have brought new pressures on patterns of land management and competition for
limited water supplies. These anthropogenic factors in combination with prevalent climatic
conditions - fiercely dry periods followed by short intense rainfall events – can lead to serious
problems of soil erosion. In Spain alone, data from 1993 suggest that almost one million
hectares of land are already considered as desert lands and another 7 million have been
identified as being at high risk of serious long term damage.

It can be seen that, in ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries alike, there is a clear need for
the development of conservation measures for soils susceptible to damage which will help
control or alleviate the worst excesses of land degradation.

Combating desertification in Asia

Desertification manifests itself in many different forms across the vast Asian continent. Out
of a total land area of 4.3 billion hectares, Asia contains some 1.7 billion hectares of arid,
semi-arid, and dry sub-humid land reaching from the Mediterranean coast to the shores of the
Pacific. Degraded areas include expanding deserts in China, India, Iran, Mongolia and
Pakistan, the sand dunes of Syria, the steeply eroded mountain slopes of Nepal, and the
deforested and overgrazed highlands of the Lao People‘s Democratic Republic. Asia, in terms
of the number of people affected by desertification and drought, is the most severely affected
continent. To be fully effective, activities to combat desertification and drought need to be
carefully tailored to the particular circumstances and needs of each country.

The Convention‘s Regional Implementation Annex for Asia recognizes these particular
conditions. It calls for activities at the national, subregional, and regional level in the form of
coordinated and integrated action programmes. The integration of activities directly related to
the combat against desertification into other environmental and sustainable development
strategies is meant to maximize the output and benefit for affected country Parties. Therefore,
action at the local level should combine the fight against desertification with efforts to
alleviate rural poverty.

The Asian and Pacific countries to have adopted their National Action Programmes (NAPs)
are: China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, the Lao People‘s
Democratic Republic, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Palau, Philippines, Sri Lanka,
Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam,

21
Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The other affected developing countries in the Asia and Pacific
region are at various stages of NAP formulation. The preparation of NAPs is a dynamic
ongoing process and the status of each country is subject to change over time. The
Convention‘s “bottomup” approach, whereby existing desertification programmes are
reviewed by the stakeholders, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local
authorities, and community leaders, was generally adopted in formulating NAPs.
Mainstreaming the NAPs in order to enhance their effective implementation is another
important consideration in this regard.

As one of the major affected country Parties in Asia, China illustrates the need to make
combating dryland degradation a long-term strategic goal in its NAP. It is estimated that
some 27 percent of the country‘s land mass is desertified, with an average of 2,460 square
kilometers of land being lost to advancing deserts each year. Nearly 400 million people live
in these areas, and the economic loss to China has been estimated at around US$ 6.5 billion a
year. China has responded to this environmental threat, which has serious socio-economic
ramifications, by passing laws and drawing up a NAP. The NAP was formulated within the
framework of the country‘s agenda 21 for sustainable development, an act to prevent and
combat desertification was adopted in August 2001 and entered into force on 1 January 2002.
Coordination is being stirred and maintained by the China National Committee to Implement
the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCICCD), which has 18 ministries or government
agencies as its members. CCICCD is supported by a permanent secretariat and three centres:
a research centre, a monitoring centre, and a training centre. China has established four
million ha plantations each year, most of which are aimed at land degradation control.
Recently, the Government has taken the initiative of encouraging people to convert farmland
(on steep slopes or marginal lands) back to forests, in order to reduce desertification.

Regional activities are being launched through Thematic Programme Networks (TPNs).
Based on the principles contained in the Convention to Combat Desertification and its
regional annex for Asia, a number of regional meetings introduced an approach that has
become central to regional cooperation in Asia: the TPNs. Each network deals with one core
aspect, which is either a cause or an effect of desertification, and aims at providing and
promoting regional solutions through improved and innovative regional cooperation and
exchange of information. The networks have evolved following the 1997 Beijing Ministerial
Conference, the 1998 Muscat meeting and the 1997 Tashkent Conference. The
implementation of the NAPs is advanced by the promotion of regional cooperation and
capacity-building at national and subregional levels through the six TPNs adopted at the
Beijing Ministerial Conference. These are Desertification monitoring and assessment (hosted
by China and launched in July 1999), Agroforestry and soil conservation (hosted by India and
launched in May 2000), Rangeland management and fixation of shifting sand dunes (hosted
by Iran and launched in May 2001), Water resources management for arid-land agriculture
(hosted by Syria and launched in July 2002), Strengthening capacities for drought impact
mitigation and combating desertification (hosted by Mongolia and launched in July 2003),
and Assistance for the implementation of integrated local area development programmes
(LADPs) (hosted by Pakistan and launched in June 2004).

22
West Asian countries are implementing a subregional action programme (SRAP) to
strengthen their activities under the Convention. In response to the subregion‘ s needs, West
Asia-based organizations have formulated activities promoting intergovernmental
cooperation within the subregion. The activities within the SRAP will focus on two main
areas: water resources and vegetative cover. An operational structure was finalized and
agreed at the Dubai meeting (February 2000).

All the Central Asian Countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan) are affected or severely affected by drought and desertification. The main feature
of the Central Asian subregion is that it comprises countries with very similar patterns of
historical, economic and political development in the pre-independence (1991) period. Since
the early 1990s, all countries of the subregion have been undergoing a process of radical
socio-economic reforms, including democratization, decentralization, privatization, improved
access to information for ordinary citizens, and land reforms, which have direct or indirect
implications for environmental protection, including combating desertification. The
transformation period has been accompanied in most countries by serious economic
difficulties, which, in some cases, have been exacerbated by political disturbances. Despite
these difficulties, the Central Asian countries have adopted measures that are conducive to
the effective implementation of the Convention. The sub-regional project, such as this on the
Aral Sea Basin (SRAP/ CD) reflects subregional cooperation for combating desertification
and land degradation. Agreement was reached to start implementation of the SRAP/CD
through organizing training courses for countries of the sub-region. Activities are being
undertaken to start implementing national projects to combat desertification under the Central
Asian Countries Initiative for Land Management.

East, Southeast, and South Asia has a very varied climate and contain much biological
diversity. Nevertheless, the magnitude of soil erosion and the resulting loss of biodiversity
and agricultural productivity are increasingly threatening both the ecological and the
economic base of many countries. Concerted action is needed to halt the emerging trends.
The 1996 Delhi Conference and the 1997 Beijing Ministerial Conference endorsed the
principle of cooperation across climatically different regions in order to prevent further land
degradation. South Asian Country Parties adopted SRAP in Sri Lanka in July 2004, and
Southeast Asian Country Parties are expected to finalize and adopt SRAP after the seventh
session of Conference of Parties (COP7). Many countries have expressed interest in
organizing regional and subregional consultative meetings on the Asia-wide TPNs.

The 14 Pacific Country Parties are unique in their problems and the ways to address those
problems. Drought preparedness, land productivity and vulnerability to natural disasters and
economic shocks are the main issues confronting them in relation to sustainable development,
including this Convention. The Pacific Island Workshop held in Apia, Samoa in May 2001
laid down the blueprint for developing a Pacific Island Initiative on agroforestry, water
harvesting, land use monitoring, and early warning systems for drought forecasting. In view
of their geographic isolation and the relatively small size of their economies, the countries at

23
that meeting recommended the adoption of a subregional approach in the implementation of
the Convention, together with national level activities.INDIA

Land degradation in the Indian context

Land degradation has far-reaching consequences that affect many realms of life, sometimes
far away, but land is above all a powerful element of the solution to the major challenges of
our time.
The major process of land degradation is soil erosion (due to water and wind erosion),
Contributing to over 71% of the land degradation in the country. Soil erosion due to water
alone contributes to about 61.7% and that by wind erosion 10.24%. The other processes
include problems of water logging, salinity-alkalinity.
Land degradation results in soil erosion, decline in water table, reduced agricultural
productivity, loss of bio-diversity, decline in groundwater and availability of water in the
affected regions. All these affect the lives and livelihoods of the populations, often eventually
precipitating forced migration and socio-economic conflicts.
Unsustainable resource management practices are often induced by population pressures and
poverty. People affected by desertification often need to draw on their limited assets in order
to survive, which accentuates their poverty. This constitutes a vicious cycle linking
deteriorating natural resources to deteriorating livelihoods as people need to encroach further
on fragile soils, sparse vegetation and limited water resources to meet their basic needs for
food, shelter and livelihood.
As per the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India2 published by the Space
Application Centre in 2007, about 32.07 % of the land is undergoing various forms of
degradation and 25% of the geographical area is affected by desertification. About 69% of
the country’s lands are dry lands and degradation of these lands has severe implications for
the livelihood and food security of millions.

ONE- FOURTH OF INDIA HEADED FOR DESERTIFICATION

TOTAL AREA UNDER DESERTIFICATION IN INDIA -- 81.45 MN HECTARES

Desertification because of water erosion -- 26.21 million hectares

Desertification because of wind erosion -- 17.77 million hectares
Desertification because of degradation of vegetation -- 17.63 million hectares
Desertification because of frost shattering -- 9.47 million hectares
Desertification because of other reasons -- 10.37 million hectares

Even though India’s land area is only 2.4 percent of the world’s total land area, it supports
16.67 percent of the world’s population and 18 percent of its livestock. These pressures alone
play a major role in promoting desertification

24
UNCCD in India

India became a signatory to the UNCCD on 14th October 1994 and ratified it on 17th
December1996. With about 32% of its land being affected by land degradation, India has
high stakes and stands strongly committed to implementing the UNCCD. The Ministry of
Environment and Forests is the nodal Ministry in the Government of India for the UNCCD,
and Desertification cell is the nodal point within the Ministry to co-ordinate all issues
pertaining to the convention. India actively participates in international events on
desertification and is currently the Chair of the Regional Implementation Annexe for the Asia
and the Pacific region3.

Though India does not have a specific policy or legislative framework for combating
desertification as such, the concern for arresting and reversing land degradation and
desertification gets reflected in many of our national policies which have enabling provisions
for addressing these problems4. It is also implicit in the goals of sustainable forest
management (SFM), sustainable agriculture, sustainable land management (SLM) and the
overarching goal of sustainable development which the country has been pursuing. The
subject has in fact been engaging the attention of our planners and policy makers since the
inception of planning.

The first five year plan (1951-1956) had ‘land rehabilitation’ as one of the thrust areas. In the
subsequent plans too, high priority has been consistently attached to development of the dry
lands. The DLDD issues and livelihoods security is addressed by the various projects and
programmes under various Government of India agencies like Ministry of Agriculture
(Department of Agriculture & Cooperation, Department of National Rain fed Area Authority,
etc),Ministry of Rural Development (Department of Land Resources, NREGA), Ministry of
Water Resources, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Department of Science & Technology and
Planning Commission. Programme and initiatives have been underway over the past 40 years
with Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP) of 1973–74; followed by Watershed
Development Project in Shifting Cultivation Areas (WDPSCA) -1974–75; Desert
Development Programme (DDP) 1977–78;
Reclamation & Development of Alkali Soil (RAS) 1985-86; Integrated Wasteland
Development Programme (IWDP) 1989; Integrated Afforestation and Eco-Development
Projects Scheme(IAEPS) 1989-90, National Watershed Development Project for Rain fed
Areas (NWDPRA) - 1990-91;Soil Conservation in the Catchment of River Valley Projects
(RVP) 1992; Association of Scheduled Tribes and Rural Poor in Regeneration of Degraded
Forests (ASTRP), launched in 1992-93 and subsequently merged into National Afforestation
Programme, the National Afforestation Programme (NAP) 2002-03 and the Integrated
Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) 2008.

India formulated and submitted in 2001 a National Action Programme (NAP) to combat

25
desertification5, in accomplishment of one of the obligations that parties to the Convention
(UNCCD) are required to fulfil. A broad roadmap to combating desertification, NAP
recognizesthe multi sectoral nature of the task, in view of the fact that many of the drivers of
desertification have cross cutting dimensions. As for instance, poverty of the masses has long
been known to be a key driver of desertification and land degradation, which needs to
addressed. 3 India is the host country for the Thematic Programme Network (TPN)-2: on
Agro forestry and The Central

Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI), Jodhpur is the host institution. The Ministry has
published “Agro forestry Manual for Asia-Pacific Region” in collaboration with the UNCCD
in 2004. India is a leading country on the work on TPN – 1: Desertification Status Monitoring
(DSM). The Space Application Centre, Ahmadabad has published a DSM Atlas of the
country in 2007, which is a globally pioneering work, based
on a pilot project sponsored by MoEF.

Through the fourth reporting and review process Parties and the other reporting entities will
be providing information on:
 Performance indicators for the five operational objectives of the Strategy;
 Financial flows (through the Standardized Financial Annex (SFA) and Programme
and Project Sheet (PPS);
 Best practices on sustainable land management (SLM) technologies, including
adaptation;
 Feedback on indicators and methodologies applied in this reporting and review
process, as well as other pertinent information that reporting entities may wish to provide
to the COP.

The process of preparation of the report will include data collection and synthesis of
important programmes undertaken by the various Government of India ministries, research
institutes, and civil society organisations. A national consultation is also planned to enable
sharing of the draft document and invite inputs to fill additional information.

Programmes Controlling Desertification

India has always maintained that desertification is a function of the interplay of a number of
causative factors and thus only a multi-sectoral approach alone will be able to arrest and
reverse the process of desertification. Some major schemes/ programmes that have
contributed to desertification control are  Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP), 1973-74;
Watershed Development Project in Shifting Cultivation Areas (WDPSCA), 1974-75; Desert
Development Programme (DDP), 1977-78; Reclamation & Development of Alkali Soil
(RAS), 1985-86; Watershed Development Fund (WDF),  Integrated Wasteland Development

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Programme (IWDP), 1989; National Watershed Development Project for Rain fed Areas
(NWDPRA) – 1990-91 and Soil Conservation in the Catchment of River Valley Projects
(RVP) 1992. National Afforestation Programme (NAP) 2002-03 is also one of the major
programmes in which  Association of Scheduled Tribes and Rural Poor in Regeneration of
Degraded Forests (ASTRP), launched in 1992-93 and  Integrated Afforestation and Eco-
Development Projects Scheme (LAEPS) 1989-90 were  merged into the  National
Afforestation Programme.

The year mentioned against the name of the schemes above designates the year of inception.
The three schemes of Desert Development Programme, Drought Prone Area Programme and
Integrated Wasteland Development Programme have been consolidated into a single
programme of Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) with effect from
01.04.2008. Recent initiatives include sustainable Land and Ecosystem Management (SLEM
Programmatic Approach) 2007; Common Guidelines for Watershed Development
Programme- 2008; Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) and Guidelines
for Convergence between NREGA and NAP 2009.

Main findings

Desertification is defined by the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification as “land

degradation in arid, semiarid and dry subhumid areas resulting from various factors,
including climatic variations and human activities.” Land degradation is in turn defined as the
reduction or loss of the biological or economic productivity of dry lands. This report
evaluates the condition of desertification in dry lands, including hyper-arid areas, by asking
pointed questions and providing answers based exclusively on the reports generated for the
MA.

Desertification occurs on all continents except Antarctica and affects the livelihoods of
millions of people, including a large proportion of the poor in dry lands. Desertification
takes place worldwide in dry lands, and its effects are experienced locally, nationally,
regionally, and globally. Dry lands occupy 41% of Earth’s land area and are home to more
than 2 billion people—a third of the human population in the year 2000. Dry lands include all
terrestrial regions where water scarcity limits the production of crops, forage, wood, and
other ecosystem provisioning services. Formally, the MA definition encompasses all lands
where the climate is classified as dry subhumid, semiarid, arid, or hyper-arid. Please see
Appendix A for more details about their geography and demography.

Some 10–20% of dry lands are already degraded (medium certainty). Based on these
rough estimates, about 1–6% of the dryland people live in desertified areas, while a much
larger number is under threat from further desertification. Scenarios of future development

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show that, if unchecked, desertification and degradation of ecosystem services in dry lands
will threaten future improvements in human well-being and possibly reverse gains in some
regions. Therefore, desertification ranks among the greatest environmental challenges today
and is a major impediment to meeting basic human needs in dry lands.

Persistent, substantial reduction in the provision of ecosystem services as a result of

water scarcity, intensive use of services, and climate change is a much greater threat in
dry lands than in non-dryland systems. In particular, the projected intensification of
freshwater scarcity as a result of climate change will cause greater stresses in dry lands. If left
unmitigated, these stresses will further exacerbate desertification. The greatest vulnerability is
ascribed to sub-Saharan and Central Asian dry lands. For example, in three key regions of
Africa—the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Africa—severe droughts occur on
average once every 30 years. These droughts triple the number of people exposed to severe
water scarcity at least once in every generation, leading to major food and health crises.

Desertification is a result of a long-term failure to balance demand for and supply of

ecosystem services in dry lands. The pressure is increasing on dryland ecosystems for
providing services such as food, forage, fuel, building materials, and water for humans and
livestock, for irrigation, and for sanitation. This increase is attributed to a combination of
human factors and climatic factors. The former includes indirect factors like population
pressure, socioeconomic and policy factors, and globalization phenomena like distortions to
international food markets and direct factors like land use patterns and practices and climate-
related processes. The climatic factors of concern include droughts and projected reduction in
freshwater availability due to global warming. While the global and regional interplay of
these factors is complex, it is possible to understand it at the local scale.

The magnitude and impacts of desertification vary greatly from place to place and
change over time. This variability is driven by the degree of aridity combined with the
pressure people put on the ecosystem’s resources. There are, however, wide gaps in our
understanding and observation of desertification processes and their underlying factors. A
better delineation of desertification would enable cost-effective action in areas affected by it.

Measurement of a persistent reduction in the capacity of ecosystems to supply services

provides a robust and operational way to quantify land degradation, and thus
desertification. Such a quantification approach is robust because these services can be
monitored, and some of them are already monitored routinely.

Desertification has strong adverse impacts on non-dry lands as well; affected areas may
sometimes be located thousands of kilometers away from the desertified areas.The
biophysical impacts include dust storms, downstream flooding, impairment of global carbon
sequestration capacity, and regional and global climate change. The societal impacts relate
notably to human migration and economic refugees, leading to deepening poverty and
political instability.

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Tailored to the degree of aridity, interventions and adaptations are available and used
to prevent desertification and to restore, where needed, the capacity of the dryland
ecosystems to provide services. Increased integration of land and water management is a
key method for desertification prevention. Local communities play a central role in the
adoption and success of effective land and water management policies. In this respect, they
require institutional and technological capacity, access to markets, and financial capital.
Similarly, increased integration of pastoral and agricultural land uses provides an
environmentally sustainable way to avoid desertification. However, policies to replace
pastoralism with sedentary cultivation in rangelands can contribute to desertification. On the
whole, prevention is a much more effective way to cope with desertification, because
subsequent attempts to rehabilitate desertified areas are costly and tend to deliver limited
results.

Desertification can also be avoided by reducing the stress on dryland ecosystems. This
can be achieved in two ways. First, by introduction of alternative livelihoods that have less of
an impact on dryland resources. These livelihoods benefit from the unique advantages of dry
lands: round-the-year available solar energy, attractive landscapes, and large wilderness
areas. Second, by creation of economic opportunities in urban centers and areas outside dry
lands.

Scenarios for future development show that the desertified area is likely to increase, and
the relief of pressures on dry lands is strongly correlated with poverty reduction.There is
medium certainty that population growth and increase in food demand will drive an
expansion of cultivated land, often at the expense of woodlands and rangelands. This is likely
to increase the spatial extent of desertified land.

The MA scenarios also show that coping with desertification and its related economic
conditions will likely fare better when proactive management approaches are used.
Proactive land and water management policies can help avoid the adverse impacts of
desertification. These approaches may initially have a high cost due to technological
development and deployment and may also have a slower rate of environment

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 Bibliography

 Reining, P. 1978. Handbook on Desertification Indicators. Washington, D.C.:

American Association for the Advancement of Science

 UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development). 1992.

Agenda 21. United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Brazil,
June 3-14,1992. Brazil: UNCED.

 Tucker, C. J., H. E. Dregne, and W. W. Newcomb. 1991. "Expansion and contraction

of Sahara Desert from 1980-1990." Science 253.

 UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 1991. Status of Desertification and

Implementation of the United Nations Plan of Action to Control Desertification.
Nairobi: UNEP.
 Website: www.google.co.in

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