"Who has seen my cows?
Who has seen my goats?
These leafless trees
And this dry land
Must be why they left."
--Youssou N'Dour
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Seeking Solutions
Taking Community Action
Success in Senegal
NGOs Act to Combat Desertification
Desertification is a serious problem that threatens the livelihoods and the lives of nearly a billion people in more than 100 countries. The total area affected covers one-third of the Earth's land surface. The people living in these areas are at risk of having to abandon their homes and migrate because the land can no longer sustain them. Though significant efforts have been initiated to combat desertification, the problem is worsening: each year, according to the Worldwatch Institute, the continents lose 24 billion tons of topsoil, creating a condition that often results in severe desertification.
Desertification does not, as many think, mean the expansion of deserts. It is a process of land degradation in the drylands where previously stable environments are degraded by humans through erosion, overgrazing, overcropping, poor irrigation practices and deforestation, combined with variations in climate. Desertification is an environmental problem that is both the reason behind and the consequence of numerous other ecological concerns, including the loss of biological diversity and the depletion of water resources. As such, it contributes to an environmental spiral that could get progressively worse unless drastic and immediate efforts are taken to correct it. Similarly, it stems from and leads to extreme poverty.
Wars and trouble spots can cause desertification, since they give rise to numbers of refugees, who are often settled in temporary shelters. This causes land degradation and deforestation in a wide circle around each refugee camp.
Rapid growth in population causes agricultural expansion into marginal lands, leading to subdivision of land, deforestation and, again, desertification. Excessive use of pesticides and other chemical substances can lead to depletion of soil fertility and soil degradation which, again, contributes to desertification.
The deterioration of lifesupport systems as a result of desertification causes significant social and economic disruptions. Desertification has a debilitating impact on the capacity of populations and communities to sustain the means needed for livelihood. In extreme cases, as during periods of drought, the land is no longer capable of supporting the people who live there. Often they have no other alternative but to leave the countryside for urban areas. Where rural human settlements gradually disappear, what is left is often a socioecological situation in which no development is possible.
Though most of the countries that are affected by desertification are in developing countries, desertification is a problem that must be viewed in an international context because it cuts across political boundaries and is found in all continents. Desertification is the result of a complex interaction of numerous factors, including external aspects such as the state of the world economy, commodity prices, interest rates, energy imports, cultural behaviour and conditional aid packages. These external factors, together with internal ones such as inappropriate political and policy instruments, low environmental investment levels and high population growth, combine to work against good land management and to worsen desertification.
The current global economic system also is part of the problem. The rapid incorporation of indigenous economic systems based on subsistence production into a world economy of mass commodity production often causes indigenous peoples to over-cultivate their land. Trade and structural adjustment programmes and the transfer of inappropriate technology exacerbates the problem. The economies of many developing countries are heavily dependent on the export of raw materials, such as agricultural cash crops, into markets over which they have no control. This leads to an over-exploitation of often fragile dryland resources.
Because desertification brings about the loss of vegetation, it
can result in the extinction of plant and animal species, and
therefore contribute to the loss of biodiversity. Drylands are
the source of many of the world's varieties of food and medicines.
The loss of these plants through desertification represents the
loss of valuable and irreplaceable genetic material.
Combating desertification effectively will require both top-down solutions from governments and bottom-up approaches from communities. Managing the drylands of the world in a manner that can increase overall food security while maintaining the sustainable livelihoods of the people is important. During the past few decades, numerous approaches to this problem have been made. These efforts include reforestation, establishment of shelter or green belts, sand dune stabilization, protection of existing forest reserves, the introduction of agro-forestry practices, establishment of communal woodlots and soil and water conservation measures. Many of the national and regional action programmes, however, have been hampered by lack of political will, poor financial resources and huge external debts.
The 1977 UN Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) acknowledged desertification as a global problem that will require concerted efforts from all nations if practical solutions are to be found. Seventeen years later, an international legal agreement to curb the degradation of drylands worldwide was agreed upon by more than 100 governments. This UN Convention to Combat Desertification, which was called for at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, established a framework for national, regional and local programmes to counter the degradation of drylands. It also calls for international action, including the mobilization of "substantial financial resources," transfer of anti-desertification technologies, information exchange and research and training programmes.
The agreement commits countries to a bottom-up approach that integrates
local people, national authorities and the international community.
The negotiating process to produce the agreement involved an unprecedented
number of community and international organizations. The Convention's
approach reflects a growing recognition of the importance of grassroots
groups and NGOs in fighting desertification, because they reach
the people who work the land. The Convention assigns NGOs a role
in designing and implementing national programmes and in overseeing
national desertification funds.
To combat the problems associated with desertification, it is essential to address a number of environmental issues such as mass migration, loss of plant and animal species and climate change. Often, these issues are best resolved by addressing certain areas of social development such as awareness-raising, education and the empowerment of the marginalized members of society-especially women, who often work the land.
Desertification reflects fundamental ills, such as poverty, underdevelopment and lack of food security. At its root is the fact that, in order simply to survive, many people are forced to engage in environmentally-unsustainable activities. Solving the problem of desertification will not be possible without simultaneously attacking the causes of poverty and addressing the basic needs of rural people.
Stopping desertification would necessitate reversing the processes of land degradation and protecting soil, water and biological resources. At the level of government policy, this would require the promotion of sustainable socio-economic development in order to eradicate poverty and ensure food and energy security, as well as the improvement of living conditions and habitat.
There is a need for international, regional, national and local-level
government action to stop the process of desertification. There
is also much that must be done at both the community and individual
level. Many solutions can be found in the chapters dealing with
problems related to desertification, such as population, deforestation
and sustainable land-use management. Following are some specific
suggestions related to desertification that can be carried out
at both the individual and community level.
More than 500 people living in a rural area 200 kilometres north of Dakar in the West African country of Senegal recently experienced the benefits of community and organizational partnership in combating desertification.
With a small amount of seed funding from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and World Vision International, several village groups set out to combat a problem they viewed as potentially threatening the habitability of their ancestral homeland. The Louga Region had long been an area of ecological imbalance, as a result of repeated attacks by various natural catastrophes such as drought and pest plagues and by the overexploitation of natural resources by rural dwellers who were victims of an imposed and inappropriate agrarian policy. The result was the chronic degradation of soils, the gradual loss of vegetation cover, a rural exodus and impoverishment of pastureland.
To address this problem, the community groups initiated the installation of 52 small boreholes, equipped with manual pumps. Access to more abundant groundwater has enabled water requirements to be met. They also set up small irrigated holdings to grow potatoes in the villages. By teaching the villagers about the environment and its connection to their problems, the solutions became long-lasting because the villagers recognized their stake in the process. It was then possible to develop the local methods of the villagers. These included the natural regeneration of acacia albida trees in closed sites protected by euphorbia, where they grow perennial crops such as manioc and vegetables, and practice organic fertilization of the soil.
Now the community has an abundant and more lasting source of groundwater,
which is used for both community needs and for irrigation to provide
income from cash-generating crops, such as potatoes.
NGOs Act to Combat Desertification
While the governments of the world were busy negotiating the fine print on the Convention to Combat Desertification, more than 50 local and regional non-governmental organizations took action to address the issue directly. During the final negotiations for the Convention in Paris, more than 60 NGO representatives, mostly from Africa, lobbied actively to ensure the concerns of local communities were considered. In the first seven months after the Convention was finalized, the NGOs met in their own forums from Ouagadougou to Nairobi to take action against desertification.
"The Convention to Combat Desertification provides a platform on which NGOs can build further action," said Heinz Greijin of the Environmental Liaison Centre International (ELCI) in an address to a United Nations plenary. "But it also raises a lot of expectations of NGOs to inform and mobilize the communities."
To inform and mobilize, the NGOs established an electronic mail
(e-mail) conference on desertification; organized meetings in
Europe to get NGO support there; provided valuable input to the
Commission on Sustainable Development; and organized awareness-raising
activities in Pakistan, Kenya, Mali, Peru, Burkina Faso and Canada.
In addition, the NGOs created a global network on desertification
to facilitate information sharing and coordination among community-based
organizations and NGOs that are active in combating desertification.
The network is unique in its objective of bridging the gap between
a Convention that has been negotiated at an international level
and the people at the community level.
ELCI continues its efforts to mobilize community groups to take
action against desertification, as well as other environmental
issues. Among their numerous other activities, ELCI organizes
forums throughout the developing world in which community groups
can meet with government representatives and international experts.
Contact:
References
Down to Earth, A simplified guide to the Convention to Combat
Desertification, why it is necessary and what is important and
different about it, Geoffrey Lean, The Centre for Our Common
Future, Geneva, 1995 - The United Nations Convention to Combat
Desertification in those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought
and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa, United Nations,
1994. - World Atlas of Desertification, the United Nations
Environment Programme, Edward Arnold, 1992. - World Resources,
1994-95: A Guide to the Global Environment, a report by the
World Resources Institute with UNEP and UNDP, Oxford University
Press, 1994.