Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
13
Desertification
Andrew Millington
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responses to it, like its causes, are far from
straightforward; and
INTRODUCTION
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geographers have an important role to play
in future desertification research.
Desertification is a strongly emotive term with
significant negative environmental overtones.
Much of this emotion can be defused by
considering desertification as the net result of a set
of processes that can result in land degradation.
Each of these processes occurs naturally, but short-
term climatic fluctuations, long-term climatic
desiccation, human activities or a combination of
these factors can accelerate the rates of these
processes. None of these factors is new— climates
have always fluctuated (although maybe not always
as rapidly as at present) and there is a long history
of the impacts of human occupation in drylands
(although, again, not at current levels). We may
then reason that, because of the high
contemporary population levels in drylands and
the rapidity of climate change, the processes that
constitute desertification are currently operating
at higher than normal rates.
The importance of desertification is underlined
by the fact that drylands (hyper-arid, arid, semi-
arid and dry sub-humid regions) comprise about
approximately a third of the world's land area, and
are home to over 900 million people (Toulmin
1997). The aims of this chapter are to show:
The International Convention to Combat
Desertification
While deconstruction of the term desertification
has approached some kind of academic epitome,
the term is widely used (in academia, among
practitioners and in the media) and, most
importantly considering its global importance, has
been a key environmental and development focus
within the United Nations (Toulmin 1997).
Stimulated by the Sahelian droughts of the
1970s, the UN organised a major conference on
desertification in 1977 in Nairobi, which produced
the Global Plan of Action to Combat
Desertification. The United Nations
Environmental Programme (UNEP) was given the
mandate to execute this plan, which mainly
focused on national action plans, surveys of the
extent of desertification and the establishment of a
donor funding mechanism. Its success was limited,
particularly in terms of the national action plans
(which were often unfeasible and did not tackle
the most important issues on the ground) and
donor funding (which continued along bilateral
lines). In the negotiating period leading up to the
UN Conference on Environment and
Development (the Earth Summit) in Rio de
Janeiro in 1992, African states called for a further
UN initiative on desertification. This call arose
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desertification is so important that it is
recognised globally as one of the world's
major environmental issues;
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the processes that comprise desertification
cannot be considered simply but only in a
holistic, complex manner;
