Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 26.3.
Major global environmental issues
specified by Tolba and El-Kholy (
1993
)
1. Air pollution
2. Ozone depletion
3. Climate change
4. Availability of freshwater
5. Coastal and marine degradation
6. Land degradation
7. Deforestation and habitat loss
8. Loss of biological diversity
9. Environmental hazards
10. Toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes
precipitate out on the surface and accumulate within the top-soil, eventually killing
plant growth.
26.8 Importance of poverty alleviation, health and food security in drylands
It is interesting to note how widely perceptions vary in regard to global environmental
issues.
Table 26.3
provides a list of ten key issues regarded as significant by Dr
Mostafa Tolba, distinguished microbiologist and for seventeen years the Executive
Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The list is not in
any order of priority but simply provides the topics discussed in each chapter of the
topic (Tolba and El-Kholy,
1993
). Few would disagree that they are important, but as
we saw earlier, there are more fundamental issues at stake, notably poverty alleviation,
health and food security (
Table 26.4
). If government regulations and institutionalised
corruption do not allow poor farmers to market their produce at fair and competitive
prices and to retain and store the surplus, then they will remained trapped in poverty,
as they are, for example, in many parts of Africa, South America and Asia. The result
will be malnutrition, poor health and little incentive and ability to innovate and work
more efficiently. Central to this is the widespread marginalisation of women and low
levels of education and literacy, which lead to a vicious circle of poor hygiene, high
levels of child death and the desire for large numbers of children to provide some form
of safety net when the parents are no longer able to work. These factors are, of course,
not peculiar to the drylands, but they are exacerbated by the remoteness of many desert
regions and the difficulties of access. However, the situation is not entirely bleak. For
example, in the Limpopo Basin of Botswana, with its highly variable climate, the local
people have developed a body of indigenous knowledge, institutions and practices that
enable them to cope successfully with natural hazards, such as major droughts (Dube
and Sekhwela,
2008
). Dube and Sekhwela (
2008
) also show how this knowledge base
is in danger of being eroded, leaving the poorer communities more vulnerable than
they previously were.
