Read at : Google Alert – desertification
http://www.celsias.com/article/combating-desertification-secure-biodiversity-food/
Combating Desertification to Secure Biodiversity, the Food Supply, and Dryland Regions Around the World
Earth’s great deserts formed slowly, as lack of precipitation over areas with low vegetation resulted in vast swaths of arid land. Some of these dry places, like the Sahara, were once fertile grasslands and may become so again sometime in the far future. Deserts are major geographical features of this planet, a result of natural forces over time. Desertification, however, resulting from harmful human activity like deforestation and overgrazing that-along with climate change-quickly degrades arid and semi-arid land, is anything but natural. Think the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl years, an environmental disaster that’s still healing and serves as a good example of the need for soil conservation and dryland management in drought-prone regions.
When desertification occurs on a massive scale, it threatens biodiversity and limits the amount of land where humans can live or grow food. In short, fighting land degradation is key to protecting both biodiversity and the global food supply. This year’s recent UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) focused on all three and on the possibility of using degraded land for biofuel production with its theme of combating land degradation for sustainable agriculture .
According to the statement from UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja,
“The conversion of land in unsustainable uses can exacerbate the vicious circle of land degradation, loss of biodiversity and climate change. Land degradation weakens the soil’s fertility, disrupts the balance of the water cycle and contributes to food insecurity, famine and poverty, as well as forced migration. Confronting this complex issue requires a global response to increase the productivity of land ecosystems and make sustainable agricultural production a priority through pro-poor policies in view of adaptation to climate change and biodiversity protection. – UNCCD
Gnacadja also emphasizes the need for a global fight against desertification using science and technology to help. While loss of fertile land and subsequent reductions in biodiversity affect the whole world, it’s especially critical to increase sustainability for people who live in degraded areas and to respect and preserve local, traditional knowledge there, Gnacadja says.
The UN’s agency for combating rural poverty in developing nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), also notes the importance of policies in vulnerable areas that take poverty into account:
“Dryland ecosystems are very vulnerable to over-exploitation and inappropriate land use. Poverty, political instability, deforestation, overgrazing and poor irrigation practices can all contribute to desertification. Sub-Saharan Africa, where 66 per cent of the land is either desert or dryland, is particularly at risk. Around 1.2 billion people in more than 110 countries are threatened by the problem.
IFAD has made land degradation and its causes a central part of its work, and has an ongoing commitment to address the issue in rural areas. About 70 per cent of IFAD’s rural poverty reduction programmes and projects are in ecologically fragile, marginal environments . All IFAD programmes and projects are screened for potential adverse effects on the environment, natural resources and local populations.” – IFAD
Modifying agricultural practices on a global scale involves a massive amount of work, of course, and IFAD nottes that changes must occur in water and forest management, crop systems, and planting, particularly since climate change will threaten seeds with more droughts and floods.
What happens if we don’t ensure responsible farming and land use in the world’s dry areas?
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