Efforts to combat Desertification

Most efforts to combat desertification require temporary reductions in economic productivity or increases in investment. Experts commonly recommend decreasing herd sizes, changing plowing practices, planting windbreaks, planting less profitable crops, and allowing each field to lie fallow on a rotating basis. In irrigated agriculture, more expensive and intensive water management is recommended, requiring improved water delivery systems, field preparation, and drainage systems. Increasingly poor populations, however, cannot absorb a reduction in income, cannot usually invest in improvements, and may not have sufficient labor available to implement even simple measures. Perhaps most importantly, national institutions, particularly in Africa, are rarely able to intervene as they do in developed countries.
The drought in the Sahel during the late 1960s and early 1970s caused alarm among developed countries. In addition to causing significant loss of life, the drought was viewed as an environmental catastrophe that might have long-term effects on global climate. Thus, the United Nations (UN) convened a Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) in 1977 to raise awareness of the problem, to summarize what was known, and to develop plans of action.
The response to this call for action was not extensive. A few national plans of action were completed, but they often addressed only the symptoms of desertification, such as soil erosion. More importantly, these plans were not integrated in a general program of development that would address the root causes of desertification, such as poverty. Several regional plans were proposed, such as a greenbelt across the Sahel that would “hold back the desert.” In addition to being misguided sometimes, these projects tended to be too large to be implemented. Perhaps in response to all these factors, there was little international interest in funding these antidesertification projects.
Nonetheless, desertification remains an international concern. A new treaty, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was signed in 1994 and enacted in 1996. Improving on the old UNCOD, the UNCCD addresses linkages between poverty and environmental degradation, and focuses more on fostering small-scale grassroots solutions instead of massive international interventions. Thus, rather than attempting to hold back the desert by planting trees across an entire region, the UNCCD tries to improve resource management by working directly with resource managers and their communities. Also, instead of relying exclusively on government agencies, the UNCCD attempts to involve national and international nongovernmental organizations that are already at work in the countryside. Whether the UNCCD brings more results than the UNCOD remains to be seen.