Desertification and Land Use in a Changing Climate

Desertification is defined by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification¹ as “land degradation in arid, semiarid and dry subhumid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities.” More frequent extreme events, such as droughts and floods, are worsening the already serious impacts of desertification in vulnerable and highly populated areas, for example the Sahel in Central Africa. In addition, desertification causes the reduction or loss of carbon seques­tration from plants and crops. These concurrent causes endanger millions of people (and hundreds of species). Land is less productive and less food is available for human populations as soils affected by desertification are subject to higher erosion and a diminished structure and health of supported vegetation and crops.

More public awareness is definitely needed on this issue. Carlos Minc, the Minister of Environment of Brazil, tells Climate-Change.tv (in September 2009, at the UNCCD COP9 in Buenos Aires) that the UNCCD Conferences of the Parties are in fact “the COPs of the poor” and that desertification is not a fashionable issue like climate change. He said Brazil will provide African countries with free satellite monitoring of desertification and deforestation. In Sahel, the advancing desert, overstocking and overgrazing reduce water recycling and monsoon circulation, and in turn further decrease precipitation. Resources, through international solidarity, to improve understanding of these problems are needed to tackle them in a scientifically informed way. Furthermore, Brazil has created the Amazon Fund² and is regulating the use of forests by paying people for environmental services, such as the plantation and maintenance of new trees.

But what is the actual impact of desertification on climate? One of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reports³ esti­mates “300 million tons of carbon are lost to the atmosphere from drylands as a result of desertification each year (about 4% of the total global emissions from all sources combined).” This figure is close to the annual emissions of a big industrialised country like Japan. A good first step to prevent this worsening is to combat deforestation and forest degradation. These two phenomena represent almost 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The recently introduced REDD⁴ scheme will hopefully be crucial to maintaining present natural carbon storage. Tropical areas potentially at risk to become savannahs, and even future deserts, could be instead preserved and enjoyed for local livelihoods and sustainable tourism.

It was Japan itself that halted the nineteenth century indiscriminate logging which caused the rapid depletion of its invaluable resources of forests. Experience shows the future management of land plays a vital role in reducing human impact on the atmosphere. The political and economic reactions to desertification, climate change and biodiversity loss should be as much interlinked as these realities are. COP16 is an opportunity to further push cooperation among the three UN Conventions. See Minister of Environment, Batilda Salha Burian from Tanzania, speaking from UNCCD COP9 in Buenos Aires. An overall better coordinated and balanced governance of environmental (and human health) problems will need to be pursued in this century.

1. http://www.unccd.int
2. http://www.amazonfund.org/
3. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Desertification Synthesis. World Resources Institute, Washington, DC.
4. http://www.un-redd.org/

Written by Luca Marazzi on behalf of Responding To Climate Change