Humanity and Desertification

By Joseph Oruoch

Desertification is the process whereby land areas originally supporting plant growth and human economic activities continually become deserts. The process is rendering many surfaces of the Earth uninhabitable and displacing communities originally residing in such areas. This has significantly reduced arable and pastoral lands and caused land related conflicts between groups who are moving away from the deserts and the indigenous communities.

Deadly tribal and/or religious conflicts witnessed in Nigeria recently are attributed to conflicts over land use between the southern agrarian communities and the northern pastoral nomads. According to Aljazeera news bulletin of 31st March 2010, the Sahara desert is to blame for forcing the pastoral communities southwards in search of pasture leading to the conflicts.

Environmentalists and some climate scientists are blaming desertification on human economic activities. These groups maintain that by deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, humans are contributing to global warming and desertification. Their contention is that humans can mitigate desertification by planting more trees and reducing greenhouse gas emissions especially CO2.

As hot deserts spread, many rivers and lakes are drying up in all of the world's five continents (WWF 2007, Vietfun 2009). But the magnitude of desertification and its history raise questions as to whether humans are really responsible for this phenomenon. This also raises another question as to whether the methods being used in combating desertification are appropriate.

According to 'Global Desertification - The Israeli Experience,' "desertification is nothing new ... desertification was part of the natural development of our planet." The United States Geological Society (USGS) concurs thus; "the world's great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities."

In the early ages human populations were relatively low for which reason it was possible to live as hunters and gatherers. The low population meant little pressure was exerted on the natural environment and it is not possible that their action caused deserts to occur. From history we learn that people have lived in deserts through nomadic lifestyles. The nomadic people adapted themselves to desert life by keeping livestock and migrating from regions worst hit by drought to relatively better areas in search of water and pasture. There is no evidence that pastoralist communities once practiced crop farming in the process of which they cleared the forests and later changed their lifestyles. Neither has it been observed that people change from crop farming to nomadic or pastoral lifestyles.

Places do not turn into deserts simply because forests have been cleared for crop farming. Instead they continue to support plant life much like they would support forests. It is true deforestation leads to soil erosion. But soil erosion is not desertification. A place can not turn into a desert because its top soils have been washed away. Deserts occur because of excess heat which dry the soil and kill its nutrients.

Before blaming desertification on human economic activities, it is necessary to identify what caused deserts in the early ages and if and when these forces stopped acting. If they are still acting then we need to know to what extent they are responsible and to what extent humans are responsible if indeed they really are.

For a long time humans were known to think with prejudice that they were God's special creation. This is characterized in religious books today like the Bible. But Charles Darwin and other evolutionists rubbished such ideas and endeavored to relate humans with other animals. This lead to major development in medicine especially when humans used animals to study the functioning of organisms and later used their findings to improve human health.

It is unfortunate that today anthropocentric thinking is manifesting itself in sciences which are shallow-rooted and inhibiting research and development similar to what transpired in the Dark Ages when the likes of St. Augustine of Hippo were considered thinkers.

Reference

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs "Combating Desertification - The Israeli Experience", 1999. Web. 30 October 2009

USGS "Desertification" 1997 Web. 30 October 2009

WWF "Drying Rivers", 2007. Web. 30 October 2009

VietFun For All "Drying Rivers, Lakes and Reservoirs", Web. 30 Oct 2009

By Joseph Otieno Oruoch
Researcher and Philosopher

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