Harvesting Hope In Deserts

Anarea the size of Egypt, around 100 million hectares, of healthy and productive land is being degraded each year due to drought and desertification, which is being driven mainly by climate change and poor land management.

It is perhaps to state the obvious, but without healthy land there can be no life. It feeds, clothes and shelters humanity. It provides jobs, sustains livelihoods and is the bedrock of local, national and global economies. It helps to regulate climate and is essential for biodiversity.

Despite its importance to life as we know it, up to 40 per cent of the world’s land is degraded, affecting around 3.2 billion people; that’s almost half of the global population.

From deforested mountains in Haiti, to the gradual disappearance of Lake Chad in the Sahel and the dry-ing up of productive lands in Georgia in eastern Europe, land degradation affects all parts of the world. It is not an exaggeration to say our very future is at stake if our land does not stay healthy.

Desertification, the process by which land is degraded in typically dry areas, results from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities, such as over-farming or deforestation. 100 million hectares (or one million square kilometres), that’s the size of a country like Egypt, of healthy and pro-ductive land is lost each year.

The soils on these lands which can take hundreds of years to form are being depleted, often by extreme weather. Droughts are hitting harder and more often, three out of four people in the world are projected to face water scarcity by 2050. Temperatures are increasing due to climate change further driving ex-treme weather events, including droughts and floods, adding to the challenge of keeping land produc-tive.

Some one billion people globally under the age of 25 live in regions where they depend on the land and natural resources for jobs and livelihoods, according to the UN, but their future is increasingly under threat due to desertification and land degradation.

Across the world, young and old are responding to this threat by adopting new approaches to working on the land that may not only prevent more degradation but may also provide new livelihood opportu-nities.

In the south of the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa, productive land has been lost at an alarming pace to sand driven inland across farmland by powerful seasonal winds. The communities that live here are amongst the most vulnerable in Madagascar and as the sandy soils they farm become ever more degraded, they can no longer cultivate their land and their livelihoods are threatened.

But now, with the support of the UN, communities have been growing sisal plants, which are resistant to severe conditions and well adapted to a more arid environment. When cultivated in grids, they can help to secure the topsoil and prevent further erosion. This means fewer sandstorms and more oppor-tunities to work the land.

“Before on the land where we are standing there was nothing here, just sand. So, we could not grow our crops. But now, we have planted sisal which has been good for the village,” said Lydia Monique Anjarasoa. In Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Ibrahim Alissa described how the arid land he grew up on to the north of the country’s capital, Riyadh, deteriorated and suffered the effects of desertification. The land falls within the rocky Thadiq National Park, known for its sweeping valleys. As its current manager, Mr. Alissa took on a project to rehabilitate the 660-square-kilometre-park. This has involved planting 250,000 trees and one million shrubs as well as the construction of terraced dams to catch the area’s sparse rainwater. “Through afforestation projects, protection and care, the area has completely changed,”said Alissa.

Restoring Thadiq National Park is part of Saudi Arabia’s wider plan to re-green huge swathes of desert at home and abroad. The push is designed to tackle drought, desertification and land degradation, which are threatening countries across West Asia and North Africa.

Three quarters of the arable land in the region is already degraded, and 60 per cent of the population is already experiencing water scarcity, a number set to increase by 2050. Saudi Arabia has partnered with UNCCD to launch the G20 global land initiative, which aims to cut land degradation by 50 per cent by 2040.

In Niger, 1.8 million people are benefitting from World Food Programme (WFP) integrated resilience ini-tiatives. Climate change, land degradation, soaring price and conflict have made the already challenging lives of farmers in the Sahel region of Africa even more precarious, but communities have come togeth-er, with the support of the World Food Programme’s (WFP) integrated resilience programme, to culti-vate a better life.

Foureyratou Saidou, a single mother of four and recent widow from the Tilaberi area of Niger, is one of around three million people in the region who have benefitted from the initiative, which promotes land rehabilitation, livelihood diversification, school meals, nutrition interventions and improved agricultural production and market access.

“In this garden, we now grow and harvest onions, tomatoes, lettuce and other vegetables that we eat and that we can sell in the local market,” she said. “Before, we didn’t have much to live for. Now we do, and we don’t want to leave.”

With better access to markets, Saidou is able to sell the food she does not consume at home and provide for herchildren.(UN News)