Photo: Flickr. Blog - Latest News. Land and water management: Sustainable land use can fix issues such as overgrazing, overexploitation of plants, trampling of soils and irrigation practices that cause and worsen desertification. Protection of vegetative cover: Protecting soil from wind and water erosion helps to prevent the loss of ecosystem services during droughts. Dry-lands are vulnerable areas that require sensitive management when cultivated. Planting trees on crop boundaries, maintaining hedgerows or practicing agroforestry has proven to be beneficial for the land.
Livestock can benefit from grazing among trees as well. This practice is known as silvopasture, and when done correctly, trees promote regeneration of grazed soils , while at the same time, create cooler climate for animals and people in the area. Additionally, farmers benefit not only from animal products, but they also harvest wood from these plots. Another popular approach to diversifying farm production is inter cropping— when farmers plant two or more crops in one plot.
A common example of crops that complement each other is maize and beans. The role of trees in protecting soils from erosion, supplying moisture and cooling down the surrounding area is irreplaceable.
We cannot substitute these functions by any technique we master. In places, where deforestation has already happened, it is recommended to replant native trees and let them grow naturally in hopes of restoring original ecosystem. The same technique can be used even on plots that were once cultivated for crops but got depleted.
Suitable tree species could restart biological activity in soils and increase land resiliency to degradation. Native species of trees should be prioritized because they have special adaptations to local climate and will sustain other native species. The final effects of these principles overlap on many levels, but their efficiency in tackling desertification consists of:.
The concept of the Sustainable Land Management combines multiple different approaches that can be combined together in order to achieve the same goal — promotion of soil health and prevention of land degradation. Maintaining healthy soils is in the best interest of farmers and land owners because it will enable them to sustain livelihoods from their land for generations.
And this is what brings us to the next important step in prevention of desertification — communities working together. Many stories were written about human suffering caused by desertification. Ranging from having to leave home, losing animals, not having enough food, water and money, to being terrorized by radical groups, or losing family members in wars for resources.
These stories are sad reminders of how destructive for communities is the loss of their ability to grow food. That is why native communities also play the key role in helping to tackle the issue of desertification. It is the people who have direct bonds with the land that may provide the missing insight on what solutions will work in their region. It is them who will carry out the challenge of implementing new land management practices, while encouraging other members of their community to adopt these techniques as well.
And it is them who care the most about saving their area from destruction. To be even more specific, in many cases, it is women who perform these tasks. Women are also more caring about well-being of their community, have more patience, are willing to share and are sensitive to learning new ways of land management. Thus, educating local communities about the principles of the Sustainable Land Management and empowering women can go long way in helping to stop land degradation by desertification.
In connection with transition to the Sustainable Land Management is also the need to provide an opportunity to these communities to sell their products and services by developing local economy. Local markets support local livelihoods. They enable rural people to benefit from sustainable management of their lands, rather than forcing them to look into destructive over-exploitation in desperate attempts to sell cash crops quickly because of not having any other choice, and eventually having to abandon their depleted lands for the life in the city.
Local markets also often encourage exchange of various seeds and different crop varieties, which helps increase crop diversity on farms and improves their resilience. But local communities alone cannot halt such a large-scale problem like desertification. This means that not only local and national governments and stakeholders have to be involved in implementing these solutions, but even international involvement is necessary, where developed countries aid affected developing countries.
For example, by introducing modern technology like highly accurate weather forecast systems to help farmers determine when is the best time to sow their crops. Similarly, sharing of the newest findings and data from scientific research should be done on a global scale because it is in the interest of all of us to prevent further losses of inhabitable land.
What do some communities in China and in Sub-Saharan Africa have in common? And they want to do it by planting a great wall of drought resistant trees. The Great Green Wall of Africa is a large-scale tree planting project that takes place on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The plan is to plant about 4, miles 8, kilometers long and 10 miles 15 kilometers wide stripe of trees that should act as a buffer between the Sahara Desert and neighboring lands in the south.
The purpose of the trees is to stop desertification and protect vulnerable soils across the entire width of the African continent. Around 12 million trees were planted in Senegal alone and positive effects on soils are already visible in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Niger and Burkina Faso.
The planting efforts are set to continue, and the next goal of this initiative is truly ambitious, planning to restore million hectares of degraded land until It has been launched in by the government of China with the aim of planting trees along the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China. The tree belt should span across approximately 2, miles 4, kilometers. Until this day, 66 billion trees have been planted and the project is set to continue until This suggests that the initiative has been successful so far.
But is it really so? For example, scientists have already noticed that trees from the Green Wall in China caused water level decline in the Yellow River—the most important source of water for farmers and communities along its long channel.
According to some scientists this is problematic in already dried out and damaged regions like these, because if there are too many trees out of sudden, they draw too much water from the ground and exacerbate soil dryness, stealing remaining soil moisture from crops and other vegetation. According to experts, restoration of grasslands with fewer trees to imitate natural Savannahs would be a better option in terms of water preservation in some of these arid areas.
But after years of exceptional droughts and unrestricted grazing due to changes in the political system in , the fragile lands of the steppe became severely degraded, turning the steppe into a desert. Thanks to the cooperation of the International Fund for Agricultural Development with the Bedouin herders, thousand hectares of the steppe have been regenerated and another thousand are in the process of restoration.
These plans include methods of rotational grazing, when certain areas are left to rest for up to two years, with replanting of native plants and shrubs where needed. Grazing animals then help to disseminate seeds and keep shrubs at check. This way the livestock aids in bringing back original ecosystem, with some parts of the steppe already hosting diversity of native birds and insects. As life slowly returns to parts of the Syrian steppe that were once barren, so does even in other parts of the world.
Rehabilitation and restoration approaches can help restore ecosystem services that have been lost due to desertification. Restoration aims to reestablish a previous ecosystem state and all its functions and services , while rehabilitation seeks to repair specific parts of the systems, in order to regain ecosystem productivity. Effective restoration and rehabilitation of desertified drylands require a combination of policies and technologies and the close involvement of local communities.
Examples of actions to restore and rehabilitate ecosystems include:. Policies that create incentives for rehabilitation include capacity building , capital investment, and supportive institutions. The success of rehabilitation practices depends on the availability of human resources, sufficient funds and infrastructures, as well as on the degree of dependence on external technologies and cultural perceptions.
Adequate access to these resources can lead to successful rehabilitation of some ecosystem services and also help reduce poverty. When these conditions are not met, efforts to rehabilitate fail. Restoring degraded dryland services may thus be difficult even with major policy and technology interventions.
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