What is Desertification ?
The definition of desertification has been a hotly debated question for a number of years. The word conjours up a landscape that is "turning into a desert" and implies irreversible loss of natural resources leading to decreasing productivity and impoverishment of the population. The problem is that the loss of natural resources has many causes, both natural and anthropic and the consequences are equally varied, from rural depopulation to soil salinisation. The many local variations in the appearance of desertification phenomena lead to many different uses of the word. In turn these different uses have meant that it has been difficult to reach agreement on how to combat it.
Desertification has been neatly defined in the text of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as " land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities."
This is the definition that is now universally used (although still not everyone entirely agrees with it because it excludes other regions also vulnerable to land degradation).
Then What is Land Degradation?
Again the UNCCD provides a useful answer. It is the loss of biological or economic productivity and complexity of croplands, pastures or forests resulting from land uses or processes including those arising from human activities. These processes include things like soil erosion, deterioration of the quality of the soil and long-term loss of natural vegetation.
Systematic presentation of the relation between desertification and land degradation (after »GIZ, 2011)
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