Desertification is the process whereby land areas originally supporting plant growth and human economic activities continually become deserts. The process is rendered 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 recently in Nigeria are attributed to conflicts over land use between the southern agrarian communities and the northern pastoral nomads. According to Aljazeera news bulletin of March 31, 2010, the Sahara desert is to blame for forcing the pastoral communities southwards in search of groundbaitleading 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 (2007, WWF 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 areapply.
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. "
Global Warming
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. We learn From history that people have lived in deserts through nomadic lifestyles. Thenomadic 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 groundbait. 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 pastoral or nomadic 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. Desertsoccur 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 along time humans were known to think with prejudice that they were God's special creation. This is characterized in religious books like the Bible today. But Charles Darwin and other evolutionists rubbished such ideas and endeavored to relate humans with other animals. This leads to major development in medicine especially when humans used animals to study the functioning of organismsand 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. the Web. October 30, 2009
USGS "Desertification" 1997 World Wide Web. October 30, 2009
WWF "Drying Rivers", 2007. The Web. October 30, 2009
VietFun For All "Drying Rivers, Lakes and Reservoirs", Web. October 30, 2009
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