ABSTRACT

The last chapter explained the growth of desertification in terms of the four main direct causes - overcultivation, overgrazing, deforestation and the mismanagement of irrigated cropland. It also indicated that these causes were greatly influenced by a variety of underlying social, economic and political factors, and were not just a consequence of faults in a particular land use, although such faults undoubtedly exist. This chapter looks in more detail at these underlying causes of desertification. Population growth and economic development are the two main driving forces which lead to an expansion of agriculture and to changes in the types of agriculture practised. Economic development is also generally accompanied by a growth in urban populations, and serious degradation of natural resources is common around towns and cities. The benefits of economic development are not shared equally among the inhabitants of a country, and it is often the poorer people, forced to live on the worst lands, who are the most directly involved in causing desertification, the most seriously affected by it, and the least able to prevent it from happening. They are also often affected by famine, although that is not an inevitable consequence of drought or desertification, and can occur when government policies constrain food production in particular areas and fail to alleviate poverty. This chapter argues that in order to assess the causes of desertification correctly, and devise programmes to bring it under control, it is necessary to take into account the pattern of land use not only in the desertified areas themselves but in the country as a whole, and the social and economic factors and government policies which determine that pattern. Although it may appear from this analysis that desertification is yet one more regrettable symptom of underdevelopment, at the same time it is also shown to

be amenable to control by better land-use planning and improved government policies.