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Desertification

 

Desertification can be defined as land degradation in arid, semi-arid and hyper-arid areas. This usually results from factors which include climatic variations and the activities of man in these areas. On the other hand, land degradation is the reduction or loss of biological and economic productivity on these dry lands. These arid and semi and hyper-arid regions are termed so because they naturally lack moisture and the rain fall distribution is highly sparse. And so the humidity in these areas are extremely low as water vapor is very low in the atmosphere resulting from the apparent lack of rainfall.

Desertification is a phenomenon that’s quite common on all the continents except the Antarctica. This state of dryness grossly affects the environment and livelihoods of a lot of people majorly indigenes or inhabitants of the dry land regions. The effects of this state of dryness can also be seen, felt and experienced locally, nationally, regionally and globally. 

Drylands also include all terrestrial regions where water scarcity limits and sometimes outrightly hinders the production of crops, forage, wood, and other ecosystem services and provisions. Places where the atmospheric conditions or climate have been extremely dry or sub-humid in nature also belong to the drylands as already mentioned above. Statistics have shown that 10-20 percent of drylands are however extremely graded, and roughly about 1-6 percent of the population of the drylands live in these dessert areas. 

With these conditions already taking place in the dessertified areas, the problem of global warming and climate change is another entire problem on its own to deal with. It has been projected that the intensifying of freshwater scarcity as a result of global warming and climate change will eventually cause and increase the dryness in these dry regions of the world.  Places or regions with the greatest vulnerability are Sub-Saharan and Central Asian drylands. Other regions in Africa prone to extreme dryness are the Sahel Savanna, the Horn of Africa and South East Africa. Here in these regions, severe droughts are estimated to occur nearly every thirty years, and this leads to severe water scarcity and major food and health crisis. 

Much has been said about global warming and climate change and the transition to sustainable green living. If we don’t  act fast enough, regions and their inhabitants like these are under the threat of extinction. We must do all we can to reduce or eliminate our dependency on fossil fuels if we are going to at least gain back to a considerable extent these dry-land ecosystems. As they are called, they are already dry; let’s not make them drier by our carbon activities on this side of the planet!


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