In fact, the Sahel is now a great deal wetter, and for the very same reasons that caused the droughts. And the great Sahelian droughts of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s did not happen because unintelligent local people were over-exploiting their land but because of global climate changes brought about by fluctuations in the composition of atmospheric greenhouse gases and particulates. The notion of widespread, catastrophic environmental degradation was, the authors say, a non-event. “The opening chapters of this book examine something that never occurred but was widely believed to have existed – the late 20th century desertification crisis in the Sahel,” begins the book. Measures intended to prevent and reverse desertification have been pursued in China, such as in the Maowusu desert. Published with the help of the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development and Tufts University in the US, it pulls no punches. The End of Desertification? Disputing Environmental Change in the Drylands is a collection of essays edited by Roy Behnke and the veteran drylands expert Mike Mortimore. This is the thesis of a new book by 20 experts in the field.
What’s more, the standard policies to reverse desertification generally do more harm than good, both to the environment and to people. The so-called desertification of the Sahel that created the scare happened for quite other reasons, and wasn’t irreversible. Scientifically, it is a meaningless and indefinable concept. It is quite a shock, then, to be presented with an abundance of evidence that desertification doesn’t happen, at least not in the way it has been explained. Great green walls of trees spanning nations – such as the one proposed to span from Senegal to Djibouti – are a popular strategy. Desertification in this narrative is almost irreversible unless superhuman efforts are employed. Most importantly, measures intended to prevent and reverse desertification are being pursued, especially in central Asia and China.
There is a UN convention to combat desertification and the word appears in sustainable development goal 15. The desertification story has had enormous influence.
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