Desertification phenomenon - Decline in vegetation cover

The world is witnessing a decrease or deterioration in the number of plants, this phenomenon is known as desertification, and it means exposing the land to degradation in arid, semi-arid, arid, and semi-humid areas, which leads to the loss of plant life and the biodiversity that exists thanks to it, which is the deterioration and decline of fertility of productive agricultural lands and their transformation into Pastoral areas, losing a large part of the vegetation cover, and also the transformation of plants that have nutritional value into plants that have no value, and thus become unfit for cultivation and use.

The spread of desertification in the world

The total desertified areas in the world are about 46 million square kilometers, of which the Arab world belongs to about 13 million square kilometers, or about 28 percent of all desertified areas in the world, knowing that about 4 percent of the cultivated lands in the world are exposed to drought annually.

All of this will lead to the drying of 18 percent of the cultivated land annually in the world by the end of the current century, and data issued by the United Nations indicate that desertification affected 168 countries in 2019, compared to only 110 countries in the 1990s, while the number of people who 850 million people suffer the consequences directly.

The results of desertification have also been reflected in people, as nearly two billion people live in dry areas, 90 percent of whom live in developing countries, and developing countries lose about 16 billion dollars annually due to desertification, and for example, 70 percent of the lands of the State of Iraq are dominated by a desert climate.

32 percent of the world's drylands are located on the African continent and the reason is the phenomenon of desertification, and the encroachment of sand is the most prominent manifestation of desertification, especially in the southern and eastern regions of Morocco, where it threatens 95 percent of the country.

Desertification has a tragic effect on the country's economic situation, as it leads to a loss of up to 40 million dollars annually in crops and increases their prices. Every year, the world loses about 691 square kilometers of agricultural land as a result of the desertification process.

What are the causes of desertification in the world?

The causes of desertification are natural causes and human causes, in addition to the influence of weather factors on the desertification process, many human factors also lead to them, and their percentage is about 87 percent human factors and 13 percent natural factors.

The most important natural factors causing desertification

Among the natural causes that occur as a result of changes in the climate such as, lack of rain, frequent drought, high temperatures, water drifting and wind blowing, soil erosion, the spread of desert-style terrain such as dunes, and the dominance of the desert climate over most of the Arab world, erosion. Drought years came in.

The most important human factors causing desertification

Unjust human activities are considered one of the main causes through the conflict of biological elements in drylands that cover more than one-third of the world's area in the excessive exploitation or inappropriate land use, which leads to soil depletion, over-pastoralism, over-cultivation, salinization, and waterlogging of the soil, and logging And the removal of forests that work to hold the soil together, overgrazing leads to depriving the land of its weeds, and it is the irregular grazing represented by the increase in the number of animals over the energy of the pastures, poor irrigation methods by relying on well water for irrigation.

Population pressure on the environment, and man returns to that because of the increase in population density, human encroachment on plants by eradicating them, encroachment on lands by transforming them into residential, industrial, and other facilities, wrong agricultural land-use methods, and bad exploitation of natural resources.

The effects of desertification on the Arab world

Desertification has major impacts on the surface of the globe, including:

Environmental impacts: They are represented by the loss of biological diversity and soil degradation, thus leading to reduced environmental production.

Economic effects: They are represented in weak production and lack of job opportunities, which leads to a low level of individual and national income.

Health effects: They are represented in the spread of epidemics and diseases, especially respiratory diseases.

Social effects: They are represented in poverty and migration from villages and valleys to cities, and the consequent civilizational problems in increasing the population and increasing the crime rate and others.

The risks of desertification

Biodiversity degradation

One of the most important dangers of desertification is the deterioration of plant and animal biodiversity, and from here we derive the concept of herbal medicine, which is about plants that are an important component in the pharmaceutical industry.

Degradation of the hydrological cycle

The degradation of the hydrological cycle is the water cycle in nature, as water bodies are the main source of water vapor in the atmosphere in the form of clouds, while forests and agricultural areas are another source of water vapor.

Low soil production capacity

Desertification is one of the reasons for the loss of food security because desertification negatively affects the biological capacity of the soil, which is reflected in agricultural production and food security.

Loss of food security

Arab countries incur a lot of material losses in treating the phenomenon of desertification in terms of removing dust and sand on the roads and around industrial and oil installations and farms, large sums of money, the high cost of reclaiming degraded lands and removing soil in river ports.

Economic losses

The loss of the Asian wing would amount to 1.6 million dollars, while the African wing would reach 1.4 million dollars.

Types of desertification

Water erosion: They are rainstorms in the form of severe water erosion, in which the soil is not able to absorb these heavy rains, thus forming these torrents.

Wind erosion: It is the exposure of all lands to wind erosion to varying degrees, and this erosion in some cases may pose a risk, and result in storms and dust. The wind speed is estimated from 15 to 20 meters per second and more.

Methods of combating desertification

Countries of the world are working to combat desertification by taking a set of measures, the most important of which are:

Technical measures: carrying out afforestation operations, protecting soil from erosion, stabilizing shifting sand, planting according to settlement lines, economic measures, developing national plans to combat desertification, combating illiteracy and ignorance, spreading awareness of the dangers of desertification, and abandoning behaviors that exacerbate it, establishing windbreaks, Stop cutting trees, preserving vegetation in agricultural areas, reviewing irrigation methods, establishing agricultural dams to reduce the force of torrents, and avoiding overgrazing

The strategy to combat desertification is based on addressing three main axes:

• Soil and water conservation
• Maintaining and improving forest cover
• Preserving and improving natural pastures

To combat desertification, we must:

• We prevent or reduce land degradation
• We are rehabilitating partially degraded lands
• Reclamation of desertified land

The process of soil formation is very slow, and it may take between 1400-7000 years for a layer of soil (18 cm) to form.

If the world's efforts do not unite to combat this phenomenon and limit its spread, the day will come when we see crowds of people migrating from desertified agricultural areas to large cities to secure a livelihood, and it becomes a fantasy to find a place decorated with greenery that speaks with beauty in which we comfort ourselves from Life consequences.

In 1994, the United Nations organized an international conference to combat desertification and recommended the creation of international cooperation to combat it. It also recommended that countries exposed to desertification and drought prepare programs whose objectives are to identify the factors contributing to desertification and take appropriate measures to combat and prevent it.

Among the objectives of this program are:

• Methods to improve the country's capabilities in meteorology, weather, and water sciences, and in terms of forecasting a future drought
• Programs to strengthen the country's preparedness to confront and manage the country's drought
• Establishing food security systems, including storage and marketing
• Reclamation and afforestation of agricultural lands to reduce the problem of desertification
• The necessity of rationalizing the use of natural resources and the proper use of agricultural lands, increasing the cultivation of plants and trees and not excessive chopping down forests
• Training specialists to combat desertification and limit its spread

The United Nations affirms that desertification is the biggest environmental challenge in the current era, warning that the continuation of this phenomenon may displace millions of people in the coming years. There is no way to eliminate desertification, but it can be slowed down by planting trees and preserving the energy involved.