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RE: [Permaculture] African deserts




Scott Pittman wrote:
<<"On the southern edge of the Sahara an area the size of Somalia has become
desert over the past 50 years.  The same fate now threatens more than
one-third of the African continent.  The main cause of desertification is
not drought but mis-management of land, including overgrazing and felling of
trees and brushwood for fuel." Source: "The conservation and Rehabilation of
African Lands" FAO 1990

FYI Somalia is 650,000 square kilometers.  An additional 50,000 to 70,000
km2 is being added to the African desertification list annually.  "More than
35% of the land north of the equator is affected by either erotion or
salinity.  Zimbabwe alone could be losing 1.6 million tonnes of nitrogen and
240,000 tonnes of phosphorus each year through erotion." FAO ARC/90/4

Just because you havn't heard about it doesn't mean it isn't happening.

How would you restore 650,000 square kilometers of sand dunes?  And what is
you argument against thousands of miles of swales to collect rainfall that
may fall on this land.  This isn't new commercial technology the Nabateans
were doing the same thing in the Sinai desert before Moses.  If the Jews had
of maintained these water collecting structures the Sinai would still be in
bloom.

Though I sympathize with Luddism in some contexts this isn't one of them.>>

To expand this conversation I would encourage everyone to investigate the 
work of the Savory Center for Holistic Management based in Albuquerque, New 
Mexico USA. 
<A HREF="http://www.holisticmanagement.org/";>Center for Holistic Manage...</A>

A couple years ago the Center made a video of a lecture that Allan Savory 
gave at the University of New Mexico where he very convincingly demonstrates 
the beneficial role grazing animals can have restoring desertifying lands, 
when managed correctly. He does a great comparison between the situation in 
Africa, (loss of soils, loss of plant cover, etc, etc, as Scott points out in 
the quotes above), and Texas. Almost everyone blames the situation in Africa 
on things like overgrazing, overcutting of trees, tragedy of the commons, 
etc. He uses Texas as the conter-example because it's a similar environment 
and it's an opposite in almost every regard: very few animals, lots of trees 
(mesquite is blamed for drought), private land ownership, etc.  

Allan then goes on to say that the flaw is in people's decision making, in 
how we think about the world and what we're doing in it, and how we choose to 
act. Part of the model that's been developed has a very clear (and sametimes 
fuzzy! since it is holism) process for helping make decisions that are sound 
ecologically, as in they help regenerate natural systems, sound socially, as 
in they empower local communities to develop rich relationships with the 
natural world and other human communities, and economically viable, as in 
they create a yield or surplus for reinvestment. 

Part of his work that I really like is the insistence that all tools can be 
in the toolbox ('dozer swaling, and planned grazing of cattle, for example) 
but we need a may to move ourselves forward towards the future we envision. 

What is it that the people in these areas want? What kind of quality of life  
do they envision for them selves? What do they need to do and produce in 
order to move towards that kind of life? What does their landscape need to 
look like far, far into the future in order to sustain what they  need to do 
to support their quality of life? When these questions have been answered to 
some degree, then we can start talking about what tools will help get them 
there. 

With regards,
Christopher Peck
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA