Photo: Thomas Roche
Global warming.
Polar ice cap and glacial melt.
Habitat devastation.
The environmental problems our generation must confront are frightening.
But amid the daily chatter we hear about these three problems, another serious environmental challenge has been largely overlooked by mainstream media: desertification.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey,
The world’s great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities.
Since the 1930s, however, desertification has been an increasingly worrisome problem around the world–even in the United States–as people who live in and around deserts overgraze, implement destructive farming practices, and change their habitation patterns, increasing erosion and decreasing the utility and stability of arid land.
Despite the documentation substantiating that desertification exists, scientists and environmental activists have had difficulty defining and quantifying the extent to which desertification is a problem… until recently.
As the video here indicates, desertification has become such a problem that its effects have become even more acute than damage to the physical environment: desertification is even sparking off human conflicts–and genocides. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon states desertification is directly responsible for the current crisis in Darfur, Sudan.
The implications of desertification indicate just how important it is to act to stem the problem of this particular environmental crisis. Check out the video below to learn more about how one group, the Village Reforestation Advancement Initiative, is working to halt desertification in Sudan:
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4 Comments... join the discussion!
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Thank you for talking about this problem. It's huge. If you haven't seen it I'd encourage you to check out the short film "Tesfaye" about an Ethiopian man's struggle against the desertification of his land. It's on the festival circuit. Or you can catch it here… ” target=”_blank”>http://vimeo.com/1431641
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I did know that– but only through the research I did for this article! In fact, the photo with this article is part of China's other great wall! Before I knew anything about desertification, someone in Puerto Rico tried to tell me that the reason for smog on the island was due to desertification. and I laughed–the butterfly effect gone crazy. Now I know better!
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Desertification is impacting the western third of the United States, not to mention Australia and the Middle East. The calls it the greatest environmental challenge of our time. I think we should believe that.
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