Desertification: Causes and Consequences

According to UN, desertification is “the process of land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas as a result of a series of climatic and human factors” and also indicates that “every year disappear more than 24 billion tons of fertile and environment’s inappropiate use and management, wildlife is destroyed among other ecosystems’ variables.

Desertification causes an unsuitable for life desert ground, several of its main causes and consequences are :

Causes

• Cutting down trees that provide stability to the ground.

• Agriculture : it causes desertification since the soil must be cleaned for the crops, depleting it from its natural nutrients.

• Wind and water erosion : The soil turns into dust and sand without nutrients provided by a normal ecosystem, causing low fertility.

• Groundwater overexploitation.

• Natural resources overexploitation.

• Bad farming practices.

Consequences

• Habital loss of a great variety of animal species, seedliongs and plants that are part of the ecosystem and without this, they will not be able to survive.

• Climate change : Climatic conditions are altered. When there are changes on living beings that are ecosystems’ pillar, trees for example, that allow the environment to be humid, in addittion to soil protection.

• Greater greenhouse impact : as in climate change, without present trees, there are no gases absorption which causes global warming, generating a higher concentration of gases in the atmosphere.

• Wars

• Social Unrest

• Political instability

• Migrations

According to the United Nations Conventions To Combat Desertification, the lives of 250 million people are already affected by desertification and almost 135 million could be forced to move (climatic migration), for this reason in 2045, which makes it one of the most serious environmental problems faced by mankind.