Combating Drylands Degradation

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Combating Drylands Degradation

• Mohamed A. M. Ahmed
• Social, Economic and Policy Research Program
• ICARDA

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Dryland Degradation and Restoration

• Drylands occupy 41 of earths land area
• Hold 1/3 of the world population
• Nearly 1.9 of the total 3392 Mha of degraded
  lands worldwide
• Global annual loss of 75 billion tons of soil
  costs (_at_ US3 / ton of soil for nutrients and
  US2 /ton of soil water).
• Losses about US400 billion/ year
• US70 per person/ year

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Land Degradation
Irrigation induced-erosion and faulty tillage

• Land degradation is decline in land quality or
  productivity
• A result of natural or anthropic factors
• Results from a mismatch between land quality and
  land use

• Rate of land degradation determined
• by the agents/ causes of LD.
• Initially degradation creeps slowly

A collector draining into river-
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Cause Effect Relations of Land Degradation

• Wind erosion
• Water erosion
• Salinization/waterlogging
• Degradation- range/pastures
• Forest land degradation

Forms
Impact

• Declining soil fertility crop yields
• Reduced biodiversity
• Declining factor productivity
• Declining livestock productivity
• Escalating prod/rehabilitation costs
• Greenhouse Gas emissions
• Low farm incomes- livelihoods
• Loss of labor

• Carbon-losses
• Excessive Tillage
• Overgrazing
• Deforestation
• Erosion
• Loss of covers
• Inappropriate Practices

Causes
Desertification spiral is driven by
interlinked biophysical and socio-economic
factors- feeding each other.
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Estimates of Land Degradation
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Land Degradation (LD)

• Biophysical
• Land use, land management, tillage methods,
  climate changes and climatic variability etc.)
• Socioeconomic
• Land tenure, marketing, institutional
  support, income sources, input Infra-structure,
  subsidies and Value chains
• Political
• Incentives, pricing policies,, political
  stability

Land degradation is a biophysical process driven
by socioeconomic and political causes.
(Lal, 1994).
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Drivers of Landuse Changes

• Demographic pressures
• Economic and policy swings
• Competition for water
• Soil fertility and land degradation
• Climate changes
• Food, fiber, fuel, fodder needs
• Technological changes
• Land use policy prescriptions

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The OASIS Challenge

• OASIS supports 5 major dimensions of integration
  of key Knowledge Streams to action oriented flow
  of knowledge
• Disciplinary research integration to support
  informed policy decision making
• Diagnosis-to-treatment integration
• Landscape scale integration
• Climate change-dry land degradation integration
• Local scientific knowledge integration

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K-Stream 3

• Research approach and methods
• Development domains will build on typology
  factors comprising of productivity drivers,
  socio-economic factors, and policy and
  institutional factors.
• Dry land economies will be classified based on
  their degree of isolation from outside economies
  and degree of inequality
• The technological, market, policy or institutional
   failure  contributing to land degradation and pov
  erty, and the  options for addressing them, wil
  l be assessed using a hierarchical diagnostic appr
  oach

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OASIS Land health approach
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Combating Dryland Degradation Project

• One-year project funded by USAID
• Focus on four countries
• Jordan
• Morocco
• Pakistan
• Yemen
• Collaboratively between ICARDA and ICRISAT

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Severity and scale of land degradation in Jordan,
Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen
Entrees are severity and scale of the problem.
Severity of the problem severe,
moderate, and minimum. Scale of the problem S
small, Mmedium and L large
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The Approach for Diagnosis, Implementation and
Evaluation
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OASIS Hierarchical approach to diagnosis
and solutions for land degradation
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The Participative Integrated Assessment

• Complex and dynamic bio-economic models will be
  used for realistic assessment
• Qualitative participative methods of data
  collection will be used for primary level data
  from stake holders
• Network approaches to illumine research
  policy-linkages with an effective combination of
  semi-structured interviews and discussions will
  be used