“Global desertification and climate change present a greater danger than all of the wars ever fought . . .”
“Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert. It happens only when there is too much bare ground. There’s no other cause … about two thirds of the earth is desertifying” — Allan Savory
Allan Savory’s quest to restore deserts to grasslands started with a big mistake: when he was a young biologist in the 1950s, he believed the teachings of the day: that livestock overgrazing destroyed the land and created deserts.
Because of this belief, he presented research papers to a group of fellow scientists. His recommendations caused the slaughter of 40,000 elephants in Africa. Thereafter, the situation got worse, not better.
Since discovering the true cause of desertification and realizing the enormity and tragic consequences of his mistake, Savory vowed to devote his life to finding and implementing solutions.
The key to restoring life to the desert, he discovered, is opposite of long-held beliefs about what begets deserts: rather than death, herd animals, like elephants, cattle, sheep, antelope, and buffalo breathe life into the land.
Land that becomes barren leads to all kinds of social, economic and political outcomes: food insecurity owing to reduced productivity of the land, and economic losses for farmers and rural communities.
It exacerbates poverty and inequality, since poorer populations are most often affected. Along with the vanishing of traditional lands, livelihoods, social cohesion and cultural identity are lost.
Degraded lands contribute to social unrest and conflict as people migrate to cities, or even other countries, straining infrastructure and services.
Desertification also leads to climate change and extreme weather conditions; it decimates animal and bird populations.
How it happens
Desertification happens only when we create too much bare ground. There is no other cause, according to Savory.
The smaller green areas on the photo above are humid throughout most of the earth. They are not becoming deserts.
The brown and tawny regions are where desertification has occurred or is occurring, where the rainfall is seasonal, with humid, then dry periods — about two-thirds of the world’s lands.
“Some of these brown regions are arid, but many receive over 1,000 mm (40 inches) of rain each year,” Savory explains.
In the Tihamah Desert in Yemen, 25 mm of water fell on this area in a day. The next day, the land was dry. Where had the water gone? Some runs off as flooding, but most of the water that had soaked into the soil evaporated out again, exactly as it does in your garden when the soil is uncovered.
On their way to becoming deserts, arid and semi-arid lands become bare and then covered over with algae, leading to increased runoff and evaporation.
“That is the cancer that we don’t recognize until it becomes terminal,” says Savory.
Creation of grasslands
“For centuries, we’ve believed that desertification is caused by livestock overgrazing and our remedy has been to decrease or remove livestock altogether. Because this belief is so deeply entrenched, we have never looked any deeper,” according to Savory.
“What we failed to understand is that these seasonally humid environments of the world developed with large numbers of grazing animals and that these grazing animals developed along with pack-hunting predators. The main defense against these predators is to get into herds. The larger the herd, the safer the individuals.
“Large herds defecate and urinate all over their own food, and they have to keep moving. It’s the movement that prevented the overgrazing of plants, while the periodic trampling ensured good cover of the soil as is evident where a herd has passed through an area.
“A typical seasonal grassland comes through four months of rain and then goes into eight months of drought. As it dries, the grass must decay biologically before the next growing season. If it doesn’t, the grassland and the soil begin to die,” Savory says.
“Failing to decay biologically leads to oxidation, a slow process that smothers and kills grasses, leading to woody vegetation and bare soil that releases carbon,” Savory explains.
Worse than that, burning one hectare — about two and a half acres — of grassland, gives off more damaging pollutants than 6,000 cars.
As of 2013 in Africa, more than one billion hectares of grassland was burned each year.
Savory notes that as scientists, “We justified the burning because it does remove the dead material and it allows the plants to grow. But it also leads to desertification and climate change.”
Regarding grassland that has gone dry, we cannot reduce animal numbers to rest it more without causing desertification and climate change.
We cannot burn it without causing desertification and climate change.
What are we going to do?
“There is only one option left to climatologists and scientists: that is to do the unthinkable: to use livestock, bunched and moving as a proxy for former herds and predators to mimic nature.
“…There is no alternative left to mankind,” according to Savory.
“By doing so, all of that soil is covered with dung, urine, litter, or mulch as every gardener understands, and that soil is ready to hold and absorb the rain, to store carbon and to break down methane,” Savory states.
Over forty years ago, Savory developed to help land managers, farmers, ranchers, environmentalists, and policymakers develop strategies for regenerating landscapes and the livelihoods of the people living on them.
Holistic Management and planned grazing addresses nature’s complexity and is being taught throughout the world, not only to restore the land, but to provide economic, social, and political stability as desert land is reclaimed.
Since 2009, the Savory Institute has trained over 22,000 farmers, ranchers, and land stewards who impact more than 29 million hectares of desertifying grasslands.
Savory’s TED Talk took place in February 2013. Since that time, there have been climate accords and gatherings to address climate change. Billions of dollars have been thrown at it, and I’m wondering about policies that further the efforts to tax the people to lower worldwide temperatures, as in the Paris Accords, when for a fraction of the cost, the Savory Institute could train land stewards and implement managed grazing to bring life back to the desert.
References:
How to Green the World’s Deserts and Reverse Climate Change | Allan Savory
Savory.Global
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