Climate Change and Migration: How Geography Shapes Mass Movements
Turning deserts green using the half–moon technology
Planet Earth appears blue when looked from space, which is mainly because about 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. While often unnoticed, deserts make up one of the major ecosystems of our Blue planet, occupying about 33% or 1/3rd of the Earth’s surface. Nonetheless, ‘deserts’ are generally thought of as not diverting enough of a subject–a word evocative of a lifeless, desolate area with temperatures ranging in the not-so-comfortable world of positive numbers.
However, geographically, a desert is best described as a region with little to no precipitation (receiving as little as 250 millimetres of annual rainfall), thereby prone to extreme dryness throughout the year. The common conjecture about deserts being lifeless can be easily falsified. Desert ecosystem actually enables a completely different life form to thrive, the kind not easily found elsewhere; what sparse vegetation is there mainly consists of plants requiring little to no water, such as prickly pear and cactus.
Certain resilient flowers such as desert rose (Adenium obesum) and desert lily (Hesperocallis undulata) bear testimony to the fact that life finds a way. Ecology states that life on Earth had long undergone several evolutionary stages, and desert is one such region which proves just how capable living organisms are of adapting themselves to new environments. Likewise, burrowing animals (e.g. kangaroo rat) and invertebrates (e.g. scorpions) have adapted themselves to such unfavourable conditions.
Deserts are of great utility to us in that they predominantly form major reserves of oil, minerals, medicinal plants and raw materials. Surprisingly enough, what is commonly believed to be confined in the isolated, inaccessible parts of the world is actually ubiquitous–deserts are found in all the seven continents, even in Antarctica, except that the desert here is extremely cold and not hot.
Incidentally, 71 deserts have been known of until now. Asia leads the list with 26 deserts, followed by Africa having 12 deserts; Australia and Europe are home to 10 deserts each; South America has 5 while North America contains 4 deserts. Furthermore, 3 deserts are found in the Arctic and 1 is in Antarctica. However, recent findings have come into suggesting that desertification–the process in which fertile lands get converted into barren, dry regions–is taking place at an unprecedented scale, and should it remain unchecked, the drylands are expected to go from 33% to anywhere between 50% to 56% by the end of 20th century. Much of desertification is attributed to anthropogenic causes, meaning humans’ activities are exacerbating global warming. Global warming does not just interfere with the natural climatic mechanism, it goes way beyond that. It renders the ecosystem crippled for an indefinite time.
The common beliefs surrounding global warming include, but are not limited to, the melting of icebergs with rising global mean temperatures, which is indeed true. But it is important to note here that even as oceans are getting impacted, deserts are already starting to have adverse impacts on the world we live in. We lose roughly 12 million hectares of land every year because of drought and desertification. To put it another way, 2/3rd of our planet is fast becoming the victim of desertification, which, in theory, means mankind will have lost most of the fertile, agricultural fields in the days to come.
Consequently, people will be faced with a food crisis, the kind of which the world has never witnessed before in the history of humanity. This will inevitably result in the collapse of the world economy; the poor, developing nations will be the most affected, simultaneously escalating the mortality rate. Generally speaking, nobody wants to have the greener parts of the world, such as the Amazon rainforest–more famously called ‘the lungs of the world’–with its blue and yellow macaws and luscious Brazilian mangoes to be wiped out, replaced by arid regions.
A recent study conducted by the University of Maryland, however, has concluded that the Sahara Desert has expanded by 10% since 1920, and global warming is only perpetuating its expansion. It is almost as though, if it keeps growing at its current estimated rate of 11,000 km²/year, the entire globe, with its 10,000 species of birds and 3,00,000 species of plants, will be engulfed by an ecosystem so harsh, only those who adapt can survive.
When it comes to taking steps to tackle this problem, Africa has done pioneering work to battle desertification: Sahel is a semi-arid region in Africa which finds itself located between the Sudanian savannas which experience humid climate and–undoubtedly the largest and hottest of all–the Sahara desert. Much of North Africa is actually covered by the Sahara.
As such, the foreseeable future of Sahel was that it will become a desert, a gradual process which will give way to Sahara desert’s further expansion all the way to the Sudan region, and later to the rest of Africa. It goes without saying that the residents were left with no choice but to migrate to other parts of Africa (more than 4 million people had abandoned their homes in Sahel).
Additionally, Sahel was often struck by drought in the past which reinforced the idea that the future of Sahel is bleak. With poverty and unemployment steadily creeping, it was virtually impossible that anything that could be done would ever revive the area.
To combat this challenge, an innovative solution was designed by the African Union back in 2007 which involved a massive tree-plantation campaign in Sahel. It goes by the name ‘the Great Green Wall’ in Africa and among others, its primary objective is restoration of 100 million infertile lands, turning it green by 2030, thereby thwarting the expansion of the Sahara desert further inside Africa.
To revive a degraded land so that it regains its fertility sounds almost implausible, but with the UN’s unwavering dedication and support from the indigenous people, they formulated a plan which involved neither A.I. machinery nor rocket science but a series of steps to prevent the loss of biodiversity, rather create one in Sahel.
The hard, sunbaked soil of Sahel made it seem unlikely that it would support any plant life. Moreover, the landscape was as such that water would simply wash away and not percolate deep into the soil. So, they came up with this esoteric half-moon technology, and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with technology or the moon.
Initially, a team of 150 people dug the soil in the shape of half-moons, each having a diameter of 4 meters. These half-moons were dug in the lower area such that anytime it rains, all of the water flows into these ditches so that it holds water long enough to completely moisten the soil. To begin with, staple crops such as Sorghum and Millet were planted in these ditches with the idea that although the soil is not as fertile, if the plant receives continuous supply of water, it will adapt itself to the soil. Interestingly, this plan not only changed the landscape of Sahel but also the lives of the residents: the crops fed the poorer sections of the society and provided them employment opportunities, enabling them to earn a living.
This half-moon technology was long-forgotten but was revived from the past. It somewhat shows resemblance to the modern-day rainwater harvesting technique in that collecting water in these half-moons is the main goal. This collected water replenished the soil while increasing the groundwater level. Now, with little rain, people could sustainably utilise it for the cultivation of crops and the water did not simply flow away.
Later, horticulture was practised, followed by the cultivation of tomatoes, pigeon pea, guava, just to name a few, and what was once a semi-arid region was now home to an entirely new ecosystem. Not to mention, these forests were built in such a way that it forms almost a boundary between Sahel and the Sahara Desert. Overtime, various farming techniques were adopted such as the Synctropic farming which not many people know about. First developed in Brazil in the 1980s, this technique of farming provides a more economical and sustainable method of agroforestry.
Thus, meticulous efforts over the last few years have turned Sahel into what it is today: the birthplace of the Great Green Wall. The Great Green Wall of Africa has provided employment opportunities to many, is feeding the people of Sahel, prevented the economy of Sahel from shrinking and has battled climate change in one of the hottest regions of the world. It is actually changing the geography of Sahel by creating an entirely new forested area.
This wall was predicted to be 15 km wide and 7,775 km long, but such was the success of this project that it has managed to expand all the way to Northern and Western Africa. The Great Green Wall Initiative has resulted in the formation of a stronger community residing along the wall and served as an effective countermeasure against immigration which was previously common here.
This rehabilitation programme got a region colonized which was teetering on the brink of mass exodus. Immigration would actually mean depriving the resources of other places while not utilising the one already present in the native land. Not only will this put stress on the environmental resources but also on the population; Over-populated places would get more populated, and due to rapid increase in competition, there would be more poverty than ever. This initiative has economically managed to tackle the aforementioned problems and more.
In retrospect, colonization isn’t always responsible for the loss of vegetation. Contrary to people’s beliefs, there is a close correspondence between colonization and greenery: colonization can increase plant growth in a given area. To cite another example, the UAE literally turned its deserts green by building residential colonies for people in the parched desert, with each area having parks and greenery cover of its own. Comparing the satellite images from 1972 to 2021, Dr. Dahy, who works in the Department of Geosciences at UAE University, concluded that there has been significant plant growth owing to urbanization and urban vegetation.
This has proved to be one of the most pragmatic approaches to stop the encroachment of deserts in places like Dubai which are in close proximity to drylands. Plantation of trees is paramount so far as to make the soil fertile (trees bind the soil together, thus preventing soil erosion), sequester carbon and recharge groundwater.
To add onto that, Chandra Dake, the CEO of the Dake group, came up with a revolutionary solution to foster desert farming in the UAE: breathable sands extracted from the Gobi Desert require little water as compared to the soils normally used for irrigation in the UAE. Breathable sands retain water longer and are comparatively more fertile; hence, it has the potential to save water in the UAE which is used in heavy amounts for irrigation purposes as the soil is not so fertile here.
To sum up, it is initiatives like these that leave an eternal mark on the landscape of Earth, the kind which never can be eroded. The Great Green Wall initiative, for instance, is doing its part in helping the world achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. As the name suggests, these goals–17 in total–were designed by the UN in 2012 to attain a sustainable future, and it is something 193 countries worldwide are looking forward to achieving.
Restoring forests, combating unemployment, achieving food security, improving nutrition, ending poverty, creating sustainable man-made residential areas, and taking action against climate change are few sustainable development goals that Africa, for example, has contributed to. Little did we know deserts, which are some of the places of not much interest to us humans, could hold so much potential to target so many of the goals that we aim to achieve.
To conclude, so long as greenery is taken into consideration, colonization will do a remarkable job of keeping desertification at bay. And, if many more countries join hands together and come up with initiatives like these, that day may not be so far away when the unauthorized entry of deserts into greener areas will, at last, come to a halt.
Bye-bye desertification, Hello colonization!
By: Srishti Suman Gupta
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