This coming Sunday marks the World Day of Combating Desertification. Perhaps nowhere else is it more important to observe this day than in Namibia, which is one of the driest parts of the world.
By Catherine Sasman
WINDHOEK
The Namib Desert on the western coastline stretches from the Olifants River in the Cape Province of South Africa to the San Nicolau in southern Angola, at an average width of around 200 kilometres.
The area is characterised by shifting sand dunes and frequent balls of fog that roll in from the cold Atlantic Ocean.
Along the eastbound border lies the Kalahari Desert, a large arid to semi-arid stretch of sandy terrain.
The central highlands of the country are pockmarked with meadows and pastures, forests and woodlands in the far eastern tip and a barren landscape in the south.
It is a country of picturesque, wide open spaces and diversity in topography, but of sparse rainfall that comes increasingly later and which is getting less with each passing rainy season.
Naturally arid areas are especially prone to land degradation, making the threat of desertification and the general under-appreciation of the desert environments of particular relevance to Namibia, where a rapid population growth imposes increasing pressure on the largely waterless environment.
Last year was proclaimed the International Year of Deserts and Desertification (IYDD) by the 58th session of the UN General Assembly to underline its concern for the exacerbation of desertification and far-reaching implications for the implementation of the eight Millennium Development Goals for 2015.
This gave an opportunity for countries to strengthen the visibility and importance of the challenges of drylands on the international environmental agenda and to reinforce the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCC).
Earlier this month, the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre on the Kuiseb River, a unique establishment run as a joint venture between the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) and the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN), finished a year of numerous activities under the IYDD & Forever project under the theme “Proud of our deserts, while combating desertification” in promotion of sustainable development in drylands and awareness raising of how the public should take care of our fragile natural heritage.
The project, funded by the Small Grants Project (SGP) of the UNDP Global Environment Facility (GEF) also aimed at making Namibians understand the contrasting contributions of our deserts and desertification to their livelihoods and to help integrate this knowledge into the National Development Programme (NDP III) processes and policy development in Namibia.
“Because desertification is still a priority for Namibia, the country continues to celebrate IYDD,” said Emily Mutota, the IYDD national coordinator at the Gobabeb centre.
Deserts are often viewed as desolate and even grotesque for their barrenness.
Many people feel threatened by their unusual and unforgiving geography.
But in Namibia, our deserts ought to be celebrated for its unique eco-systems and the fact that it remains a major tourist attraction, added Mutota.
“Most tourists travel to Namibia to come and explore the beauty of the two deserts. Both have beautiful landscapes like the Sand Dune Sea and rocky outcrops of the Namib Desert. And both deserts have clean air. ”
Another important benefit of our deserts, commented Clarence Mazambani of the DRFN, is that plant and animal species found there cannot be found anywhere else, like the Welwitschia and !Nara plant, a fruit that has played a significant role in the lives of the Topnaar people of the Namib.
Also of significance is the fact that the deserts abound of archaeological materials such as scattered pieces of stone and pottery or paintings representing a valuable part of our history. These artifacts constitute an important component of the total archaeological picture of the desert lands and are popular among scientists and other researchers.
The deserts cover large conservation and recreation areas, and are rich in minerals.
Desertification, on the other hand, poses a huge threat to Namibia’s economic, social, cultural and biological fabric.
Desertification, explained Mutota, does not mean the expansion of natural deserts, such as sand dunes into agricultural land. Instead, desertification means the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations, but primarily human activities.
Global warming contributes to desertification due to extreme weather patterns such as soaring temperatures and repeated floods, more wind erosion and drought.
This makes desert lands more sensitive because of their aridity and highly specialized species.
Worldwide, it is feared that more than over 250 million people are at risk of becoming refugees as a consequence of desertification and one billion people in over 100 countries are at risk of the direct effects of desertification. It affects up to one third of the planet’s land surface directly with devastating efforts on the stability of particularly rural livelihoods.
In Namibia, desertification is brought about mostly through deforestation and bush encroachment, soil erosion and overgrazing or over-cultivation. Poor land and water management contribute to the loss of usable land.
“Fighting desertification is essential to ensure the long-term productivity of inhabited drylands,” said Mutota. “Unfortunately, efforts to combat the ever-increasing problem have often failed and, as a result, land degradation continues to worsen.”
The effects thereof are a declining biophysical system that may result in an inability to produce goods and services necessary for sustainable socio-economic systems.
This results in food shortages, hunger and overexploitation of resources in an attempt to produce more food, and in effect further deteriorating the land condition.
Desertification is therefore closely linked to poverty and often results in out-migration from areas stripped bare and left uncultivable.
Namibia’s policy framework is considered as relatively progressive on the combating of desertification.
The first in the world to incorporate environmental protection in its constitution, the country has various draft and ratified policies, legislation, its Vision 2030 and various National Development Plans and other international environmental agreements.
But, criticized experts from the DRFN, the understanding of the interrelationships among desertification, poverty alleviation, land reform and sustainable development are limited. Moreover, they criticized, is the lack of sufficient political will to address these issues with the necessary vim and vigour.
Tree planting, for example, is one way of combating desertification. The Namibian Cabinet some years ago made a decision to have 1.5 million trees planted every year. This target, however, has never been reached.
But, said Joseph Hailwa, head of the Directorate of Forestry with the Ministry of Agriculture, it is a “good wish” by the politicians but an “impossible” task.
“It takes a lot of water that we do not have to reach such a target. It also costs a lot of money to grow the materials and to protect those through fencing and so on. And we do not have enough land available to do that,” said Hailwa.
The result is that about 500 000 trees are being planted yearly, mostly in the Caprivi and the four northern regions.
Of note, he mentioned, is the 13 areas that have been proclaimed as community forests. Here, members of the community manage and sustain forests in their areas.
The MET with support from the GTZ has similarly embarked on a pilot course for communal land boards that aims at strengthening the capacity of integrated sustainable land management.
Kirsten Probst of the GTZ in the offices of the MET explained that this project involves working with communal land boards on environmentally sound decision making.
The DRFN experts have, however, acknowledged the fact that the evolving process of mainstreaming desertification policy has contributed to overall sustainable development.
What Namibians at local and national level need to do to fight desertification, said Mutota, is to raise awareness concerning the benefits of deserts to livelihoods and learn to understand the comparative advantage in terms of Vision 2030.
“One of the objectives of the IYDD & Forever project is to encourage all Namibians, young and old, rich or poor, to get involved in activities of awareness raising and spreading the message promoted by IYDD and fight desertification. In addition to that, we all need to seriously use our natural resources in a sustainable manner. There has to be cooperation among all Namibians if we want to defect desertification, because only by working together can we reach a solution.”
Added Mazambani: “The most important thing in the fight against desertification is to change people’s minds. If not, we are lost.”