Natural Hazards: Causes and Effects - Disaster Management Center ...

such measures involve the disruption of traditional livelihood systems, they are unlikely to
succeed unless they form part of larger schemes of rural reconstruction involving appropriate
changes in land tenure, the consolidation of holdings, or resettlement programs offering
alternative livelihoods.
Balancing Human and Environmental Needs
The ideal objective is the recovery and maintenance of ecological balance in the drylands in
order to sustain productivity, but this must be reconciled with the needs of local populations.
Some degree of environmental disturbance, as determined by pressing human needs, must be
tolerated in land management.
On the other hand, it must be recognized that land-use pressures have been the major factor in
the advance of desertification. Accordingly, changes in land use will be required, and these
bring with them a need for corresponding social changes. Some policing of affected lands may
be required, but it will not succeed without a sympathetic community response.
Priorities and Enforcement
Priorities in programs to combat desertification should be influenced by the severity of its impact
on the populations concerned and by the degree of their vulnerability, rather than by the severity
of its impact on the land alone. When the situation has been made clear, decisions can be made
on priorities, which might include abandonment of lands most severely affected, and a
reclamation program designed in terms of the availability of water, labor and capital. After the
program has been implemented, reclaimed lands can be re-allocated, but not without clear
regulations on what can be done with them. Reclamation provides an occasion for the
enforcement of practices that will prevent desertification from recurring.
Specific Actions
Grazing
To combat desertification in pastoral systems means to adopt grazing practices that will allow
vegetation to recuperate. In areas too dry for rainfed cropping, the natural vegetation usually
forms the most efficient pasture in terms of upkeep, grazing returns and protection of the soil
surface. The maintenance of a plant cover that will sustain the pastoral system under most
conditions is the obvious goal of land-use planning. Anything more—intensive reclamation, for
example, by planting programs or mechanical controls—will be feasible only in restricted areas
where the physical process of desertification threaten installations, communications, settlements
or valuable cropland.
Experience indicates that the death of livestock is chiefly due to the failure of pastures rather
than of water supplies. Accordingly, conservation measures should be introduced for the
control of grazing access to dryland ranges where such control does not exist, including fencing
where necessary and economically feasible.
Using Surveys. As a first step, surveys should be initiated to determine the useful productivity
of the main varieties of dryland pasture under differing seasonal conditions, the requirements of
pasture plants for successful regeneration under grazing, and the dimensions of the grazing
impact of a proposed system composed of certain animals in certain numbers. Surveys must
take into account the dual role of perennials as surface protectors and as fodder during drought.
A logical first step in the assessment of dryland pastures is to map them, indicating their distinct
topographic, soil and water conditions.