According to the United Nations, around 70% of the 5.2 billion hectares of arid land devoted to agriculture are currently degraded. In other words, desertification affects practically one-quarter of the world’s total surface area. These arid lands are home to around one billion inhabitants. The situation of these individuals is precarious; in fact, there are very serious concerns for more than 100 million of them. These people may well have to abandon their lands to seek their subsistence elsewhere. In terms of lost earnings, the economic costs generated by desertification in 1991 were estimated at more than 42 billion USD per year for the whole world, including 9.3 billion USD for Africa.

The causes

Multitemporal environmental studies conducted by remote detection in the Sahel all present similar results: a substantial reduction of the forests and vegetation generally, with a simultaneous significant increase in degraded soils, often indicated by soil being shifted due to wind action.

Globally, most scientists and institutions basically agree about the causes of desertification: firstly, exacerbated and constantly growing anthropic action on the environment, including exponential population growth, over-grazing, deforestation, over-cultivation of lands and deterioration of the soils and, secondly, the climatic crisis which originally revealed desertification.