Dryland peoples face uncertain futures, including drought, climate change, ecosystem degradation, and market failures
What
are Drylands?
Drylands are areas exposed to arid, semi-arid or dry-sub-humid climate
and therefore threatened by desertification. These climatic conditions
are defined easily by a simple coefficient reflecting the ratio of potential
evaporation and precipitation (0.05 - 0.65). About 40% of Sub-Saharan
Africa is covered by drylands, in which 206 million people or 36% of the
total population lives. Poverty levels are extremely high-the average
Human Development Index in Sub-Saharan African countries that have large
dryland areas is as low as 0.35.
Why
do you prefer Ecosystem approach to Drylands Environmental Management,
based on adaptive management?
Ecosystem approach recognizes the need to maintain provisioning
services of ecosystems (such as food, fibre, fuel, freshwater) through
maintenance of ecosystem supporting and regulating services (such as hydrological
regulation, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity). Adaptive management of
ecosystems aims to promote, within national development processes, more
reliable and efficient learning from project experience through use of
scientifically rigorous testing of policy and management interventions.
A regional approach is needed to help ensure that solutions match the
scale of the dryland environmental problems and that scarce resources
are wisely targeted to where they are most needed. At a local level, there
is need to build capacity of communities for adaptive management strategies
based on income-generating agroforestry practices integrated with other
soil conservation practices and local land use planning.
Copyright © 2008, West Africa Drylands Project. All rights reserved