Book Summary of Desertification: Environmental Degradation in and Around Arid Lands by Michael H. Glantz (ed)

Desertification: Environmental Degradation in and Around Arid Lands, Michael H. Glantz (ed), (Colorado: Westview Press, 1977), 337 pp.

Desertification: Environmental Degradation in and Around Arid Lands will be useful to those who seek an understanding of desertification. This book is a collection of works by several authors. The editor begins with an examination of the attention that the United Nations has paid to the global problem of desertification. Glantz offers definitions of desertification and discusses the cyclic nature of interest in this global problem. The second chapter is concerned with the nature and causes of desertification. The author addresses the question, "Is desertization irreversible?". Overpopulation is cited as one underlying cause of desertification.

Erik P. Eckholm addresses what he terms 'the other energy crisis'. By this he means the need of the poor of developing countries for firewood with which to cook their food. The receding forests in many countries results in less firewood to be gathered, which results in more animal dung being used for heating and cooking, which results in less dung being applied to fields, which results in more area needed to be cleared for grazing which results in receding forests... . Eckholm offers suggestions on alternative fuels and proposes a return to basic concepts such as those proposed in E F Schumacher's Buddhist Economics (1973).

Chapter four examines the ecological deterioration and the resultant local-level rule-making and enforcement problems in Niger. Richard W. Katz and the editor present rainfall statistics and discuss droughts and desertification in the Sahel region of West Africa. Chapter six examines ocean deserts and ocean oases. The relationships among desertification, climate and human activities is examined in the next chapter. Helen Ware addresses desertification and population in sub-Saharan Africa in chapter eight. The following chapter focuses upon the principal problems of desert land reclamation in the (then) USSR. The problems of water supply, irrigation, plant cover, pastures and blowing sand are discussed. This chapter is appended with abstracts from Problems of Desert Development, volumes 3-4 (1976).

The interim report of the South African Drought Investigation Commission of April 1922 is examined in chapter ten. The penultimate chapter addresses pastoral development in Somalia. In this context, Jeremy Swift explores herding cooperatives as a strategy against desertification and famine. The final chapter is authored by the editor and examines climate and weather modification in and around arid lands in Africa. The modifications of: vegetation,atmospheric circulation and precipitation are discussed. Glantz examines and evaluates proposals to create large inland seas which would cover 10% of Africa and provide the atmosphere with moisture which would then cycle in rainfall and evaporation. Desertification: Environmental Degradation in and Around Arid Lands is an examination of desertification at a global scale with clear implications for decision-making at the local level.