Climate and Land Degradation
In many parts of the world, climatic variations are recognized as one of the major factors contributing to land degradation impacting on agricultural systems performance and management. To accurately assess sustainable land management practices, the clima
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nzania Meteorological Agency (TMA)
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Mannava V. K. Sivakumar · Ndegwa Ndiang’ui (Eds.)
Climate and Land Degradation With 192 Figures and 61 Tables
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Mannava V.K. Sivakumar Agricultural Meteorology Division World Meteorological Organization 7bis Avenue de la Paix P.O. Box 2300 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland E-mail: [email protected] Ndegwa Ndiang‘ui Committee on Science and Technology (CST) United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification Hermann - Ehlers - Str. 10 D-53113 Bonn Germany e-mail: [email protected]
ISSN 1863-5520 ISBN 10 3-540-72437-0 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York ISBN 13 978-3-540-72437-7 Springer Berlin Heidelberg New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2007931628 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer-Verlag. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. Springer is a part of Springer Science+Business Media springeronline.com © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007 The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: deblik, Berlin Production: Agata Oelschläger Typesetting: Satz-Druck-Service (SDS), Leimen Printed on acid-free paper 30/2132/AO
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Foreword
Desertification is one of the most alarming processes of environmental degradation. It is about land degradation: the loss of the land‘s biological productivity, caused by human-induced factors and climate change, affecting one-third of the Earth‘s surface and over a billion people. Moreover, it can have devastating consequences in terms of social and economic costs. The impacts of land degradation on global food security and the quality of the environment are of major significance and concern when one considers that only about 11% of the global land surface can be considered as prime land, yet this must feed the 6 billion people inhabiting the World today and the 8.2 billion expected by the year 2020. Long-term food productivity is threatened by soil degradation, which is now severe enough to reduce crop yields on approximately 16% of the agricultural land, especially in Africa and Central America, as well as the African pastures. The rate of land degradation is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where it is estimated that losses in productivity of cropping land are in the order of 0.5-1 % annually, suggesting a
