Bogumil Terminski Environmentally-Induced Displacement ... - Cedem

continues to be a major problem facing China’s environment, despite efforts toexpand forest cover and plant trees.Desertification, Soil Salinity: Desertification is considered as one of theworld’s most alarming global environmental problems. It is also the primarycause of environmentallly induced displacement in many regions of the world.The term “desertification” has been in use since 1949 when French ecologistand botanists Andre Aubreville published a book entitled Climate, Forets etDesertification de l’Afrique Tropicale. He defined desertification as thechanging of productive land into a desert as the result of ruination of land byman-induced soil erosion. According to many estimates, desertification affectsat least 135-250 million people worldwide. However, some scientists arguethat only in China does the problem of desertification concerns more than 400million people. Primary areas of the world that are affected by desertificationis Sahel region, as well as Southern Africa (the Kalahari Desert), China (theGobi Desert) and Latin America.As Kofi Annan said in 2006, “If we don’t take action, current trends suggestthat by 2020 an estimated 60 million people could move from desertified areasof sub-Saharan Africa towards North Africa and Europe, and that worldwide,135 million people could be placed at risk of being uprooted”. According toAllen and Ober (2008) over 67 million people in the Sahel already exist underthe effects of desertification. Desertification of soils appears to be one of thefundamental causes of hunger in many regions of the world.Soil degradation is actually very dangerous phenomenon in land degradationand has severe effects on soil functions. To the most important causes of soildegradation we can include deforestation, overgrazing and various agriculturalactivities. According to Salfrank and Walicki (2005) over a half of totalCentral Asian land area is prone to desertification and over 80 percent of totalland area in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan is affected by salinization anddesertification.