Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability Paradigms, Processes, Principles and Policies

About this book

Desertification offers a comprehensive overview of the subject and clearly emphasizes the link between local and global desertification processes and how past and current policy has affected arid environments and their populations. This text adequately applies the research undertaken during the last 15 years on the topic. Desertification has become increasingly politicized and there is a need to present and explain the facts from a global perspective.

Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability tackles the issues surrounding desertification in a number of ways from differing scales (local to global), processes (physical to human), the relationship of desertification to current global development and management responses at different scales. Desertification has been mainstreamed and integrated into other areas of concern and has consequently been ignored as a cross cutting issue. Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability redresses this balance. Making use of much original data and information that has been undertaken by many scientists and practitioners during the last decade in different parts of the world, Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability is organised according to the principles of adaptive management and hierarchy theory and clearly explains desertification within a framework of evolving and interacting physical and socio-economic systems.

In addition to research data Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability also draws from the National Action Plans of different countries, the IPCC Fourth Assessment on Climate Change and the Millennium assessments. Clearly structured throughout, the content of Desertification, Land Degradation and Sustainability is organised at different scales; local, regional and global. It also specifically explains processes linking top-down and bottom- up interactions and has a strong human component. The historical, cultural and physical context is also stressed. Clearly organised into the following distinct sections; a) Concepts and processes b) Data c) Impacts d) Responses e) Case studies.

Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgement xv
Introduction: Scope and approach 1

Part I The Nature of Desertification 3
1 Desertification, its causes and why it matters 5
2 Responses to desertification 41

Part II Local Desertification Impact and Response 115
3 Desertification indicators: from concept to practice 57
4 Key processes regulating soil and landscape functions 117
5 Human impact on degradation processes 155

Part III Global Desertification Impact and Response 237
6 Responses to land degradation from perception to action 191
7 Global desertification today 239
8 Desertification, ecosystem services and capital 267
9 The way forward: global soil conservation and protection 293

References and further reading 303
Appendix A: Soil basics 305
References and further reading 309
Index 311

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