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106 CHAPTER fIVE COMBATINg DESERTIFICATION Evolving Perceptions and Strategies Alon Tal We stand today on lands which show deep scars and damages of the rise and fall of nations and civilizations. These arid lands have been afflicted by the course of the conflict of Cain and abel, the conflict between farmer and nomadic shepherd along the borderland of the “sown” and the “unsown.” The conflict still hangs over these lands and similar lands of eastern asia, as a sword of Damocles. “Conquest of the Desert” involves not only the sciences, but social organization and a square deal for all segments of a population. —Walter Clay Lowdermilk, Jerusalem, 1952 When David Ben-Gurion stunned the nation in 1953 and moved to sede boqer, a newly formed, remote southern kibbutz, it was a radical statement from a radical leader reflecting the depth of his personal commitment to conquering the negev desert. ben-Gurion was obsessed with what he perceived to be the neglected state of israel’s southlands—an area that included some 60 percent of the country’s area, but only a tiny fraction of its people. after leading his nation through a war of independence, it was as if he had decided to personally wage war against his country’s hot and desolate desert: “if the state does not exterminate the desert . . . the desert will exterminate the state” was his grim battle cry. Thirty years later, the world would acknowledge that desertification posed a crisis of global dimensions. but the diagnosis and the cure to this global challenge, as defined by the United nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UnCCD) (UnCCD 1994) and elsewhere, have emerged as fundamentally different from the human-environment conflict paradigm that benGurion trumpeted and epitomized. rather, the problem termed “desertification ” is largely characterized as one of carrying capacity exceeded, requiring COMbATINg DESERTIfICATION 107 greater human humility, restraint, and resourcefulness in settling and developing the drylands. Whereas ben-Gurion saw the desert itself as a threat to human progress, today it is human activities that are perceived as threatening the long-term health of desert ecosystems. accordingly, desertification is understood not so much as the ineluctable expansion of the world’s deserts with unstoppable sand dunes overrunning civilization, but rather, as dispassionately defined by the United nations: “land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities” (UnCCD 1994). by this definition, some of the measures inspired by ben-Gurion for “conquering the recalcitrant negev” actually have the potential to accelerate desertification processes, degrading the vulnerable soil. for example, transforming traditional rangelands to intensely cultivated farmlands frequently triggers natural erosional processes (schlesinger et al. 1990). today’s anti-desertification policies around the world seek to stop and even reverse such negative impact through sustainable agriculture and forestation , regulation of erosive activities, and economic development that does not exacerbate pressures on the soil. although the israeli government has never articulated a comprehensive program to combat desertification per se, almost a century of sundry efforts to increase dryland productivity constitutes a proxy for such a strategy. aggregated , the strategy includes aggressive water management and extensive irrigation, intensive desert agriculture, afforestation, and erosion control as well as regulation of rangelands and grazing. for the most part, management strategies that have emerged over the years produce net gains for the health and productivity of israel’s lands. israel’s experience provides a unique case study in desertification for at least three reasons. first, unique, local climatic features contribute to the country serving as a real-world laboratory. israel has an extremely steep precipitation gradient. over only a couple hundred kilometers, israel’s “drylands” run the full spectrum of climatic zones: beginning with hyper-arid and arid areas in the south, semiarid lands in the central and northern negev, and dry subhumid zones up through the Galilee. indeed, only some 3% of israel has sufficient precipitation to avoid classification as drylands (CLemDes 2004). naturally, influenced by the country’s myriad climatic conditions, activities to combat desertification are diverse, and can be contrasted and evaluated. technically, the hyperarid and arid zones, which constitute almost half of the country’s territory, are not given to desertification processes. Development can certainly damage land conditions in these parched, low-rainfall areas . for example poorly executed irrigation can exacerbate salinization. but generally, soil erosion per se is nonexistent. Quite simply there is not a natural, [3.144.42.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 16:31...

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