Removal of wood – in developing countries, people use wood for cooking. As the population in desert areas increases, there is a greater need for fuel wood. When the land is cleared of trees, the roots of the trees no longer hold the soil together so it is more vulnerable to soil erosion .

But since the late 1960s, the Sahel has endured an extensive and severe drought. Desertification occurs when land surfaces are transformed by human activities, including overgrazing, deforestation, surface land mining, and poor irrigation techniques, during a natural time of drought.

Various Causes of Desertification

• Overgrazing.
• Deforestation.
• Farming Practices.
• Excessive Use of Fertilizers and Pesticides.
• Overdrafting of groundwater.
• Urbanization and Other Types of Land Development.
• Climate Change.
• Stripping the Land of Resources.

First, it assumes global climate change leads to drought and desertification, which in turn leads to resource scarcity. Since the Sahelian ecosystem largely depends on rainfall, global warming ̶ if it reduces rainfall ̶ may lead to desertification and resource scarcity in the long run.

While climate may be partly to blame for desertification in the Sahel, human activity has also contributed. Most people in the Sahel have historically worked as farmers or herders.

Land degradation and desertification can affect human health through complex pathways. As land is degraded and deserts expand in some places, food production is reduced, water sources dry up and populations are pressured to move to more hospitable areas.

The United Nations’ official definition says desertification is land degradation in typically dry areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities. Many things can cause desertification. Drought, overgrazing, fire, and deforestation can thin out vegetation, leaving exposed soil.

In the Sahel, droughts are becoming more and more intense. Temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than in the rest of the world. But climate change is also causing heavy rains (violent thunderstorms, above-normal rainfall). Two out of three people in the Sahel countries live from agriculture and livestock.

Climatic disturbances may be both a consequence and a cause of desertification. The destruction of the natural grass and woody vegetation cover in dry lands affects the topsoil temperature and air humidity, and thus influences the movements of atmospheric masses and rainfall.

Africa
Africa is the simple answer to the question: where is desertification happening? More specifically, desertification plays its largest role in the grasslands of East Africa, the Kalahari Desert and the Sahara Desert. These regions span over 65 percent of the land.

Holistic Planned Grazing, or Management Intensive Grazing (MiG), gives rise to a planned grazing strategy that has been proven to reverse desertification. While consuming vegetation, grazing livestock, like their grazing animal ancestors, can fertilize with manure and till with hooves.

Overgrazing: Overgrazing is one of the major factors of land degradation or desertification.

The Sahel is a narrow belt of land which lies immediately to the south of the Sahara Desert and which extends across most of Africa. The main causes of desertification include: Population growth – the population in some desert areas is increasing. In places where there are developments in mining and tourism, people are attracted by jobs.

Desertification occurs when land surfaces are transformed by human activities, including overgrazing, deforestation, surface land mining, and poor irrigation techniques, during a natural time of drought. Desertification in the Sahel can largely be attributed to greatly increased numbers of humans and their grazing cattle .

The Sahel is a region of western and north-central Africa. It is semiarid , meaning that it gets more rainfall than a desert but is still fairly dry. The Sahel runs in an east-to-west band through portions of the countries of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, and Eritrea.

Historically the Sahel has been characterized by strong climatic variations and irregular rainfalls , which pose two of the biggest obstacles to food security and poverty reduction in the region, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Things have gotten worse in recent decades, experts say.