THE USE OF ALTERNATIVE FUTURES IN A STRATEGY TO ASSESS THE LIKELIHOOD OF LAND DEGRADATION LEADING TO INCREASED SUBSEQUENT POLITICAL INSTABILITY

As stated by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), desertification or land degradation is at the root of political and socio-economic problems and poses a threat to the environmental equilibrium in affected regions. That desertification and political instability are interlinked should not be a surprise, the UN states that half of the 50 armed conflicts in 1994 had environmental causal factors characteristic of drylands (i.e., land degradation). One example cited states that the land’s loss of productivity exacerbates poverty in the drylands, forcing its farmers to seek a way of living in more fertile land or cities. In fact, over one billion people are affected as a direct consequence of desertification including 135 million people who are at risk of being displaced. The physical, biological and social causes of desertification that lead to grave human impacts are interlinked with significant feedback mechanisms. Soil salinization, for example, may result from unsuitable irrigation practices. Changes of vegetation from perennial grasses to shrubs and to annual grasses and forbs might result from overgrazing. Increases in poverty and human out-migration might result from declining agricultural productivity caused by salinization and overgrazing. Because poverty forces the people who depend on land for their livelihood to overexploit the land for food, energy, housing and source of income, desertification can be seen as both the cause and consequence of poverty. Any effective mitigation strategy must address poverty at its very center. It must take into account the social structures and land ownership as well as pay proper attention to education, training and communications in order to provide the fully integrated approach which alone can effectively combat desertification. Seeking solutions to such complex problems requires appropriate technologies and common sense. This paper suggests a technique, alternative futures analysis, to model the likelihood of future land uses in a given region undergoing desertification or at great risk to desertification and to develop an understanding of the risk to political instability coming from each of the alternatives. Furthermore, alternative futures analysis provides a technique (and communication strategy) for illustrating possible conflicts as well their causes and potential solutions. Such a strategy would help local, national and regional land managers, working with their constituent stakeholders to mitigate such effects. A framework for a pilot project employing this technique is presented.