Marco Bahé*
Recife – Imagine a country with 937,000 square kilometres and a population of 18.5 million inhabitants – greater and more populated than the majority of European nations. This country lost 37% of its agricultural productivity in less than 20 years. The reduction in bovine cattle breeding was of 24%. Of goats, 11%. The losses are of US$ 800 million every year. This imaginary country in fact exists and is called the Brazilian semi-arid. The phenomenon causing these losses – capable of scaring the coldest of economists – goes by the name of desertification.
In Brazil, the semi-arid regions represent 9.3% of national territory, concentrated in the Northeast. According to information from the Federal University of the state of Ceará, in the northeastern region of the country, 17.7% of the more than 900,000 squared kilometres are desertified already, directly or indirectly affecting more than 15 million people.
Before anything else, it is important to recall that desertification and drought are completely different things. The drought is a natural climatic and relatively frequent (but of irregular periodicity) phenomenon in semi-arid regions. It is characterised by the poor distribution of rain in time and space. Desertification, on the other hand, is caused, principally, by human action – especially cutting down trees, excessive grazing and exaggerated or inadequate exploitation of arable lands.
On the contrary to what people normally think, semi-arid land is not synonymous of unproductiveness. According to information from the United Nations , the regions of semi-arid climate represent nearly one third of earth surface, are the home of about one billion people and are responsible for nearly 20% of world production of foods. It is an area of great economic and social importance, but which can cause, when badly managed, serious imbalances in the climate and biodiversity.
The impacts of desertification are environmental (destruction of biodiversity, reduction of available water resources and reduction of agricultural productivity), social (migration to the great urban centres, increase in the already vulnerable poverty and destruction of family unity), and economic. They are three dissociable aspects of the phenomenon that fuel each other.
In the environmental area, there are many examples. Considering the most recent, studies developed by the Ministry of Mines and Energy together with the Ministry of Environment identified that in the last ten years alone, the forest cover in the caatinga (biome exclusive of the Brazilian semi-arid) dropped 30% in its total area and the main fact causing this situation is the operation of industrial parks that use native species of the caatinga as a source of energy for industrial operation.
Energy source
The General Forest Coordination of the Brazilian Environment and Renewable Natural Resource Institute (Ibama) concluded a study on the profile of the energy matrix of forest origin and showed that only 3% of the entire consumption of caatinga forest products or sub-products come from projects of sustainable forestry management.
Considering the current scenario that every day more companies use the forest as an energy source in their operations, be it for the economic advantages, be it for the fragility of the control systems of the management organisations, it is forecasted that in the next five years 20% of the remaining caatinga forest cover will have disappeared and also, in consequence, many species exclusive to this biome. With the current scenario, the perspective is that in 2010 we will have only 30% remaining of the total area of the biome, according to the Laboratory of Forest Products of the Ibama.
The losses
According to the Esquel Foundation, organisation that participates in the debate on desertification control in Brazil, between 1977 and 1994, the planted area for foodstuff production increased by 25%. The average rate in the reduction of agricultural productivity of foods (tonnes per hectare) in the Brazilian semi-arid is of about 2% to 3% per year (2.6% between 1977 and 1994).
In the region of the Araripe plateau, the states of Piauí and Pernambuco, also in the Northeast of Brazil, had a reduction in agricultural productivity of 2% per year, while in Ceará, the drop is of more than 3%. Average productivity in Ceará, however, was greater than in the other states. In other words, Pernambuco and Piauí had lower rates, but over a lower productivity average.
Concluding, society, the individual and agriculturists nowadays work 25% more than 20 years ago and manage only 63% of what was previously obtained (loss at an annual rate of 2.8%). It is as if the entire semi-arid region produced and lost 4.8 million tonnes per year. In values this means US$ 360 million.
"The production costs increase and may end up making agriculture unviable; one sees that the costs are not only financial, but also human: an effort all the time greater (child labour) to ensure survival of the group," states Silvio Santana, from Esquel.
Also according to the data gathered by the Esquel Foundation, the water sources at the Araripe plateau had annual reduction of 0.3% per year, between the 100 years prior to 1960. As of that year, the rate increased to 2.8% per year until 1980. Between 1980 and 1995 the rate reached 6% per year. There is a clear acceleration of the processes. For the bad management of resources, the increase in desertified areas is of 3% annually, according to Alexandre Araújo, executive secretary at the Pernambuco Association of Nature Protection (Aspan).
More desertified world
The total degraded area in the whole world is of 61.3 million square kilometres. According to information from the United Nations, the desertification process puts out of production approximately 60,000 squared kilometres of fertile lands per year.
The annual economic losses reach US$ 4 billion, with a recuperation cost of US$ 10 billion per year, in the whole world. Desertification already affects 30% of world territory, affects about 10 million new hectares annually in the whole planet, which represents a cost of US$ 42 billion.
In Brazil, according to a diagnosis carried out by the Ministry of Environment, the economic losses with desertification may reach US$ 800 million per year. The costs of recuperation of the most affected areas reach US$ 2 billion for a period of twenty years, especially in the most affected states, of the Northeastern region and the north of Minas Gerais, in the southeast of Brazil.
Read tomorrow about the choice for 2006 as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification.
*Translated by Silvia Lindsey
