The opening chapters of this book examine something that never occurred but was widely believed to have existed-the late 20th century desertification crisis in the Sahel. Recent advances in climatology and changing weather patterns have effectively terminated further scientific debate about the existence of widespread Sahelian desertification, providing us with an opportunity to take stock and draw lessons. The logical and empirical shortcomings of the concept of desertification have been known for decades but the idea has been institutionalized at the global level and is remarkably resilient. The middle section of this book presents new reasons for concluding that the concept of desertification is no longer analytically useful and that we should instead struggle to better define and measure dryland degradation. The closing chapters of the book provide case studies from around the world that examine the use and relevance of the desertification concept. Despite an increasingly sophisticated understanding of dryland environments and societies, the uses now being made of the desertification concept in parts of Asia exhibit many of the shortcomings of earlier work done in Africa. It took scientists more than three decades to transform a perceived desertification crisis in the Sahel into a non-event. This book is an effort to critically examine that experience and accelerate the learning process in other parts of the world.

There is much to learn from stakeholders’ adaptations in seeking a new paradigm of dryland development. The case is based on eleven paradoxes: (1) specialised scientific knowledge, formerly accepted as the guide to policy, now needs to engage in partnerships with local stakeholders and to aim for interdisciplinary understanding of complex systems; (2) the population factor, formerly blamed for land degradation (‘desertification’) is now known to work in more complex ways, and positive outcomes can be associated with high densities; (3) climate scientists focus on models for predicting trends while dryland peoples set their priority on managing rainfall variability; (4) recent analyses suggest that demand factors have been underrated, as opposed to supply constraints, in achieving food security; (5) the policy choice between promoting small-scale family farming or large scale commercial agriculture is unresolved and has enormous implications; (6) natural resources are frequently blamed for conflict in drylands, but it has more complex system-wide causes; (7) the emergence of new and growing markets in drylands challenges the assumption that they have little to sell; (8) protecting biodiversity is now a global priority, for good reasons, whereas GM crops and new technologies threaten to destroy or reduce it; (9) technologies aimed at maximising production need to be re-oriented towards sustainability; (10) in a free market system, promoting investment is a priority and needs better analysis; and (11) even as agriculture climbs the development agenda once more, spontaneous income diversification out of agriculture (or complementary to it) attracts more attention from dryland peoples. These paradoxes are explored through the illustration of northern Nigerian experience. A more contextual paradigm of dryland management should include all stakeholders and promote greater local ownership of the policy process. Key words: Adaptation, development opportunities, dryland systems, environmental change, Nigeria, transition.

Key paradigm changes are discernible in the science of desertification or land degradation in the West African Sahel. These have been characterized as a shift from a 'desertification' to a 'resilience' paradigm. The first of these positions, based on an equilibrial model of social-ecological systems, refers to a range of measurable changes which are unilinear with a strong likelihood of irreversibility. The second is based on a disequilibrial model which begins with evidence for sustainable practices under local knowledge and management of variability. Whereas the desertification paradigm attempts to correct misuse through exogenous interventions, designed to transform natural resource management by improved technologies, the resilience paradigm, based on optimizing endogenous capacities, offers an evolutionary trajectory of development adapted to the constraints of small-scale farming and pastoralism. Guided by this distinction, the complexity and variability of the social-environmental systems in the Sahel are disaggregated under the following headings: bio-productivity changes as reflected in remote sensing; rangeland management; deforestation (the expansion of cultivation, burning, fuel-wood cutting and the transition to sustainable practice); and soil nutrient management. Against the backdrop of rapid demographic change, poverty reduction and adaptive capacity are briefly reviewed. An 'escape from Malthus' is being attempted through a smallholder intensification pathway in situ and an income diversification pathway that extends to non-local opportunities. Governments, donors, and other agencies can use these as a platform for policies and interventions.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a fierce debate took place concerning the vulnerability and adaptive practices of farmers and herders in the West African Sahel, and the utility of concepts including ‘adaptation’ to drought. The region has had the most primary research conducted on drought vulnerability and response, and it is referred to as an archetype, notably in work on human security and famine. Some (eg Michael Watt’s ‘Silent Violence’ 1983) painted a gloomy picture of rural life, with farmers beset by brutal commodity markets and extractive governance stretching back over 100 years. Food shortage and famine was, for Watts, created by colonial policies and unequal access to resources. However others, for example Michael Mortimore (author of ‘Adapting to Drought’ 1989) found regardless of these threats households responded (adapted) to drought in innovative and largely successful ways: diversifying into livestock from farming, moving into labouring and small business activity, and finally considering some temporary outmigration to less affected or more affluent regions to provide remittances. Reversible adaptations occurred before less reversible ones. In this chapter we argue that adaptation is socially mediated, not always successful, and is linked into broader political and economic forces. Its utility as a concept is constrained if wedded to Darwinian uses.’Productive Bricolage’ characterizes livelihoods, with different responses pursued at the same time, and for different lengths of time. Development projects can assist community resilience and individual response to food crises, but in unexpected ways. Our findings from fieldwork in Niger, Burkina and Nigeria are discussed and linked to the new preoccupation of the millennium; ‘climate adaptation’. New research on adaptation in semi arid regions urgently needs to learn from this vast reservoir of contextual knowledge in the African drylands, some of it dating back over 40 years.

Youth farming is undergoing a transformation in Nigeria as the incentive framework for small-scale farming changes. Rural-urban migration, rural poverty, education and the new opportunities it affords, and technological change are among the drivers of this transformation. Meanwhile, as the demand for food commodities increases with urbanisation, an exodus of labour from the countryside threatens food sufficiency at the national level. Agrarian policy faces a difficult threefold choice between state-supported large-scale commercial farming, training young farmers for small-scale commercial farming, and continuing present policies of improving incentive structures for small-scale peasant farmers. In Kwara State, the Shonga experiment in large-scale commercial methods, involving 13 Zimbabwean farmers, is viewed through the lens of youth farming and the necessary transfer of national food provisioning to a new generation of producers. It is found that youth farming is likely to be as dependent on state subsidies as the Zimbabweans are.

This paper takes a developmental approach to land degradation in drylands. There is a large knowledge bank on the science and technology of ‘desertification’ which has tended until recently to overly influence dryland development policy. This resource does not translate automatically into appropriate policies or development interventions, as shown by the poor record of ‘desertification control’ over the past half-century. There have been failures to impact on the scale expected either on poverty or on natural resource management. While there is still scope for further advancing the scientific understanding of land degradation, a review of the West African experience has highlighted the priorities of (i) understanding ‘success stories’ of dryland development, (ii) overcoming the constraints which block new or improved technologies through strengthening incentives for investment, and (iii) aligning development policy with dryland peoples’ strategies to diversify their incomes and develop inter-regional linkages. It is therefore argued that a developmental approach is needed, in order to integrate science with policy making, as well as to identify priorities for research in future.

Socio‐economic and policy dynamics strongly influence sustainable land management and consequently the capacity of land to sustain valuable ecosystem services, so it is important that they be incorporated into monitoring and assessment regimes aimed at combating desertification and land degradation. Systematic surveys can provide standardized information on socio‐economic and policy dynamics, supplemented by deeper cause–effect understanding emanating from case studies. Countries increasingly collect geo‐referenced socio‐economic data as part of regular censuses and surveys; the collection of information relevant to sustainable land management could be efficiently added to those exercises. Geographic information systems analysis and modeling can then link social, economic, and policy data with biophysical data to support decision‐making. The identification of typical socio‐economic and policy cause–effect patterns is a potential means for summarizing complex human–environmental interactions in more insightful ways. By integrating monitoring techniques based on both local and scientific knowledge, the relevance, accuracy, reliability, and sensitivity of monitoring can be improved. Such integration can also foster mutual commitment and effective joint planning and action between governments and land‐users leading to the implementation of effective sustainable land management practices. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Sahel's experience of adapting to changes in rainfall on a scale at least comparable to that of climate change scenarios, between the 1960s and the 1990s, suggests that lessons can be learnt that may have a wider utility for policy in the future. The Sahel is a major global agroecological region and its success in adaptation will influence the achievement of the global Millennium Development Goals. From simple typologies of adaptation strategies, our understanding of adaptive capacity has evolved over time (with accumulating observations) into a contextual model which places drought management at the center of a development process. Climate change impacts in future are very uncertain. Policies and interventions should therefore aim to build on the platform of past achievements and existing local knowledge to enable flexibility and diversity and the protection of assets of small-scale farmers and herders. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. WIREs Clim Change 2010 1 134-143

Geographical ResearchVolume 46, Issue 2 p. 237-238 Challenging Nature. Local Knowledge, Agroscience and Food Security in Tanga Region, Tanzania - by Philip W. Porter Michael Mortimore, Michael Mortimore Drylands ResearchSherborne, United KingdomSearch for more papers by this author Michael Mortimore, Michael Mortimore Drylands ResearchSherborne, United KingdomSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 May 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871.2008.00514.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. REFERENCES Tiffen, M., Mortimore, M. and Gichuki, F., 1994: More People, Less Erosion: Environmental Recovery in Kenya. John Wiley, Chichester. Tiffen, M. and Mortimore, M., 2006: Response: forwards to new challenges, not backwards to prescription. Development Policy Review 24, 87–104. Volume46, Issue2June 2008Pages 237-238 ReferencesRelatedInformation

In this millennium, global drylands face a myriad of problems that present tough research, management, and policy challenges. Recent advances in dryland development, however, together with the integrative approaches of global change and sustainability science, suggest that concerns about land degradation, poverty, safeguarding biodiversity, and protecting the culture of 2.5 billion people can be confronted with renewed optimism. We review recent lessons about the functioning of dryland ecosystems and the livelihood systems of their human residents and introduce a new synthetic framework, the Drylands Development Paradigm (DDP). The DDP, supported by a growing and well-documented set of tools for policy and management action, helps navigate the inherent complexity of desertification and dryland development, identifying and synthesizing those factors important to research, management, and policy communities.

Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 105(1):101–118, 2005The linkages between global and policy drivers of land use on the one hand, and land cover data on the other are explored in four dryland areas (Machakos/Makueni Districts in Kenya; Maradi Department in Niger; Diourbel Region in Senegal; the Kano Close- Settled Zone in Nigeria). The findings are that (I) land cover change data are insensitive to short term changes in economic circumstances, mainly because a subsistence priority constrains the impact of market forces; (2) land use or cover variables are poor indicators of deepening agricultural intensification, decapitalisation, or significant transitions hidden in apparently degradational narratives; (3) land use adaptations are embedded in broader changes to livelihood strategies, whose understanding is necessary before constructing land cover scenarios for wider areas. For this reason it is unwise to speculate about supporting capacities or limits to adaptation; (4) representative analyses of process at micro-scale need to be linked in a systematic way to regional land cover scenarios based on remotely sensed data.

A simple theory of ‘desertification’ is found inadequate for understanding the complexity, diverse patterns and flexibility of farmers’ responses to change in environmental conditions and population growth in the Sahel. These include long-term transitions in farming practices, in management of natural resources and in income diversification. This paper reviews evidence relating to deforestation, woodland and rangeland degradation to show that in certain areas, a transition to intensified land use, although initially involving a loss of woodland, has led to the planting or protection of useful trees on farms and maintained biomass levels. Livestock numbers have been maintained, despite declining rainfall and loss or apparent degradation of rangeland, by development of more integrated livestock, arable and marketing systems. The possibility of these trends having impact on Sahelian ‘greening’ is discussed.

According to the mainstream view of African dryland development, widespread and inappropriate land-management practices are leading to desertification. However, improvements in ecosystem management, land investments, productivity, andpersonal welfare in West Africa challenge this perspective.