Deserting Desertification -By Abubakar Idris Misau

At first glance, the words “Deserting” and “Desertification” sound almost identical and together seem not to make any sense; ironically however, especially as intended here, they are the antagonists who jointly tell us what we must do to save life on Earth. Sorry, let me explain.

It was my elementary school Maths teacher who first taught me that when a negative number is multiplied by another negative, the resulting answer must be positive. This, I had to concede later, isn’t a conspiracy. If it were, it would never have been corroborated by our English teacher. The two core-subjects’ teachers were staunch enemies [I mean, non-friends]; yet the latter said there’s a similar rule in linguistics and semantics about what is called the “double negatives”.

Since deserting something literally means to abandon it, deserting seems negative. On the other side of the equation, desertification, the process through which a serious productive land becomes insane and destitute, is such a dangerous thing that no doubt qualifies as another negative. Going by the arithmetic-linguistics parlance of double negatives therefore, “deserting”, as used in this piece, becomes an honourable cause. Simply put, deserting desertification does not mean running away from what one needs to care for, but abandoning our harmful habits that are turning our green fertile lands into dry lifeless deserts. In other words, deserting desertification is a call to action on the need to change the ways we deal with the back surface of our dear mother Earth.

Come to think of it huh, throughout the planet Earth, mother Earth is the only mother whose children are hellbent on turning her barren out of greed. This we do through our double dealing with, on one hand the mother and on the other her enemies. It seems to me as though we love coming to her in the morning saying “oh Mama, give us today our daily bread”, and then go behind her back and set the bakery on fire at night! I mean, it’s no difference when the so-called most intelligent species, numbering up to 8 billion, dedicated the intellect to deforestation, overgrazing, poor agronomic practices, open-pit mining, and other unsustainable land-use practices that strip lands of vegetation, exhaust soil nutrients, and disrupt water cycle; all while expecting the mother to keep providing us every ecosystem service as if nothing happened. But it is simply an “inevitable consequence of nature” [to borrow from Prof. Brian Cox] that when we stretch dryland ecosystems to their breaking points, they turn to arid wastelands – read: deserts – or more appropriately “sandlands”.

As a matter of fact therefore, whichever way one sees the bad guy, the truth is, Mr. Desertification hardly ever acted alone. In the Sahelian ecological region of Northern Nigeria and other regions globally, he almost always works with Madam Earth’s children to damage her reproductive organs. Now, that’s such bad revelation. Meanwhile, the good news is that not all her children are the same. Some good Samaritans have even been working to extinguish the fire, in which case they deserve some support;  some conspire against her out of ignorance, in which case they can do with some education; and so on and so forth – hence this call to action.

Here, forgive me for introducing the Greek philosopher Aristotle. It was his idea that writers should, in exercising their duty, try to peg arguments by the three fundamental pillars [modes] of persuasion or the rhetorical triangle; Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos deals with the communicator’s credibility; pathos with the audience’s emotions; and logos handles the logical reasoning contained in the presentation.

Long story short, since this writer is not an authority on the subject in question, he ought not to suggest any social behavioural change straight out of his moro-moro head. He is to simply convey the message of the world’s most credible Who-is-Who on the issue: namely, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

According to the UNCCD, humanity destroys about 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 …100 million hectares of productive land every year. The first time I read this, I was shocked. I knew that we clear-fell up to 10 million hectares of forest lands annually, but I didn’t know that we are destroying the rangelands, grasslands and so on at that rate. For a perspective, damaging one hundred million hectares of land annually is losing the whole of Egypt on yearly bases. Or, better still, destroying the equivalent of four football fields each one second. Most probably, this message would make more sense to us if the changes are happening right before our eyes. Imagine two countries playing a game in the ongoing World Cup only for the stadium to turn into a total desert in a second. The World Cup would likely be asked to give way for an emergency UNCCD Summit.

In fact there is no doubting it, the more land we allow to desert encroachment, the more likely we are to go to war with each other. That is why, in 2020, during a UN Security Council meeting to discuss ‘Maintenance of international peace and security: the humanitarian impact of environmental degradation and peace and security’, Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of UNCCD, said: “In arid lands, such as in Africa’s Sahel region, violence often erupts over competition for access to depleted land and scarce water resources.” He then went ahead to outline three factors that are adding fuel to the flame: over dependence on natural resources by rural dwellers; shrinking of the resources due to land degradation, drought and climate change; and high population density.

All of these are self-evident. In Northern Nigeria, the conflict between farmers and herdsmen over scarce natural resources is a vivid case of that. It’s also a common knowledge that Lake Chad has lost up to [a staggering] 90% of its surface area since the 1960s, shrinking from 26,000 km² in 1963 to as low as <1,500 km² in 2018 when the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published the story “Tale of a disappearing lake”. These affect people in millions.

There is no question whatsoever, drylands are the closest bus-stop to deserts and are therefore the major victims of desertification. Now, let’s go back to Bonn to collect some statistics from the UNCCD again. Covering up to 41% of the earth’s land surface, majorly in developing countries of Africa and Asia, drylands are home to more than 2 billion people. And because more than 70% and 20% of them are rangelands and grasslands respectively, half of the world’s livestock and up to 44% of crops are produced from drylands. How essential are they.

Meanwhile, right now, as scientists say, up to 40% of the world’s land is already degraded, directly affecting over 3.2 billion people. Also, land degradation and droughts cost the global community an estimated eye-watering $878 billion every single year. Isn’t that a lot of money to squander on making the earth look like the surface of Mars, huh?! For me, turning the green planet into another red planet is a cold dry bitter joke.

As the Roman Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius put it 18 centuries ago; “You can commit injustice by doing nothing”. Indeed, this is an issue about which being neutral is being complicit. It now makes more sense to me what one of my mentors once told me, for which I must quote him verbatim: “Mr. Idris”, he said, “you see, doing nothing is such an expensive hobby…” Suffice it to say that if we continue to ignore this crisis, the financial and physical hangover will be brutal. Well, it actually already is.

I don’t want to go into discussing the need for governments and big corporatives to invest $1 billion a day until 2030 to meet global land restoration targets – which in fact is precisely required. I know it might sound like a hefty price tag, but it is actually the ultimate buy-one-get-one-free deal one can possibly lay hold on. For we know for a fact that for every one dollar invested in healthy land, the economic return is between $7 and $30. It turns out, by this realistic assumption thus, that saving the planet is highly profitable.

While it is not possible for all things to be detailed in an article this short, addressing desertification isn’t rocket science. We know how to do it well enough. The solution simply requires a massive shift. We first need to address deforestation and work toward restoring already degraded lands. Farmers need to switch to smart agricultural methods that protect the soil. If we can save rainwater and give the soil periodic holidays to “fallow”, we definitely can stop the deserts from winning. I tell you all these because I have a modest understanding of the basics. After all, I am a development practitioner who envisioned a climate-resilient food-secure sub-Saharan Africa and whose work and current focus spans sustainable land-use practices, assisted natural regeneration, and agroforestry and livelihood systems in Nigeria.

In 1994, the UN General Assembly established the UNCCD and declared June 17 as the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. Since then, June 17 is commemorated to promote awareness on solutions to land degradation, drought, and desertification. The theme for this year, 2026, is “Rangeland: Recognize. Respect. Restore.” As this writer presumes we all know what rangelands are, it’s fair to allow relevant MDAs like Ministries of Agriculture-Environment-Livestock and initiatives such as the African-led Great Green Wall Initiative to deliver their mandates in peace while we equally do our parts as individuals and as groups.

So therefore, the choice before us is simple, yet likely embarrassing depending on how we manage it. We can either continue on our current path, in which case we are to watch our favorite green spaces turn to dust; or we can make a stand today to save life on land. Because if we don’t desert our destructive habits right now, the desert is going to move in and claim our dessert (dessert not desert). My ancestors would say “Dabara ta rage wa mai shiga rijiya.”

There I lie.

— Abubakar Idris Misau, a Forestry and Wildlife graduate from the University of Maiduguri, writes from Akure, Southwest, Nigeria. He is reachable through +2349030178211, or via email abubakar.consult@gmail.com.