Deforestation and desertification. Critical development issues?

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,5, University of Warwick, language: English, abstract: Drought and desertification threaten the livelihood of more than 1.2 billion people

across 110 countries. Around 2 billion people live in ¿dry-lands¿, which occupy around

40 per cent of the earth¿s land surface, while 90 per cent of the people who live in

drylands are from DC (Kingsbury et al. 2012,314). Drought and desertification effect

strongly the development of a country. The town Baga in Nigeria, was once a

fisherman¿s village. It was at the coast of the Tschad lake, now it is more than 30km

away from the lake. The increasing desertification of the region at Tschad lake drove the

city to become agriculturally centred, the outcome of desertification for the local

population is significant.

This essay argues for a strong impact of ¿environmental¿ problems like desertification

and deforestation on the development of a country. This essay wants to highlight the

importance of these problems for development science. The key argument of this essay

is the reciprocal influence between development and environmental problems.

Development often generates environmental problems, which in turn aggravates future

development.