MANGALORE: Land degradation and desertification are affecting the country badly. If enough care is not taken, these dry lands will eventually turn into deserts, environmental scientist N.A. Madhyastha has said.

He was delivering a lecture on "Desert and Desertification" at the Institution of Engineers here on Tuesday.

Dr. Madhyastha said that dry lands could significantly contribute to economic growth by serving as a base for human habitation and agriculture. But they were vulnerable to drought in case of unsustainable human activity, he said.

Dr. Madhyastha said that 3.6 billion of the world's 5.2 billion hectares of dry land for agriculture had suffered erosion and soil degradation. One billion of the world's 6 billion population was affected by desertification. This was forcing people to leave their farms for jobs in the cities, he said.

Deforestation removed trees that held the soil to the land. It also created conditions that would intensify wild fires and stirring winds, and affect water resources, he said.

Dust from Africa reached Europe and U.S. cities through fast wind. It caused health problems and had shown to boost death rates, he said.

India was losing 4.5 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product owing to land degradation, and 15 per cent of land cover was getting degraded owing to human activities, Dr. Madhyastha said.

Desertification was owing to land degradation and loss of the land's productivity. Owing to human-induced factors and climate change, dry lands became semi-arid, arid and finally turned into deserts. Once dry land turned into desert, there was no way of restoring it, Dr. Madhyastha added. The Indian desert was characterised by huge shifting sand dunes, high wind speed, scarce rainfall and intense solar radiation. Efforts had been made since the 1960s for ecological restoration of the Thar desert, he said.

An afforestation programme, which included stabilisation of shifting sand dunes and creation of micro-climate through tree screens, was launched by the Forest Department, Rajasthan, Dr. Madhyastha said.

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