Productivity, Variability and Sustainability as Criteria of Desertification

Abstract

Criteria are needed to distinguish the limits of a programme of study or control of desertification (or land degradation). These should be as unambiguous and easy to measure as possible, but not at the expense of their relevance to specific economies and cultures. They should also distinguish degradation involving the environment from that which does not. And they should specify their scale of concern: concern with extensive and long-continued change is termed “conservation” and is distinct from agricultural programmes. Such a programme is properly the province of a body like the EEC. With these requirements in mind, three sets of criteria are explored: (1) Reductions on production or productivity; (2) increases in variability of A production (instability), B income (inequity), or C spatial distribution of production or productivity; and finally (3) decreases in sustainability — the property of the system to recover from a severe shock.