suggest management strategies for droughts and desertification
Answers
Answer:
supply rural people with long-term employment, adequate income and decent living and working conditions; maintain, if necessary after rehabilitation, the productive capacity of natural resources; and. mitigate the agricultural sector's vulnerability to hostile natural and socio-economic factors and other hazards
Answer:
Why are actions needed?
The source document for this Digest states:
Rationale
Major policy interventions and management approaches are needed to prevent and reverse desertification. Assessment of future scenarios shows that major interventions and shifts in ecosystem management will be needed to overcome challenges related to desertification. As recognized by the UNCCD, such interventions are to be implemented at local to global scales, with the active engagement of stakeholders and local communities. Improved information generation and access, as noted in the final section, will help create enabling conditions for this implementation (S14.4.2, C6.6).
Societal and policy responses vary according to the degree of desertification that a society faces.This intensity of responses needs to be reflected accordingly in National Action Programmes stipulated by the UNCCD and their subsequent implementation. In areas where desertification processes are at the early stages or are relatively minor, it is possible to arrest the process and restore key services in the degraded areas. The adverse impacts of desertification on dryland ecosystem services and limited success in rehabilitation demonstrate that it is more cost-effective to
prevent desertification (C22.3.2, C22.6, R17).
Addressing desertification is critical and essential to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.The human well-being of dryland people, about 90% of whom are in developing countries, lags significantly behind other areas. Approximately half of the people worldwide who live below the poverty line live in drylands. The combination of high variability in ecosystem conditions in drylands and high levels of poverty leads to a situation where societies are vulnerable to a further decline in human well-being. Addressing desertification therefore facilitates eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, as envisioned in the MDGs. This also complements directly the policies to be included in NAPs to combat desertification (C22.ES).
Source & ©: MA  Desertification Synthesis Report (2005
6.2 What actions can be taken to prevent desertification?
The source document for this Digest states:
Prevention

Truck with wood
Source: MA
The creation of a “culture of prevention” can go a long way toward protecting drylands from the onset of desertification or its continuation.The culture of prevention requires a change in governments’ and peoples’ attitudes through improved incentives. Young people can play a key role in this process. Evidence from a growing body of case studies demonstrates that dryland populations, building on long-term experience and active innovation, can stay ahead of desertification by improving agricultural practices and enhancing pastoral mobility in a sustainable way. For example, in many areas of the Sahel region, land users are achieving higher productivity by capitalizing on improved organization of labor, more extensive soil and water conservation, increased use of mineral fertilizer and manure, and new market opportunities (C22.3.1).
Integrated land and water management are key methods of desertification prevention. All measures that protect soils from erosion, salinization, and other forms of soil degradation effectively prevent desertification. Sustainable land use can address human activities such as overgrazing, overexploitation of plants, trampling of soils, and unsustainable irrigation practices that exacerbate dryland vulnerability. Management strategies include measures to spread the pressures of human activities, such as transhumance (rotational use) of rangelands and well sites, stocking rates matched to the carrying capacity of ecosystems, and diverse species composition. Improved water management practices can enhance water-related services. These may include use of traditional water-harvesting techniques, water storage, and diverse soil and water conservation measures. Maintaining management practices for water capture during intensive rainfall episodes also helps prevent surface runoff that carries away the thin, fertile, moisture-holding topsoil. Improving groundwater recharge through soil-water conservation, upstream revegetation, and floodwater spreading can provide reserves of water for use during drought periods (C22.2.3, C22.4.3, C22.4.4, R6.2.2, R6.3.7).