Towards Sustainable Dryland Development in Africa: Integrating Groundwater and Land Management

Abstract

Long term, irreversible loss in agricultural production from degradation of dryland is a major threat to human, food, and environmental security in the arid and semi-arid parts of Africa. The scope to compensate here for with agricultural intensification has however remained limited. The key limiting factor is water, with the consequent erosion of the very foundation for social and environmental security, exacerbation of rural poverty, and frequent regional famines with increasing food aid dependence.

Land degradation is linked to deforestation and inappropriate agricultural land use, and dealt with by local, community based watershed management practices often with long term consequences for the water balance at basin and aquifer level. In semi-arid areas groundwater resources are being depleted and degraded due to land use changes in aquifer recharge areas resulting in reduced seepage, with desiccation and salinization of humid zones as the main agricultural production areas and habitats for dryland biodiversity. With these signals the benefits, with synergies and reduced overlap, of integrated land-groundwater management interactions to sustain dryland eco-systems and adapt agricultural production to impacts of climatic change are increasingly recognized.

The paper, backing integrated land-water management approaches at professional and policy and institutional levels, draws upon the findings of the recent GEF/STAP — UNESCO/IHP groundwater workshops, and cases of integrated land-water management of African dryland, and discusses the scope for conservation and production benefits in the light of socio-economic and environmental drivers at the local, national and sub-regional scales.