To what extent do you agree that the human causes of desertification in the sahel are more important than the physical causes?

Desertification is when formerly productive land becomes a desert due to a combination of natural and human factors. It’s a long term change that results in land degrading or becoming poorer, vegetation dying and soil becoming exposed to erosion by wind and rain. The Sahel is an example of where desertification has happened. The sahel is a semi arid region of north central Africa south of the sahara desert. It passes through countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Chad. The sahel has been turning in to the desert since the late 1940s, this has been caused by drought, population increase, overcultivation, over grazing and cutting firewood.

There is only one physical cause of desertification in the Sahel and that is climate change. There have been frequent and very intense droughts that occurred from 1968 to 1974 and then again from 1979 to 1984. Without water for a long period of time the vegetation will die and the soil will turn to dust thus making it more easily eroded by the wind. The intense and frequent droughts are said to be caused by global warming which leads to higher temperatures and an increased evapotranspiration, therefore you could say that the droughts are caused partially by humans as they burn the fossil fuels causing global warming.

The other four causes of desertification; population increase, over cultivation, overgrazing and cutting firewood are all caused by humans.
There has been a natural increase in the population of 3% per year due to high birth rates exceeding the lowering death rates, as the countries that the sahel goes through are in stage 2 of the dtm. Furthermore, there has been an increase in immigration of refugees due to civil wars in Ethiopia, Eritrea and somalia and drought. This is a problem because the increased in population doesn’t match the 2% increase in food production.
Overgrazing occurs when the number of grazing livestock in an area exceeds the carrying capacity. The carrying capacity is the number of animals that have enough vegetation to graze on without causing any long term ecological damage. If there are too many animals that eat the vegetation then it will make the soil more susceptible to erosion by wind and water. Moreover, animals also tramp and destroy vegetation and compact the soil making it much more difficult for roots and water to penetrate. This has occured as a result of the rise in population as more animals are needed to provide food and the replacement of nomadism by sedentary agrriculture has increased the pressure on the land.

To conclude, no desertification would occur in the sahel without any drought, however i believe humans exacerbate the problem causing more rapid desertification to occur.