Towards sustainable development and environmental conservation in African drylands

The paper highlights the problems, issues and constraints of arid lands development and outlines new means and actions to achieve sustainable development in the drylands of Africa. It is contended that the foremost causes of the widespread environmental degradation in these drylands are the rapidly increasing animal and human pressure and outside influences, leading to overexploitation and poor management of resources. Development in the drylands has had a false start and the models which have been adopted are derived from the experience of the advanced countries. Many development assistance projects have attempted to change the traditional economic base by offering alternatives such as irrigated agriculture and fisheries. Several have failed because the alternatives to pastoralism have not offered competitive solutions and also because there have been impositions which have worked to the detriment of the pastoralists and the natural environment. Attempts to introduce modern ranching projects have also failed. After 30 years of abortive development in these drylands, a new approach is needed, one that is based on self-reliance and policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base. To achieve this requires structural changes at two levels: internal and external. Overall development effort needs to be self-reliant and people-centred. Development planning should aim to understand the traditional risk-avoidance strategies of the local communities in these drylands and attempt through the introduction of broader knowledge and improved technologies to reduce the risks without attempting drastic changes. The challenge of rural development at the internal level is to focus on a variety of strategies and actions at several fronts simultaneously to break the vicious cycle of poverty and environmental degradation, achieve sustainable development and integrate these drylands into the mainstream of national and regional development. At the external plane, sustainable development requires collective action to resolve the debt problems, strengthening international financial stability, redirecting resources away from wasteful armaments and establishing more equitable terms of trade. There is also need for stronger international institutions with more decision making authority than we have at the moment at the global level.