Desertification

Desertification, the degradation of arable land into un-arable desert, is an under recognized international crisis. “Chief causes are deforestation, overgrazing, overdrafting of groundwater, increased soil salinity, overagriculture, and global climate change, all fundamentally caused by the burgeoning human population.” (E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life, 2001)
“Seven percent of Madagascar’s total land mass has become barren, sterile land…More than 80% of Afghanistan's land could be subject to soil erosion and desertification. In Kazakhstan, nearly half of the cropland has been abandoned since 1980. In Iran, sand storms were said to have buried 124 villages.” (Wikipedia, 2008)
The Aral Sea, between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, once the fourth largest lake in the world, had its source rivers diverted for cotton irrigation, resulting in climate change, a five-fold increase in salinity, dust storms, wildlife extinction, the loss of livelihood and massive health problems for the local population, spooky images of boats landlocked in the sand, and the shrinking of the sea by 80%. In 1948, on an island in the Aral Sea, the Soviet Union built a bio-weapons facility for producing, testing, and later dumping pathogenic substances, including anthrax. The current status of this facility has not yet been disclosed.
In Africa, desertification is a major threat. According to UNU's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa., current trends suggest that by 2025 soil degradation will leave 75% of the population without sufficient food.
“In some areas, nomads moving to less arid areas disrupt the local ecosystem and increase the rate of erosion of the land. Nomads typically try to escape the desert, but because of their land-use practices, they are bringing the desert with them…Areas far from natural deserts can degrade quickly to barren soil, rock, or sand through poor land management.” (Wikipedia, 2008) Desertification has nothing to do with the great, shifting sand seas (known as “ergs”), such as the Sahara Desert , which have historically had little or no natural vegetation. Desertification is fertile land gone barren. Think of the Oklahoma dustbowls of the Great Depression. Think of those dustbowls occurring all over the world.
One of the primary causes and effects of desertification is a reduction in biodiversity. For example, in much of the American Southwest, native grasses have been supplanted by creosote bush, a tenacious perennial that sucks the water out of its surroundings, creating “dead zones” around every bush. Old creosote bushes don’t die. They split, and clone themselves. One creosote plant in the Sonoran Desert, called "King Clone", has been found, through carbon dating, to be almost 12,000 years old.
The biodiversity of the American public education curriculum is undergoing its own desertification. An intense national focus on raising mathematics and reading test scores “is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group …indicates that the practice, known as narrowing the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities…71 percent of the nation's 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours of instructional time spent on history, music and other subjects to open up more time for reading and math.” (New York Times, March 26, 2006)
Students that are having the hardest time in school are given the least access to anything they might care about. This is outrageous.
There are the beginnings of attempts to roll back land desertification. In China, a "Green Wall of China", a 5,700 kilometer row of trees almost as long as the Great Wall itself, is being planted to protect "sandy lands" – deserts created by human activity.
We must also roll back curricular desertification. The Arts are a green wall that needs to be planted in public education with deep roots and tall branches. It is time for us to quench our children’s parched, thirsty, fertile minds.

Arnold Aprill
Founding and Creative Director
Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education
www.capeweb.org