Then, desertification and drought exacerbate poverty and thus political instability. It contributes in an important way to the scarcity of water, with interior displacements of populations, the migrations and social ruptures. That can be a major cause of social instability, tensions between bordering countries, even of armed conflicts. It appears more and more clearly that there is often a close relationship between disorders and social conflicts, on the one hand, and environmental problems, like desertification, on the other hand.
Socio-economic consequences
The impact is essentially on:
- The agricultural systems (falls of returns, the quality is affected…)
- Declines of agricultural income: this situation is more marked at the level of countries on agricultural economic base.
The lands degradation of consequence of drought, desertification and change of climate, affects a significant share of arable lands of the planet and has a direct impact on the standard of living of populations and the economic development of countries. It involves economic losses for farmers, it disturbs the local and regional food markets and it is source of a social and political instability.
The soil impoverishment by the effect of drought and desertification is carrying poverty and socio-cultural erosion. It is a relaxation of traditional structures and their transformation under effects of the market economy (BEDRANI, BESSAOUD, 2006).
The first assessments carried out on consequences of drought in France for example, advance the figure of a billion Euros of damage for agriculture and 1.6 billion Euros for the damage caused by fires. It still remains to evaluate the impact of these events on cultural heritage and naturalness.
(Press release, first assessment of drought consequences, reported by the French Council of Ministers).
In North Africa, for instance the annual costs of desertification included are between 1.36% from the PIB (Algeria) and 0.4% (Morocco). In the sub-Saharan countries, they range between 1 and 10 % of the agricultural PIB. These costs are under-estimated altogether. They take into account, indeed, only the direct costs of desertification (only agricultural losses).
On the socio-economic level, desertification reduces economic resources considerably. According to a new research of the World Bank, the loss of natural resources of a country of the Sahel corresponds to 20% of its annual (PIB) gross domestic product. It is estimated that on a worldwide scale, the shortfall of zones immediately affected by desertification amounts to 42 billion dollars per annum approximately. Economic costs and social indirect undergone apart from the Affected areas, including the surge of “ecological refugees” and the national food production loss, could be definitely higher.
The infringement of the systems of production leads to an indisputable poverty, where from a threat of famine. To escape it, men, women and children make appeal to the exodus towards lands more favorable to the life.
The case most illustrating is of that of the migrants en masse from the desert regions of Sahel towards Spain.
It is worth noting that the FAO plans before 2020, a migratory flow about 60 million persons of the desert regions of sub-Saharan Africa towards North Africa and Europe with all that it leads to socioeconomic pressure and thus, political on the territories of reception.