This paper reviews geographical studies of desertification, one of major global environmental issues in this century, in a historical perspective. Mention is made of the present status and future tasks of Japanese studies on this topic.
Studies of desertification can date back to the early 20th century when a debate on the question of “progressive desiccation” and “desert encroachment” on the southern margin of the Sahara was of major concern among French and English geographers. Among others, following two scientists must be noted as the founders of desertification.studies: E. P. Stebbing (1935), English forestry professor who first stressed the spreading of desert conditions and the role of man in environmental deterioration, and A. Aubreville (1949), French ecologist and plant geographer who first used the term “desertification” in his book and persisted in his opinion of the creation of desert-like conditions due to human activities.
Since the early 1970s, when the “Drought in Africa” reached its first culmination, studies on desertification issue, including those by geographers, have been accelerated. The U. N. Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) held in Nairobi in 1977, with the “Drought in Africa” in the backdrop, had drawn the widespread attention of the public and scientists. The activities of world geographers, in particular those organized in the IGU Working Group on Desertification in and around Arid Lands (1972-80), had served great deal in the preparation of the UNCOD and the Plan of the Action to Combat Desertification (PACD), the major product of the UNCOD, by presenting background documents and case studies. Since 1980, international cooperative research on arid lands within the IGU has been succeeded by the Working Group on Resources Management in Drylands.
Recent activities of geographers in and outside of the Working Group have contributed to the implementation of and the assessment of the progress of the PACD. One of the recent trends in the desertification studies is the prevalent attention to the geopolitical approach to the problems of poverty and famine, and the transfer of strategies to combat desertification applied in one region to other regions.
In Japan, overseas research in and and semi-arid lands began as early as the mid-1960s, but the attention to the desertification issue by geographers did not grow until the early 1980s. However, a number of studies in the and to humid regions of the world by Japanese geographers have been more or less related to the desertification phenomenon in a broad sense, i, e. soil erosion, vegetation degradation, water logging and salinization of irrigated lands, etc.
With the “Crisis of Africa” resulting from the second culmination of persistent drought and desertification in the early 1980s in the background, the above studies were brought together into the Symposium on the Geography of Desertification held in September 1986. The papers presented at the symposium and published in this special issue have revealed rapid progress in the desertification studies in Japan in the last years. However, Japanese studies are still young, and following should be reinforced for further development of desertification studies.
1) Clima.tological and meteorological studies on the causes and effects of drought at various scales.
2) Comparative studies between regions under different climatic conditions as well as under different political and socioeconomic conditions.
3) Studies of human aspects in relation to the problems of poverty, population growth, famine, energy supply, etc.
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