We cannot survive without arable land. Therefore we must protect, preserve and conserve it. We know this not because we are spiritually aware but because we have a little bit of common sense.
If the key to rack the code read desertification is spiritualism India would have had no environmental crisis. The basic tenet in this country is to worship nature. Spirituality is in-built into their genetic make-up. Yet when it comes to desertification, it is one of the most affected countries. Trees fell with a vengeanance by the same people. Spirituality goes out of the window to suit the need of the hour. Spirituality in any context a (a) soul searching (b) dispositional change cannot be forced nor is it an answer to the problem.
The implification of desertification can only be understood scientifically that is we must know the causative factors to combat the menace. Across the planet, poverty, unsustainable land management and climatic change are turning dry lands into deserts. Desertification in turn worsens and leads to poverty, ramification of which will be felt by communities like Africa to achieve the millennium development goals by 2015. Drought and poor practice in farming turned parts of the great plains of the US into “desert bowl”. It was improved method of agriculture and land and water management which had prevented the disaster from recurring and not their spiritualistic leanings. Overgrazing again can be controlled by the use of fences: - a valuable tool of good welled management. Migration is China’s answer to the problem of desertification and extreme poverty in the wastelands and Dust Mountains.
The Eden Foundation in Nigeria is researching different ways of re vegetating and advising farmers to regain valuable land. We live in the era of technological upsurge! Satellites, remote sensing systems, etc. provide the much needed global monitoring necessary to check the rate of desertification which is 5-6 kilometers per year.
Finally, a spiritually aware person is an asset, who might curb man’s greed, but definitely not a remedy to fulfill his needs of combating increasing desertification.