|Obstacles to Tree Planting in Arid and Semi-arid Lands: Comparative Case Studies from India and Kenya (UNU, 1982, 63 pages)|
|4. India and Kenya: Comparisons and contrasts|
Environmental and technical factors
Social and economic factors
Over a period of some 14 years (1951-1964) the UNESCO programme of arid zone research provided a large body of information on the environment, resources, and plant and animal physiology of the zone. Expanding world populations have placed increasing demands on the resources of the zone and caused loss of productivity and spreading desertification. The severity of the problem (among others) was recognized at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Environment (Stockholm) by the recommendation for the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, Nairobi), and this agency itself organized the 1977 United Nations Conference on Desertification (Nairobi).
Throughout these international activities and in many individual national development programmes there has been increasing realization of the part played by trees in the prevention of desertification, the restoration of degraded areas, the provision of goods and services, the amelioration of climate and soil, and the general improvement of the quality of life for the inhabitants of the arid zone and their domestic animals. Revolutions, whether green, political, or electromechanical are useless without soil to grow food crops and fuel to cook them, and trees have an important place in the provision of these two major requirements.