Much More than Simply “Desertification”: Understanding Agricultural Sustainability and Change in the Mediterranean

Abstract

In the socio-economic and climatic complexity of a Mediterranean environment, desertification involves many processes and is much more spatio-temporally sophisticated than is often suggested by both the policy and academic communities. Here we examine the spatial variability of the Mediterranean environment and its agriculture—a supposed key driver of deserti-fication in the region. We examine trends in agricultural production and climate in the region and the differences between north and south. We review the recent history of Mediterranean desertification research and its changing policy context. In particular, we examine the evidence for Mediterranean desertification, and what we now understand of it, with the hindsight of three decades of research and having 'come out of the other side' of decadal drought events that prompted large-scale concern over the desertification of Mediterranean Europe in the 1990 s. We focus particularly on the spatial heterogeneity of the Mediterranean and the implications of this heterogeneity for understanding perceived desertification in the region, and explore implications for land use and management policy-making, indicating the need for a much more locally nuanced approach. Desertification is an umbrella term that is used to represent a range of biophysical and socio-economic processes that may combine to reduce the biological potential of the land in arid and semi-arid agricultural areas. In contrast, at the edges of true deserts, desertization can be a simple process of desert encroachment by migrating dunes. In the socio-economic and climatic complexity of a Mediterranean envi-ronment, desertification involves many more processes than desertization and is much more spatio-temporally sophisticated than is often suggested by both the policy and academic communities. Here we examine the Mediterranean environ-ment and its agriculture—a supposed key driver desertification in the region—and look into the recent history of Mediterranean desertification research. In particular, we examine the evidence for Mediterranean desertification, and what we now understand of it, with the hindsight of three decades of research and, moreover having 'come out of the other side' of decadal drought events that prompted large-scale concern over the desertification of Mediterranean Europe in the 1990s. We focus particularly on the spatial heterogeneity of the Mediterranean and the implications of this heterogeneity for understanding perceived desertification in the region in the 1990s and now, having access to much more detailed spatial data.