According to Savory: More this
Allan
Savory’s TED talk (How to fight desertification and reverse climate change)
proposed an “unthinkable” idea that he claimed we
need to re-educate the public about “overgrazing” causing
desertification. Desertification means human activities increase the
rate at which land becomes desert and causes macro climate change.
Savory proposed if his Holistic Management and planned grazing principle
implemented on 50% of the worlds grassland can bring the quantity of
greenhouse gases to pre-industrial levels. Holistic management uses very
high densities of livestock and quickly moving them between lands to
increase the plant biomass and help soil store nutrients. In addition,
he claimed this is the only method and option we left as mankind to
correct desertification.
In
his talk he showed various results that his research team had
progressively restored the vegetation and grassland that were suffering
from desertification. According to McWilliams’ article (All Sizzle and No Steak), the results were
obtained in 1969 and 1975 (the Charter Grazing Trials) and the
experiments were performed on only 6,200 acres of semi-arid African
lands. The biologists and ecologists worldwide argued that the trials
only count for relatively small areas compared with deserts all over the
world. A Scientific paper by Joseph et al. evaluated the Charter
Grazing Trials research paper and found high similarity between African
studies and North American studies. No solid evidence and significant
data to prove that holistic management and planned grazing could improve
the regeneration of vegetation. The paper also mentioned that the high
density of cattle in small areas reduced the cattle performance because
of individual stresses within livestock animals.
Moreover,
McWilliam pointed out a very good point that Savory did not separate
different kinds of deserts in his talk which was a poor mistake because
there are two kinds of deserts: deserts that have evolved from a long
history and developed a unique desert ecosystem, and bare ground caused
by the overgrazing of livestock. Kelt’s ( 2011) paper stated that the
formation of deserts throughout the whole world had unique extrinsic
(climate) and intrinsic (population density factors). Those deserts have
been developing over a long period of time thus species and vegetation
have already developed unique adaptations to the desert’s ecosystem. We
would be wrong again if we tried to do as what Savory suggested to
“mimic natural complexities” and add 400% (to some cases) of cattle to
deserts and destroyed unique desert ecosystems.
Sources:
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