Ref No.:
Researcher: Mustafa M Suliman
Country/Region Covered: Sudan
Research Period: unknown
Funding Source: unknown

Abstract:

In this paper, the effects of fire and drought as ecological components, farming and pastoralism as land-use patterns are discussed and compared as they relate to the environment.

The pastoralists' impact on the environment is often confused with other land-users' impacts and in most cases unduly exaggerated.

Fire, in the hands of farmers is being altered from a natural phenomenon to a destructive tool in both the savannah and semi-desert zones. Shifting cultivation based on vegetation clearance by fire is responsible for the rapid encroachment of farming in pasturelands. Also unprescribed burning is responsible for destruction and loss of nearly 25% of the annual production from the savannah rangelands in the Sudan.

Normal oscillations in rainfall regimes are being accentuated in 'droughts' by farmers permanent acquisition of land, physical removal and replacement of the natural vegetative cover by monocropping. Farming-induced changes in land characteristics are often drastic and instant. Pastoralism on the other hand is largely biological in its relationship with the environment.

Plant communities and soil types in the savannahs and semi-arid ecosystems can reasonably be described as well adapted to occasional burning, natural oscillations in rainfall 'droughts' and grazing, but cannot be described as adapted to and immuned against wholesale physical clearance as practised by farmers.

Scientific and technological progress, international market forces and government policies have clearly been of greater help to farmers than to pastoralists. Subsequently, pastoralists are subjected to constant and unfair marginalisation. In the Sudan, and despite their substantial contribution to GDP they are often conveniently ignored in all government policies and development plans to the extent that no legislation has yet been enacted to define or protect pasturelands against encroachment of commercial or traditional farming. Even the simple principles of grazing management have never been given a genuine chance for application.