Word: sahel
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...supplies of oil and other energy sources through 1990, but even before then the poor nations will experience serious shortages, with the outlook particularly bleak for the one-quarter of humanity dependent primarily on wood for fuel. Already the relentless quest for firewood in places like Africa's Sahel and the foothills of the Himalaya-to say nothing of such commercial exploitation as the denuding of the Amazon rain forest -has meant the annual loss of enough trees to forest half the state of California. One side effect: as the trees are slashed away, the ground loses its ability...
There would be some benefits, to be sure. Heavier rainfall would possibly restore Africa's extremely dry Sahel, the Sahara and the Arabian desert to their ancient fertility and make vast tracts in Siberia and Canada suitable for growing cereal grains. But the rich wheat and corn belt in the central U.S. would probably become too dry for these crops. Hundreds of millions of people might suffer from these dislocations...
...peregrinations of the Tuareg in Niger, Mali and Upper Volta and the nomadic Masai in Kenya and Tanzania frighten their respective governments, who would prefer to see them sedentary and hence politically under control. So to keep them in place, we have the permanent pumping stations in the Sahel and the "ranches" of East Africa, destroying irreplaceable elements of the human mosaic and creating new deserts, all in the name of "progress...
...this is not the Sahel; South Africa is the most industrialized country in Africa, no longer considered a "developing country" by international organizations...
Once you accept this fact, and the fact that much of the globe's arable land is underutilized, the problem of hunger takes on new dimensions. If Mali produced enough peanuts to export them during the 1974 drought in the Sahel, why were peasants there starving? If it is possible to increase productivity on Bangladesh acreage by a factor of 15, why is the country so often described as a basket case whose people are doomed...