Environmental Factors and Human Activity

Choose one of the following options - all submissions must conform to the guidelines laid out in the essay instruction sheet. Respond to all parts of the question and support your statements with well-reasoned arguments and references to appropriate resources.

Pastoral Nomads have been put under significant pressure as a result of major social and environmental change over the last several hundred years.

i) Make a case for the effects of each of these changes on the Pastoral Nomad lifestyle.

ii) Given constraints in semi-arid environments, to what extent has the pastoralist lifestyle become unsustainable?

iii) Under the current as well as historical state of desertification, what is a plausible future for semi-arid and arid ecosystems?

or

Many urban areas in developing countries are currently experiencing very high rates of economic and demographic growth. The vast majority live in poverty and are particularly susceptible to a wide range of natural and human-caused hazards.

i) Explain the growth of most cities in developing countries in relation to the high level of migration from rural areas to urban areas.

ii) Explain why the poor are particularly vulnerable to these hazards. Be specific.

iii) What strategies can be followed to improve the standard of living of the urban poor?

Possible Sources -

Chaibva, S. 1996. Drought, famine, and environmental degradation in Africa. Ambio 25:212-213. Davis, D. 2005. Indigenous knowledge and the desertification debate: problematising expert knowledge in North Africa. Geoforum 36(4).

Dodd, J.L. 1994. Desertification and degradation in sub-Saharan Africa: the role of livestock. BioScience, 44: 28-34.

Lesorogol, C. 2005. Privatizing pastoral lands: economic and normative outcomes in Kenya. World Development 33(11): 1959-1978.

Weber, K.T. and S. Horst. 2011. Desertification and livestock grazing: The roles of sedentarization, mobility and rest. Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 1:19.