I think you’re cherry picking. She is either a respected scholar or she’s not.
I am not saying that desertification is not an actual phenomenon, but to deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change is not what science says is true. Indeed they are intrinsically linked.
Drylands cover nearly half of Earth’s surface, yet how they will fare in light of anthropogenic climate change is debated. Here the authors find that over the past 40 years climate change has pushed ~13% of drylands towards desertification threatening hundreds of millions of people in developing...
www.nature.com
“We found that, between 1982 and 2015, 6% of the world’s drylands underwent desertification driven by unsustainable land use practices compounded by anthropogenic climate change. Despite an average global greening, anthropogenic climate change has degraded 12.6% (5.43 million km2) of drylands, contributing to desertification and affecting 213 million people, 93% of who live in developing economies.”
<p>Desertification has been caused by various factors and is a major environmental problem and development bottleneck faced by the world. It is also a serious threat to ecological security and to sustainable economic and social development. As a stubborn world problem, focused on by the United...
journal.hep.com.cn
Cause of desertification. Climate variation and human activities are two main causes of desertification according to the convention. Here, human activity mainly refers to the unreasonable use of natural resources for the development of human civilizations, for urbanization, industrialization and wars. In fact, most scholars maintain that human activity has been the greatest factor affecting desertification since the first human societies formed. However, the question remains as to what role climate variation (or climate change) has and what role drought has during land desertification. These problems are still important to both academics and to human society as a whole, especially since the extreme drought in the Sahel occurred. Indeed, following the United Nations conventions on climate change and biological diversity, more scholars have been encouraged to focus on climate change, drought and desertification.