Global Warming NOW -- World's livable spaces rapidly drying up, U.N. reports
From: Psalm 110 (Melchizedek_at_USA.com)
Date: 06/20/04
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Date: 20 Jun 2004 13:43:49 -0700
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2223302,00.html
World's livable spaces rapidly drying up, U.N. reports
By Chris Hawley
Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS -- The world is turning to dust, with lands the size of
Rhode Island becoming desert wasteland every year and the problem
threatening to send millions of people fleeing to greener countries,
the United Nations says.
One-third of Earth's surface is at risk, driving people into cities
and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa. Thirty-one
percent of Spain is threatened, while China has lost 36,000 square
miles to desert -- an area the size of Indiana -- since the 1950s.
Last week the United Nations marked the 10th anniversary of the
Convention to Combat Desertification, a plan aimed at stopping the
phenomenon. Despite the efforts, the trend seems to be picking up
speed -- doubling its pace since the 1970s.
"It's a creeping catastrophe," said Michel Smitall, a spokesman for
the U.N. secretariat that oversees the 1994 accord. "Entire parts of
the world might become uninhabitable."
Slash-and-burn agriculture, sloppy conservation, overtaxed water
supplies and soaring populations are mostly to blame. But global
warming is taking its toll, too.
The United Nations was to hold a ceremony in Bonn, Germany, on
Thursday to mark World Day to Combat Desertification, and will hold a
meeting in Brazil this month to take stock of the problem.
The warning comes as a controversial movie, "The Day After Tomorrow"
is whipping up interest in climate change, and as rivers and lakes dry
up in the American West, giving Americans a taste of what's to come
elsewhere.
The United Nations says:
>From the mid-1990s to 2000, 1,374 square miles have turned into
deserts each year -- an area about the size of Rhode Island. That's up
from 840 square miles in the 1980s, and 624 square miles during the
1970s.
By 2025, two-thirds of arable land in Africa will disappear, along
with one-third of Asia's and one-fifth of South America's.
Some 135 million people -- equivalent to the populations of France and
Germany combined -- are at risk of being displaced.
Most at risk are dry regions on the edges of deserts -- places like
sub-Saharan Africa or the Gobi Desert in China, where people are
already struggling to eke out a living from the land.
As populations expand, those regions have become more stressed. Trees
are cut for firewood, grasslands are overgrazed, fields are
over-farmed and lose their nutrients, water becomes scarcer and
dirtier.
Technology can make the problem worse. In parts of Australia,
irrigation systems are pumping up salty water and slowly poisoning
farms. In Saudi Arabia, herdsmen can use water trucks instead of
taking their animals from oasis to oasis -- but by staying in one
place, the herds are getting bigger and eating all the grass.
In Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, coastal resorts are swallowing
up water that once moistened the wilderness. Many farmers in those
countries still flood their fields instead of using more miserly "drip
irrigation," and the resulting shortages are slowly baking the life
out of the land.
The result is a patchy "rash" of dead areas, rather than an
easy-to-see expansion of existing deserts, scientists say. These areas
have their good times and bad times as the weather changes. But in
general, they are getting bigger and worse off.
"It's not as dramatic as a flood or a big disaster like an
earthquake," said Richard Thomas of the International Center for
Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas in Aleppo, Syria. "There are
some bright spots and hot spots. But overall, there is a trend toward
increasing degradation."
The trend is speeding up, but it has been going on for centuries,
scientists say. Fossilized pollen and seeds, along with ancient tools
like grinding stones, show that much of the Middle East, the
Mediterranean and North Africa were once green. The Sahara itself was
a savanna, and rock paintings show giraffes, elephants and cows once
lived there.
Global warming contributes to the problem, making many dry areas
drier, scientists say. In the past century, average temperatures have
risen more than 1 degree Fahrenheit worldwide, according to the U.S.
Global Change Research Program.
As for the American Southwest, it is too early to tell whether its
six-year drought could turn to something more permanent. But
scientists note that reservoir levels are dropping as cities like
Phoenix and Las Vegas expand.
"In some respects you may have greener vegetation showing up in
people's yards, but you may be using water that was destined for the
natural environment," said Stuart Marsh of the University of Arizona's
Office of Arid Lands Studies. "That might have an effect on the
biodiversity surrounding that city."
The Global Change Research Program says global warming could
eventually make the Southwest wetter -- but it will also cause more
extreme weather, meaning harsher droughts that could kill vegetation.
Now, the Southwest drought has become so severe that even the
sagebrush is dying.
"The lack of water and the overuse of water, that is going to be a
threat to the United States," Thomas said. "In other parts of the
world, the problem is poverty that causes people to overuse the land.
Most of these ecological systems have tipping points, and once you go
past them, things go downhill."
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