Posts
Whether
or not climate change " helped spark" the unjust war
against Syria by external forces taking advantage of local tensions
or not, it has exacerbated the appalling problems the war has
created.
All wars are resource wars and the M.E. will be confronted
with the West continuing to attempt to control the regions resources
be those fossil fuels, water,productive land or hard working people.
(yeah I know, when
did they ever worry about the U.N.).
Deforestation will continue to
make the M.E. a drier, more arid region making Syria's fertile plains
and valleys another target for imperialist intentions. Never
underestimate the issue of A.C.C.in wars,it will soon become the norm
as our global habitat dies away.
---Kevin Hester
Did
climate change help spark the Syrian war?
2
March, 2015
A
new study says a record drought that ravaged Syria in 2006-2010 was
likely stoked by ongoing manmade climate change, and that the drought
may have helped propel the 2011 Syrian uprising. Researchers say the
drought, the worst ever recorded in the region, destroyed agriculture
in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed
farmers to cities, where poverty, government mismanagement and other
factors created unrest that exploded in spring 2011. The conflict has
since evolved into a complex multinational war that has killed at
least 200,000 people and displaced millions. The study appears today
in the leading journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We're
not saying the drought caused the war," said Richard Seager, a
climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory who coauthored the study. "We're saying that added
to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold
into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more
likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region."
A
growing body of research suggests that extreme weather, including
high temperatures and droughts, increases the chances of violence,
from individual attacks to full-scale wars. Some researchers project
that manmade global warming will heighten future conflicts, or argue
that it may already be doing so.
And recent journalistic accounts and
other reports have linked warfare in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in
part to environmental issues, especially lack of water. The new
study, combining climate, social and economic data, is perhaps the
first to look closely and quantitatively at these questions in
relation to a current war.
The
recent drought affected the so-called Fertile Crescent, spanning
parts of Turkey and much of Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and
animal herding are believed to have started some 12,000 years ago.
The region has always seen natural weather swings. But using existing
studies and their own research, the authors showed that since 1900,
the area has undergone warming of 1 to 1.2 degrees Centigrade (about
2 degrees Fahrenheit), and about a 10 percent reduction in wet-season
precipitation. They showed that the trend matches neatly with models
of human-influenced global
warming,
and thus cannot be attributed to natural variability.
An
estimated 1.5 million people fled Syria's drought-stricken areas,
many of them to the peripheries of cities already swollen by refugees
from the next-door war in Iraq. Credit: Stephen Starr/IRIN
Global
warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have
indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the
Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April
wet season. Second, higher temperatures have increased evaporation of
moisture from soils during the usually hot summers, giving any dry
year a one-two punch. The region saw substantial droughts in the
1950s, 1980s and 1990s. However, 2006-10 was easily the worst and
longest since reliable recordkeeping began. The researchers concluded
that an episode of this severity and length would have been unlikely
without the long-term changes.
Other
researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the
entire Mediterranean, and attributed at least part of it to manmade
warming; this includes an earlier study from the U.S. National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change has predicted that the already violent Mideast will
dry more in coming decades as human-induced warming proceeds.
The
study's authors say Syria was made especially vulnerable by other
factors, including sheer population growth—from 4 million in the
1950s to 22 million in recent years. Also, the ruling al-Assad family
encouraged water-intensive export crops like cotton. Illegal drilling
of irrigation wells dramatically depleted groundwater that might have
provided reserves during dry years, said coauthor Shahrzad Mohtadi, a
graduate student at Columbia's School of International and Public
Affairs who did the economic and social components of the research.
The
drought's effects were immediate. Agricultural production, typically
a quarter of the country's gross domestic product, plummeted by a
third. In the hard-hit northeast, livestock herds were practically
all obliterated; cereal prices doubled; and nutrition-related
diseases among children saw dramatic increases. As many as 1.5
million people fled from the countryside to the peripheries of cities
that were already strained by influxes of refugees from the ongoing
war in next-door Iraq. In these chaotic instant suburbs, the Assad
regime did little to help people with employment or services, said
Mohtadi. It was largely in these areas that the uprising began.
"Rapid
demographic change encourages instability," say the authors.
"Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to
know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled
with preexisting acute vulnerability."
Solomon
Hsiang, a professor of public policy at the University of California,
Berkeley who studies climate and conflict, said the study is "the
first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate
change
is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and
violence." Hsiang said this is not the first time the region has
faced the issue: research by other scientists has suggested that the
Akkadian Empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,200
years ago, likely collapsed during a multi-year drought.
Marshall
Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University who studies
climate and agriculture, said, "There were many things going on
in the region and world at that time, such as high global food prices
and the beginning of the Arab Spring, that could have also increased
the likelihood of civil conflict." But, he said, the study is
"consistent with a large body of statistical evidence linking
changes in climate to conflict."
The
study's lead author is climatologist Colin Kelley, who did the work
while working on his PhD. at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; he is
now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. It was also coauthored by climate scientists Mark Cane and
Yochanan Kushnir, also of Lamont-Doherty.
More
information:
Climate Change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent
Syrian drought, PNAS,
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1421533112
additional
info
"NATO
and the United States should change their policy because the time
when they dictate their conditions to the world has passed,"
Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Dushanbe, capital of the Central
Asian republic of Tajikistan
Egypt
faces power cuts, potential drought
9
Septgember, 2014
Despite
the need to store extra water from this year’s floods to activate
the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
in September 2015, the Egyptian government had to discharge extra
amounts of water — other than the amount that is released from the
Aswan Dam on a daily basis — to generate more hydroelectric power
to solve the power cut crises. The Renaissance Dam, on the Blue Nile
River in Ethiopia, is expected to become the largest hydroelectric
power plant in Africa and will have direct consequences on Egypt and
Sudan.
According
to Hossam
el-Moghazy, the Egyptian minister of water resources and
irrigation, the Aswan Dam committee has discharged 10 million
cubic meters (353 million cubic feet) from the Nile per day, for 10
days, to produce more hydroelectric
energy.
In
a news conference organized by the Ministry of Water Resources and
Irrigation, Moghazy said that the emission of this amount of water
from storage in Lake Nasser, which is considered strategic, occurred
at a time when Egypt is struggling with drought and in terrible need
to store every possible drop. “This is the cost of the terrorist
acts committed by the extremist groups that bombed and destroyed
electricity stations and towers, which led to long power cuts and the
disruption of indispensable facilities,” Moghazy explained.
“We
are sorry, but there was an electricity crisis. The emission of extra
water for 10 days helped in solving this crisis by contributing to
the production of hydroelectric power. There was significant
improvement and the officials in the Ministry of Electricity overcame
the crisis,” Moghazy said.
In
a phone interview with Al-Monitor, former Minister of Water
Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Nasr Eldin Allam criticized the
government for wasting such amounts of water from the vital storage
point in Lake Nasser, while the country is on the verge of a water
crisis in the coming year, in addition to the scheduled activation of
the first phase of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
“When
I was minister of irrigation, I prevented using the water of
floodings to cleanse
the Nile
in addition to preventing any drop from the Nile from reaching the
Mediterranean, despite its importance," Allam said. "All
of this was to preserve every drop of water in anticipation of
droughts, so Egyptians would never be thirsty.
“As
minister of irrigation, I had to discharge certain amounts of water
from Lake Nasser to solve urgent electricity crises. However, this
would be done according to certain restrictions by storing the
discharged water behind al-Qanater, Esna, Nag Hammadi and Asyut along
the Nile, to reuse the water after having solved an electricity
crisis, with the purpose of preserving the Lake Nasser storage. This
is why the government is not doing the right thing right now.”
The
scheduled activation of the Egyptian Renaissance Dam in September
2015 requires Egypt to store enough water from current flooding to
avoid a severe water crisis. The first phase of the activation will
have a major effect on electricity shortages at the Aswan Dam and it
would be difficult to activate a number of its stations.
Mohamed
Abdel Aty, former head of Nile water at the Ministry of Water
Resources and Irrigation, revealed this in an interview with
Al-Monitor. He also confirmed the inevitability of Egypt heading
toward serious negotiations with the Ethiopian government to pursue
the electricity-linkage project between the two countries and Sudan.
Abdel
Aty said that this electricity-linkage
project
between Egypt and Ethiopia, in partnership with Sudan, will be much
more important for Ethiopians since Ethiopia would be able to benefit
from Egypt’s power-generating stations during the Nile’s drought
period, while Egypt would be able to use the electricity surplus from
the Ethiopian Reconnaissance Dam.
When
asked about his opinion concerning the current amount of water
discharged from the Aswan Dam to solve the electricity crisis, Abdel
Aty explained that the purpose of this was not limited to increasing
hydroelectric power generation, but it was also to cleanse the Nile
from pollution. This cleanse also included the highly polluted
Rosetta and Damietta branch rivers since the ministry stopped water
emission to reduce pollution years ago, because of the water
shortage.
“The
Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation and the Aswan Dam
committee are capable of returning this amount of water back to Lake
Nasser in the next month by reducing the daily discharge and storing
larger amounts from flooding into the lake,” Abdel Aty said.
Haitham
Awad, a professor of irrigation engineering and water hydraulics at
the University of Alexandria, spoke to Al-Monitor concerning the
Egyptian-Ethiopian electricity-linkage project. “The
electricity-linkage project with Ethiopia will be beneficial for both
parties. According to published studies, the power to activate the
Renaissance Dam is for less than six hours per day and its efficiency
is less than 30%," Awad said. "This is why Ethiopia
needs alternative energy, which is available in Egypt since the
country only relies on the hydroelectric power from the Aswan Dam 10%
[of the time], while 90% of the time it uses thermal stations to
generate electricity.
“Electricity
exchange between the two countries is highly possible. The
Renaissance Dam covers the electricity shortage in Egypt during rush
hours, while Ethiopia regains electricity during the dam’s pause
and during drought periods when there is no water to activate the
dam,” Awad said.
Cairo
is facing an electricity shortage, and its power cuts are
lasting longer. The solutions for this crisis might result in more
dangerous problems in the future. Egyptians will suffer darkness and
drought in case there are no serious procedures to face the crisis of
activating the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the water shortage it
could cause in Egypt. This would eventually lead to a deficiency in
the Aswan Dam’s electricity production, the first phase of which
would reach 14 billion cubic meters (494 billion cubic feet) of water
from the Nile, to be stored in the new dam in September, ultimately
reaching 74 billion cubic meters (2,613 billion cubic feet) by the
time the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is fully activated.
'Israel experiencing unprecedented drought conditions'
10
February, 2014
Video: Forced drought hits Jordan Valley farmers as Israel steals their water
The movie talks about Palestinian agriculture in the Jordan Valley. Nowadays most of the agriculture in the area is cultivated by illegal Israeli settlers who appropriated land and water from Palestinian farmers. Having limited access to water Palestinian farmers are forced to change their traditional agricultural practices or even leave their original places of living in search of better life.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.