World's land turning to desert at alarming speed

[Kulapavana]

World's land turning to desert at alarming speed, United Nations warns

 

Tuesday June 15, 2004

By CHRIS HAWLEY

Associated Press Writer

 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) 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 the 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.

 

This week the United Nations marks 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 is holding 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 last century, average temperatures have risen over 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.''

 

On the Web:

 

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification: http://www.unccd.int

 

International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas : http://www.icarda.org/

 

University of Arizona Office of Arid Lands Studies: http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/oals/oals.html

[ancient_paztriot]

I really cannot imagine how Kali-yuga can continue for so long. Will there be any natural beauty left in 100 years?

 

This is the result of all those untold hours put into making machines that will save people time. The future is a high price to pay for the benefit of a few.

 

So the impression I get from Bhagavatam is that everything is already there in nature. We need create nothing for our own sustenance. That is demonstrated in Satya-yuga. There was the natural balance.

 

With the advancement of time and demoniac qualities, we see people obsessed with lording over others and excessive exploitation. We see the appearance of machines and technology that help them do that.

 

And they are so convinced on this dominance with their machines, they don't see the world crumbling around them… or they don't care… I'll be dead and gone in a few years - (even though the act itself suggests they think they'll be here forever).

[Kulapavana]

The next 500 years are supposed to be very good /images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

...but later people will gradually be forced to live underground because the surface of the Earth will be uninhabitable. eventually they will eat fungus and each other... I hope I'll be long gone to Goloka Vrindavan by then /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[theist]

Unti very recently the news used to drive me into a frenzy. It still can if I'm not very careful. I get the impression that we are witnessing an immediate run up to some very horrendous event or series of events very very soon.

 

A good percentage can be traced back to animal slaughter. the strain on the enviroment is staggering. Clear the forest for more and more cattle to graze to feed the billions with their friggin' cheese burgers. All increasing proportionately with the popoulation. just from that it can be seen that something has to break.

 

What to speak of the pent up karmic reactions from animal slaughter and slaughtering human children in the womb. Time to jump ship and try to take someone else with you.

[ancient_paztriot]

Maybe real estate is the market to get into.

 

I remember hearing Prabhupada say that the slaughterhouses have already killed enough to justify the logic of nuclear war. And now abortion on top of that?

 

Kulapavana, you seem to think 500 years before a nuclear war?

 

I agree with the living underground because of radiation… "become again a mouse"… again a caveman.

 

Why 500? Golden Age is 5,000?

 

(I hope the Golden Age means more than sitting in a cave chanting Hare Krsna because it's too dangerous to go out).

[Kulapavana]

the next 500 years is supposed to be the predicted return of the Golden Age (Lord Caitanya's era) - nuclear war or not. I can see it coming... /images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

yes, the slaughter of the innocent living entities will bear a very bitter fruit. demigods can devastate the earth in SO many ways: rampant disease (airborne AIDS?), drastic climate changes, pestilence and famine, wars...