( Source: www.slaughterphoto.com/Artists/4891/Mediums/M)Forgive my ignorance but to me Desertification, sounds like when your significant other runs out on you ... aparently not . Desertification is actually some serious global warming speak, which translates as: huge dust storms which sweep millions of tons of sand from one country and deposit them into another . Initially the Gobi desert was the biggest 'hotspot' with 400 million people under threat in China, however thanx to climate change the threat is now one of global proportions .
The Facts are enough to freak anyone out!!!
In Africa demand for water has shrunk Lake Chad by 95 percent since the 1960s, leaving only sand and scrub. In Kazakhstan desertification has meant that nearly 50 percent of cropland has been abandoned since 1980. The Sahara is advancing into Ghana and Nigeria at the rate of 3,510 square kilometers per year. In Iran, fierce sandstorms are believed to have buried more than 100 villages in 2002.
So desertification affects both water and food supplies directly. In most of North Africa and the Middle East water supplies are close to 1,000 cubic meters per person per year, which is widely taken as a benchmark for water scarcity. While internationally crops are less as the desert claims even more of the world and considering the increase in food prices, I'd have to say the bad times are here to stay.
4 comments:
Its amazing...for years you sit here wondering when it will all get "better"...but sadly there is no "better"...we are regressing at a rapid rate. And how do you fight those elements you have absolutely no control over? Its scary...
Again, I maintain...end of days...all we can do is pray and hope that we are worthy.
Thank you for this reminder. It's so easy to forget when so much of our food comes from a clean, shiny supermarket with pleasant music playing in the background. That isn't reality--desertification is.
Actually, we as humans have a lot more power/impact over these developments than we think...much of the processes that lead to desertification are aggravated by human activity, namely hyper-exploitation of the environment in all sorts of ways.
And this point, as that massive movement (OK, slight exaggeration here!) known as Islamic ecofeminism argues, is part of the larger critique of a global order that continues to rely on the triple domination/oppression of the Global South, women, and nature.
Ultimately, it is both an issue of the seeming betrayal of the amanath or sacred trust with which the Earth was placed in the care of humans by God; as well as how insan, or sacred human beings in whom God has breathed his own spirit, become robotic, atomized, rootless souls reduced to being passive, obedient subjects and consumers of whatever comes our way, no matter what the cost to each other AND the ecological systems that allow us to be here in the first place.
azra: well the thing is there is always damage control that can be done if we are willing :)
wolf: lol ur so right it appears that we have been totally spoilt by modern convieniences
Junaid: thanx - its a very interesting concept - where do i sign up ?
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