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People in a dry river bed in the Indian city of Allahabad
Photo: Sanjay Kanojia / AFP
The Rahalija oasis is located in western Iraq. Here in the desert, an underground spring has fed a pool of water for centuries. Not so long ago, children swam in it. But now the pool is less than half full. The water level has been falling for five years - a development that is threatening for the residents of the region. The people fear for their agricultural yields and their livelihoods. Palm trees have been grown here for generations.
Such threatening developments are also more common in other regions of the world. Deserts, which also include icy regions such as Antarctica, already cover around a fifth of the earth - almost 30 million square kilometers. Together with the semi-deserts it is 50 million square kilometers. But in the future these areas could increase, not only in Iraq. For the entire Middle East, researchers expect increasing drought in the coming decades. At these hotspots of climate change, the people there have to prepare for more frequent and longer droughts, as the Mainz climate researcher Jos Lelieveld warns.
The causes of so-called desertification can also go back naturally, but they are mostly in humans.
Almost exactly 25 years ago, the world community put a UN convention against desertification into force - it will celebrate its anniversary on December 26th.
The contracting states undertook to take vigorous action against the desertification of large areas.
But the success of the initiative seems manageable.
According to her, twelve million hectares of land are lost to desertification and drought every year.
This area could produce 20 million tons of grain.
Desertification and land degradation cause annual revenue losses of 42 billion US dollars, according to the Convention to Combat Desertification.
The main reasons the Desolate Zones progressed include:
Overgrazing
the destruction of forests
increasing water consumption with wrong water policy
arable land overused by agriculture
and climate change
In the USA, the west of the country is affected by a severe drought with insufficient rainfall.
Climate change has made the region warmer and drier over the past 30 years and, according to scientists, will make the weather even more extreme and the forest fires even more devastating.
Iraq and Syria also experienced one of the worst droughts in decades this year.
The rivers Euphrates and Tigris bring less water - also because Turkey, as the country of origin, is supposed to partially dig up the water, according to an analysis by the Israeli Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Elsewhere in the world, too, there is drought and drought - and thus a potential risk of increasing desertification. An overview:
Turkey
: The "salt lake" (Tuz Gölü) in the central
Turkish
province of Konya is actually a bird paradise. Thousands of flamingos breed there every year. But this summer a disturbing sight presented itself: the carcasses of chicks and parent birds covered the dried up lake bed. Thousands of flamingos perished because they could no longer find food. The water level of what was originally Turkey's second largest lake has continued to drop over the years - and according to researchers, it is on the verge of drying out completely. According to experts, the reasons for this are the climate crisis and a wrong agricultural policy. Precipitation has been falling in Turkey for years. According to the state meteorological institute, it has recently rained there as little as it has not in 20 years.
Madagascar
: The island nation off Africa's east coast is currently experiencing its worst drought in decades. Especially in the south, hardly anything grows in the fields, people would have to feed on cactus leaves and grasshoppers. The cause is climate change, says the World Food Program WFP. But extreme weather events such as storms, thunderstorms or heat waves on the continent are also causing problems for South Sudan and increasingly parts of the East African states of Mozambique, Kenya and Somalia.
India
: Data from the Indian space agency Isro show that desertification is increasing here.
An important factor is the so-called green revolution, a radical restructuring of agriculture in the 1960s after there had previously been famine.
Farmers began to use higher yielding seeds and many chemicals.
These helped to significantly increase productivity and feed the land, but they also harmed the soil.
Because of subsidy incentives, rice and wheat are mainly grown in particularly fertile regions, which require a lot of water.
In the state of Punjab, for example, the groundwater level is falling further and further, by 25 to 30 centimeters per year.
With increasing urbanization, the earth could also absorb less rainwater, warn experts.
Australia
: Experts assume that global warming Down Under will lead to an accumulation of persistent droughts and other serious weather phenomena in the future.
In recent years in particular, dry spells have increased, with devastating consequences: from August 2019 to March 2020, massive bush fires devastated over twelve million hectares of land in six of the eight Australian states and territories.
The Australian Department of Agriculture has set up a multi-billion dollar drought fund to better prepare farmers and communities for dry spells.
“Drought is a permanent feature of the Australian landscape.
It has a significant economic, social and ecological impact, ”they say.
Brazil
: According to experts, the fact that there has been a lack of water and drought in large parts of Brazil in recent months reflects, among other things, the consequences of climate change.
A study by the Mapbiomas initiative also showed that the water surface in the largest country in Latin America has declined by 15 percent since the early 1990s.
The conversion of forests for livestock and agriculture as well as the construction of hydropower plants contributed to this development.
Around 20 percent of the original Amazon rainforest has already been destroyed.
Scientists warn that with a share of 25 percent, a point has been reached at which the whole area turns into a steppe.
joe / dpa