Climate change significant challenge facing Libya
If new government doesn’t address the
issues related to climate change, Libya could see more turmoil, say
Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell.
PATRICK BAZ
/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Libyans wait their turn to fill containers with clean water on September 3, 2011 in Tripoli.
When dictator Moammar Gadhafi was killed in October 2011,
months after the first wave of uprisings swept Libya as part of the
larger Arab Spring, international analysts declared the North African
country finally free.
But two years later,
there are ethnic and tribal tensions and parts of the country are
overrun by armed militia and religious hardliners.
Another significant
challenge is from climate change, according to an essay in “The Arab
Spring and Climate Change,” a study recently published by three
think-tanks in Washington.
If the new government
does not address the issue of water shortages, Libya could see more
turmoil, Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell write in their essay, which
examines Libya’s water and desertification problems.
“Water could cause great insecurity there,” Femia says.
Libya is oil rich, water poor.
Desert covers much of the country and some areas don’t see any rainfall for years, even as long as a decade.
It is going to get worse, say a growing body of climatologists.
A recent report by
Joshua Busby at the University of Texas, Austin, notes that between now
and the middle of the century, some of the wettest and most populated
areas of Libya, along the Mediterranean coast, are likely to experience
increases in drought days — meaning no rainfall — from a current 101, to
a whopping 224.
The National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration released similar findings in the Journal
of Climate in October 2011. That study said climate change is already
responsible for the prolonged drought in Libya’s most-populous areas on
the coast.
A report last year by
Oceana, a nonprofit group fighting for ocean conservation, said Libya
will also see a significant decline in fish stocks due to climate change
and ocean acidification.
Gadhafi ruled Libya
with an iron fist. For more than three decades, he got what he wanted.
This includes the spectacular — or unwise, depending on who you talk to —
Great Man Made River project.
Gadhafi started the
project in the 1960s and it is said to be the largest and the most
expensive irrigation development in the world.
Its pumps water from
the vast, underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south and
takes it, via a network of pipelines, to the populated coastal areas in
the north, where most of the country’s six million citizens live and
work.
It consists of more
than 1,300 wells, some as deep as 500 metres, and it supplies about 6.5
million cubic metres of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli,
Benghazi and Sirte.
The ancient aquifers
store 40,000-year-old reserves of pure drinking water in the world’s
largest known fossil water aquifer system.
Gadhafi called the project the Eighth Wonder of the World.
The aquifer accumulated the water during the last ice age, but is not currently being replenished.
Femia calls it unsustainable.
According to reports,
Libyans who worked on the project claimed water from the aquifer would
last hundreds of years. Climatologists say it could run out in 50 years
at the present rate of consumption.
“What will Libya do then?” asks Femia. “Water insecurity is a huge threat to the country.”
But the draining of the aquifer isn’t Libya’s only problem.
If Libya starts
extracting even more groundwater from the Nubian aquifer to deal with
drought, it could cause tension with neighbours Egypt, Chad and Sudan,
all of which share the aquifer.
It has the potential to destabilize the region, Femia and Werrell say.
It is easy to see how
these conditions multiply the threats already facing the country’s new
government, says Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton scholar who wrote an
introduction to the study.
But all is not lost, not yet.
The Libyan interim
government sent representatives to the UN climate change conference in
Durban, South Africa, in December 2011 to promote a solar and wind power
project financed by oil money.
The country now has
the opportunity to “transition not just to a post-Gadhafi era but also
to a new era of resilience — one that uses its finite resources wisely
and adapts itself to a changing climate,” say Femia and Werrell.
Libya should be looking at better ways of irrigation and growing crops that require less water.
Climate change may not
be the No. 1 priority in Libya today, but climatologists say it should
not remain off the table for long. Tackling it can potentially help
Libya in its search for unity, says Femia.
“Libya is wealthier than its neighbours . . . it can do it."
end quote from:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/03/16/climate_change_biggest_challenge_facing_libya_researchers_say.html
This only increases problems for the whole middle east with lowering rainfall as a result of climate change there. In many areas there already water was minimal but with increasing lack of rain and populations in most middle eastern Countries at 1/2 of the population under 30 and many without jobs or the prospect of jobs this will only increase tensions everywhere there now and in the future.
end quote from:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/03/16/climate_change_biggest_challenge_facing_libya_researchers_say.html
This only increases problems for the whole middle east with lowering rainfall as a result of climate change there. In many areas there already water was minimal but with increasing lack of rain and populations in most middle eastern Countries at 1/2 of the population under 30 and many without jobs or the prospect of jobs this will only increase tensions everywhere there now and in the future.
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