Desertification, dust are global threats - report

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Desertification, dust are global threats - report

16 Jun 2005 16:22:35 GMT

Source: Reuters

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L1644970.htm

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO, June 16 (Reuters) - Desertification threatens to drive

millions of people from their homes in coming decades while vast

dust storms can damage the health of people continents away, an

international report said on Thursday.

" Desertification has emerged as a global problem affecting

everyone, " said Zafar Adeel, assistant director of the U.N.

University's water academy and a lead author of a report drawing on

the work of 1,360 scientists in 95 nations.

Two billion people live in drylands vulnerable to desertification,

ranging from northern Africa to swathes of central Asia, he told

Reuters. And storms can lift dust from the Sahara Desert, for

instance, and cause respiratory problems for people as far away as

North America.

Over-grazing and over-planting of crops, swelling human populations

and misuse of irrigation were contributing to desertification, the

report said. It estimated that 10-20 percent of drylands were

already degraded.

Global warming, widely blamed on human emissions of heat-trapping

gases from cars, factories and power plants, was likely to

exacerbate the problems in coming decades by triggering more floods,

droughts and heatwaves.

" Growing desertification worldwide threatens to swell by millions

the number of poor forced to seek new homes and livelihoods, "

according to the report, part of a Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

led by U.N. agencies and other groups.

" Desertification is potentially the most threatening ecosystem

change impacting livelihoods of the poor, " it said.

The report said 41 percent of the world's land area was dryland,

including most of Australia, the western part of North America and

much of the Andean region of South America.

DUST WORSENS POVERTY

Desertification meant increasing health problems linked to dust,

reduced farm production and poverty.

Infant mortality in drylands in developing nations averaged 54

children per 1,000 live births in 2000, double the rate in other

poor regions and 10 times the rate in industrial nations.

" An increase in desertification-related dust storms is widely

considered to be a cause of ill-health -- fever, coughing, sore

eyes -- during the dry season, " it said.

And dust from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia could affect people as far

away as Japan or Hawaii. Some scientists estimate that a billion

tonnes of dust can be lifted from the Sahara region into the

atmosphere every year.

Dust particles can also carry bacteria and fungi. Dust-borne

microrganisms from Africa were believed to have damaged coral reefs

in the Caribbean, said Uriel Safriel, another of the report's lead

authors.

" Bedouins in Israel are known to be infected by spores of fungi and

bacteria transported by dust, " he told Reuters. Some dust carries

toxins like pesticides from around the Aral Sea.

And dust storms from Africa can damage plants' ability to grow as

far away as Florida by muting the sunlight. African dust, however,

can also carry nutrients and is credited with helping forests to

survive in the Amazon.

The report said that better management of crops, more careful

irrigation and strategies to provide non-farming jobs for people

living in drylands could help mute problems. But it was easier to

prevent desertification than to reverse it.

The United States, for instance, failed fully to solve the 1930s

Dust Bowl -- caused by a combination of intensive farming and

drought in states including Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and

Oklahoma. The problems resurfaced in the 1950s.