Thursday, March 10, 2011
Final Statement
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Part of Annotated Bibliography
This a reliable tertiary source that describes how human interactions to nature has caused climate change to occur and has portray the way humans treat Earth very badly in more of a scientific form. But it does mentions about the Middle East; what it used to be, its downfall and it current condition. It talked about how the Middle East caused desertification during ancient times by cutting forests, fields cleared, agriculture being accelerated. Even though they did not meant for this to happen it did show how “humans were influential in accelerating and intensifying desert formation and were often the key factor” (130). It also describes how ancient techniques of war craft can effect the environment that has affected the way the people of the Middle East live. This will be useful information because in contemporary times, the Middle East is having problems with wars and misuses of agricultural practices that could hurt them in the future. It is as if history is going to be repeated.
Southwick, Charles H. Global Ecology in Human Perspective. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
(Gabe Simkover)
Climate Change Adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa: Challenges and Opportunities
This is a reliable internet source because it talks about reasons in which climate change has effected the Middle East and future implications of what could happen to the Middle East which are all negative. Some of the negative consequences could be more intense flash floods, long-term salinizations of inland aquifer systems, lower yields of major crops and an increase likelihood of sand and dust storms. This is important to refer to because this shows what will happen if the world keeps this exponential growth in our carbon footprint that it will negatively affect the Middle East in the future. This article even points out which topics the Middle East needs to pay more attention to; Climate change and Tran boundary water resources and Agriculture and food security. This will be important information that could be place near the end of the paper, because it could show that this is what the Middle East needs to do before anything gets any worse.
Sowers, Jeannie, and Erika Weinthal. "Climate Change Adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa." The Dubai Initiative Havard. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Web.
(Gabe Simkover)
Water Wars in the Middle East: a Looming Threat
This is a reliable peered review source because it mentions about how much importance water is to the region of the Middle East and the wars for territory that will give them some water for the upcoming years. It mentions about the water wars between Lebanon and Israel, in which it mentions about gives background information like; how both ended p with droughts, historical of violent confrontations between Israel and Lebanon, distrust, varying development needs and territorial disputes. In Israel, the average citizen uses up to 348 liter of water per person per day while countries like Lebanon uses below a hundred liters of water per person per day. This demonstrates how both countries live different lifestyles and that because Israel is a stronger country that they will have a better chance of taking over water supplies that Lebanon would need too. Lebanon will eventually suffer with less drinking water and enough water for agriculture. This could definitely be foreshadowing the future when more industrialized countries start running out of water.
Amery, Hussein A. "Water Wars in the Middle East: a Looming Threat." The Geographical Journal 168.4 (2002): 313-23. Print.
(Gabe Simkover)
Bonne, Alfred. "Land and Population in the Middle East: Trends and Prospects." Middle East Journal 5, no. 1 (1951): 39-56.
This journal article by Alfred Bonne discusses the growing apprehension towards the increase in the earth's population as against the limited potentialities of its natural resources. Discussing grave implications of this increase unaccompanied by any adequate expansion of food production and how the Middle East is and is not prepared for this event. Discussions of available land and water resources are discussed in terms of population growth and how generally the standards of living and the levels of economic, social, and political organization in nearly all parts of the Middle East are low. “Assuming an inferior grade of productivity for part of the Middle East lands as compared with areas of the temperate zone, we are still entitled to say that for the region as a whole there is no need to be concerned over the relationship between land and population for a considerable time to come”.The only exception is Egypt. However this does not take into account water needs but only land and food.
This article is a reliable peer reviewed article. The MEI is a nonprofit organization based in Washington D.C. Whose mission is to "promote knowledge of the Middle East in America and strengthen understanding of the United States by the people and governments of the region." The MEI checks out on Ulrichs.
(Jeremy Gavelin)
Hirsch, Abraham. "Water Legislation in the Middle East." The American Journal of Comparative Law 8, no. 2 (1959): 168-186. http://www.jstor.org/stable/837457 . (accessed February 14, 2011).
This journal article by Abreaham Hirsch talks about water laws in the middle east. Water legislation in the Middle East has a recorded history of four millennia. Water legislation is a policy-making instrument in the hands of a government intent on mobilizing national water resources to the fullest degree possible and Water legislation is significant in terms of the development of the Middle East. This article goes briefly through history and how more modern water laws came to be. The article focuses on four main levels of water laws. Local customs (based predominately on ancient law), religious law (or civil-law provisions of religious law codes), Ottoman law that has survived the disintegration of the empire, and new laws. This article offers valuable insight into how modern practices of water rights may have been based on or the rights that the people believe that they should have. This could be good background information for a report based upon water.
The American Society of Comparative Law was founded in 1951 "to promote the comparative study of law and the understanding of foreign legal systems . . . [and] private international law." With more non-United States sponsor members joining, the Society has become an international forum for comparative studies. The ASCL checks out on Ulrichs.
(Jeremy Gavelin)
"Our Common Future, Chapter 11: Peace, Security, Development, and the Environment - A/42/427 Annex, Chapter 11 - UN Documents: Gathering a body of global agreements." UN Documents: Gathering a body of global agreements. Hyperlinked collection of more than 500 key United Nations documents. http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-11.htm#I (accessed February 22, 2011).
This policy document from the United Nations discusses environmental stress as a source of conflict, conflict as a cause of unsustainable development, and steps towards security and sustainable development. Focusing mostly on political issues as a result of environmental issues this article points out how conflict occurs when political processes are unable to handle the effects of environmental stress resulting from erosion and desertification, for example. In addition to the problems of poverty, injustice, and environmental stress, competition for non-renewable raw materials, land, or energy can create tension. It was the quest for raw materials that cause much of the competition between colonial powers. Conflicts in the Middle East inevitably contain the seeds of great power intervention and global conflagration, in part because of the international interest in oil.
This policy document is a reliable source as it was on the website http://www.un-documents.net which was supplied as a link by Dr. Tappan. UN Documents: Gathering a Body of Global Agreements has been compiled by the NGO Committee on Education of the Conference of NGOs from United Nations web sites.
(Jeremy Gavelin)
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Climate Change May Boost Middle East Rainfall
Recent projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) raised fears that storm activity in the eastern Mediterranean would decline this century if global warming continues on present trends. In turn, that would have reduced rainfall by between 15 and 25 per cent over a large part of the so-called Fertile Crescent.
This is land encompassing parts of Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, and north-eastern Iran and the strategically important headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
When University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre researcher Dr Jason Evans analysed the IPPC projections, he found that the region's agricultural base faced significant challenges as a result. About 170,000 square kilometres of viable rain-fed agricultural land would be lost; a longer dry season would limit grazing on rangelands; and changes in the timing of maximum rainfall would force farmers in northern Iran to change cropping strategies and even crop types. The results are to be published in the journal Climatic Change.
But the IPCC projections were based on the results of global modelling of climate change, which tends to obscure smaller-scale regional effects.
"The global models are good for investigating what's likely to happen on a planetary scale but the resolution is quite coarse when looking at a more localised regional scale," says Dr Evans. "It's a bit like enlarging a digital photograph until it becomes pixellated and all sorts of detail is blurred out."
"Simulating the climate of the region is a challenge for climate models, due in part to the high natural inter-annual variability, the topography of the region - which includes multiple mountain ranges and inland seas - and the presence of a slight cooling trend in recent decades despite the global trend being a warming."
So in a second far more detailed study, to be published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology, Evans used regional climate modelling specific to the Middle East, and the result was very different.
It emerged that while storm activity over the eastern Mediterranean would indeed decline, moisture-bearing winds would be channelled inland more often and diverted by the Zagros Mountains, bringing an increase of over 50% in annual rainfall to the Euphrates-Tigris watershed.
"We need to confirm this result with other models, but a 50 per cent increase in rainfall in such an important agricultural area is a much more hopeful scenario than a 15 per cent decline," says Evans
Monday, January 31, 2011
Middle East and North Africa Contributions to Climate Change
There has been many cases in which the Middle East and North Africa has contributed to the Climate Change. Human forces cause most of these contributions to climate change. Saddam Hussein draining the wetlands of Southern Iraq has been destroying the traditional water cycles of the marshes. Yemen wastes 40% of their agricultural water supply on Qat, which will lead to Yemen’s capital, Somra, to be the first capital in the world to run out of water. The Middle East is most common known for its oil in which that it supports 40% of the World’s natural gas reserves (zawya.com). Much of the oil will burn off Carbon Dioxide into the air causing Global Warming, which increases the climate.
II. Impacts of Climate Change
A combination of Higher temperatures and reduced precipitation will increase the occurrence of droughts. It is further estimated that an additional 80 –100 million people will be exposed to water stress by 2025. This is likely to result in increased pressure on groundwater resources, which as mentioned above is already being used in most areas above aquifers’ sustainable levels. In addition, crop modeling results indicate that climate change will have a negative effect on crop yields in the Middle East and North Africa. By 2050 the region will face yield declines of up to 30 percent for rice, about 47 percent for maize and 20 percent for wheat (International Food Policy Research Institute). In urban areas in North Africa, a temperature increase of 1-3 degrees could expose 6–25 million people to coastal flooding. In addition, heat waves, an increased “heat island effect,” water scarcity, loss of arable land, decreasing water quality, and worsening air quality are likely to affect public health, and generally lead to challenging living conditions.
III.Proposed Solutions
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Middle East and North Africa’s Proposed Solutions to Climate Change
According to Sir Charles Nicholson, BP’s Group Advisor on the Environment, “the world cannot ignore the impact of climate change and action should be taken now to address the issue. (ameinfo.com)”
Sir Charles cited the “increasing shift to using cleaner fuels such as natural gas, which in power generation produces 24 percent less carbon than oil and 41 percent less than coal” as the steps that BP is taking in the Middle East to reduce its burden on the environment.
In 1998 BP “set itself the target of reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions to 10 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2010. In (actuality), BP met the target by the end of 2001, nine years ahead of plan, and produced remarkable savings.”
BP introduced the method of Internal Emissions Trading System, in essence, “each of the company's 120 business units was given a greenhouse gas emissions allowance. If it exceeded this limit the unit had to either buy additional allowance from another unit or seek lower cost ways of staying within target.” BP hoped that this would provide incentive to its participants to reduce their carbon footprint while still expanding their business.
BP is exploring the method of CO2 capture and storage. The largest project of this nature is Algeria with Sonatrach; (BP) is developing one of the world's largest CO2 storage projects to store the CO2 that will be separated from large quantities of natural gas produced by the companies for the European market.
In Yemen, the World Bank is “supporting the identification and implementation of coping strategies for adaptation to climate change for highland farmers who rely on rain-fed agriculture. These strategies include the conservation and utilization of biodiversity important to agriculture (particularly the local land races and their wild relatives) and associated local traditional knowledge. The hope is to “emphasize the conservation of agro biodiversity and developing a range of coping mechanisms using predictive climate modeling. (web.worldbank.org)
Monday, January 24, 2011
Yemen’s Addiciton of Qat
Yemen’s capital, Somra, could be the first capital in the world to run out of water in the short amount of time of five to ten years. The water shortage will affect the population of Somra, which has quadrupled in the last 50 years. This is due to Yemen’s biggest addiction Qat.
Qat is a mild narcotic that this country, the poorest in the Middle East cannot stay away from. Most of the population requires having it daily for meetings, socializing and weddings. The problem is that Qat needs a lot of water to help it grow, especially when the temperature in that area is so high. Yemen uses 91% of its water on agriculture, and 40% of the water for agriculture is wasted on this narcotic. Most of the farms that used to grow different varieties of vegetation are now growing Qat because of it high demand.
This water problem was cause by human demands. Even though this article didn’t mention how this could effect our climate change, it should make sense that the water being waste is unsustainable. Also the government has thought about getting water from sea to help these farmers keep thriving. Farmers are even drilling illegal wells with the use of diesel and oil generators to help pump the water up, which is just increasing there Carbon Footprint to increase. This could effect the temperature because they are putting more Carbon Dioxide into our Atmosphere.
Even though this is a problem seems to be a hard one to fix, it can be done. Education would play a key role in helping Yemen’s population know the negative effects on Qat. The government also needs to set up new activities for its citizens so that they would not have to waste there time eating Qat and doing other things.
This is a good example of how we humans need to take more action to be more sustainable with what we have, especially water, which most living things needs to survive.
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-02/world/yemen.water.crisis_1_qat-yemen-s-water-water-crisis?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/11/28/jamjoom.yemen.water.crisis.cnn?iref=videosearch
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
This BBC story included both a video and article about the marshes in Iraq. These wetlands have been thought to be the original garden of Eden but recently have been destroyed and turned into dried out holes with little life continuing to live there.
The dams have also reduced the total volume of water reaching the marshes in the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Combined with a prolonged regional drought the area is suffering from a second drying."
This damage has been done by direct effect from human forces. Saddam Hussein drained these great wetlands of southern Iraq, destroying them, turning them to desert as punishment to the people living there. However, since his overthrow, a remarkable effort has begun to restore these Mesopotamian Marshes, among the most important wetland habitat in the world.
Although this disaster was caused on purpose it is an important representation of what human influence can do to the environment and what climate change could bring if we're not careful.
Links to the article are listed below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12215046