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Ed Webb

On Blaming Climate Change for the Syrian Civil War - MERIP - 0 views

merip.org/...hange-for-the-syrian-civil-war

Syria climate migration protests war agriculture security food foodsecurity ideology economy policy UN thinktanks discourse

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Oct 20 - Cached
  • the Syria climate conflict narrative is deeply problematic.[2] Not only is the evidence behind this narrative weak. In addition, it masks what was really occurring in rural Syria (and in the country’s northeast region in particular) prior to 2011, which was the unfolding of a long-term economic, environmental and political crisis. And crucially, the narrative largely originated from Syrian regime interests in deflecting responsibility for a crisis of its own making. Syria is less an exemplar of what awaits us as the planet warms than of the complex and uncomfortable politics of blaming climate change.
  • much of Syria and the eastern Mediterranean region experienced an exceptionally severe drought in the years before the onset of Syria’s civil war: the single year 2007–2008 was northeastern Syria’s driest on record, as was the three-year period 2006–2009
  • it is evident that northeastern Syria’s agrarian troubles—and especially those in the province of Hasakah—went all the way back to 2000, and indeed earlier. Production of the two main government-designated strategic crops, wheat and cotton, was in decline in Hasakah from the early 2000s onward. Land and settlements were being abandoned there well before the drought. Net out-migration from Hasakah during this period was higher than from any other province. And the reasons for this lay not in the drought but in the contradictions of Syrian development.
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  • The widely reproduced claim that 2 to 3 million people were driven into extreme poverty by the 2006–2009 drought was drawn, extraordinarily, from analyses by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of pre-drought poverty levels.[4] The claim that around 1.5 million people were displaced was derived from a single humanitarian news bulletin, seemingly on the basis of a misreading of the UN’s estimate of those affected—not displaced—by the drought. Using Syrian government numbers, the UN actually reported drought-period displacement to be around 40,000–60,000 families.
  • A presidential decree in 2008, which tightened restrictions on land sales across the northeastern-most province of Hasakah, led to the extensive loss of land rights and was credited by some organizations as a key factor in the increased migration from northeast Syria prior to the war
  • during 2008–2009 rural Syria was hit by triple-digit increases in the prices of key agricultural inputs. In May 2008 fuel subsidies were halved, leading to an overnight 342 percent spike in the price of diesel. And then in May 2009 fertilizer subsidies were removed, causing prices to rise anywhere from 200 to 450 percent. The fuel subsidy cuts had particularly devastating economic consequences, especially for farmers reliant on cheap fuel for groundwater irrigation.
  • The fact that a number of neighboring countries experienced equivalent precipitation declines during 2006–2009—or in Iraq’s case an even larger decline—but no comparable migration crises, suggests at the very least that the migration from Syria’s northeast must have been caused more by these Syria-specific factors than by the drought.
  • Proponents of the climate conflict thesis typically claim that drought-induced displacement caused a “population shock” within Syria’s urban peripheries, exacerbating pre-existing socio-economic pressures. Yet Syria’s cities grew rapidly throughout the decade before the civil war, not only during the drought years. By our calculations, excess migration from the northeast during 2008–2009 amounted to just 4–12 percent of Syria’s 2003–2010 urban growth (and this excess migration was not all triggered by drought)
  • as Marwa Daoudy concludes in her new book on the subject, there is “little evidence” that “climate change in Syria sparked popular revolt in 2011”—but “a lot of evidence” that “suggests it did not.”
  • a deep and long-term structural agrarian crisis
  • it is reasonable to say, per the Columbia study, that climate change did make this particular drought more likely
  • an agrarian socialist development program, promoting rapid expansion of the country’s agricultural sector and deploying Soviet aid and oil income to this end. Among other elements, this program involved heavy investment in agricultural and especially water supply infrastructure, low interest loans for private well drilling, price controls on strategic crops at well above international market value, the annual wiping clean of state farm losses and, as already indicated, generous input subsidies
  • Environmentally, the model relied above all on the super-exploitation of water resources, especially groundwater—a problem which by the early 2000s had become critical. And economically, Syrian agriculture had become highly input dependent, reliant on continuing fuel subsidies in particular.
  • International media reports on the subject were similarly focused on  drought, no doubt partly because of media preferences for simplified and striking narratives, but also because they relied upon UN sources and took these at their word
  • Irrespective of any drought impacts, these developments essentially occurred when the props that had until then artificially maintained an over-extended agricultural production system—oil export rents, a pro-agrarian ideology and their associated price controls—were suddenly and decisively removed.
  • As Syria’s pre-eminent breadbasket region—the heartland of strategic crop production—Hasakah was particularly vulnerable to economic liberalization and the withdrawal of input supports. No other region of the country was so dependent on groundwater for irrigation, a factor that made it particularly vulnerable to fuel price increases. Hasakah’s groundwater resources were also exceptionally degraded, even by Syrian standards
  • The region was also deeply affected by intense irrigation development and over-abstraction of groundwater resources within Turkey
  • It was Ba’athist state policies which had turned Hasakah into a region of wheat monoculture, failed to promote economic diversification and facilitated cultivation ever deeper into the badiya (the desert) while over-exploiting surface and groundwater resources. Moreover, these measures were taken partly for strategic and geostrategic reasons, bound up with regime interests in expanding and consolidating Hasakah’s Arab population (its project of Arabization), in controlling and excluding the province’s Kurdish population and in extending its control and presence within a strategically sensitive borderland and frontier region. During the heyday of Ba’athist agrarian development, Hasakah’s population and agricultural sector expanded like in no other area. With the collapse of this development model, rural crisis and out-migration were the inevitable result.
  • After an initial reluctance to acknowledge the depth of the crisis in the northeast, the government eventually embraced the climate crisis narrative with gusto. The drought was “beyond our powers,” claimed Asad. The drought was “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with,” claimed the Minister of Agriculture. “Syria could have achieved [its] goals pertaining to unemployment, poverty and growth if it was not for the drought,” proclaimed Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Dardari.[12] Indeed, as the International Crisis Group reported, the Asad regime would regularly take diplomats to the northeast and tell them, “it all has to do with global warming,” blaming what was in essence a state-induced socio-ecological crisis on climatic transformations beyond its control.[13] This shifting of blame is essentially how the Syria climate crisis narrative began.
  • Official UN reports on the crisis in the northeast, which were produced in collaboration with the Syrian regime, were predictably drought-centric, barely mentioning any factors other than drought, omitting any criticisms of government policy and ignoring the existence of a discriminated-against Kurdish minority
  • Within just a few short years, Syria embraced principles of economic liberalization, privatized state farms, liberalized trade and reduced price control levels. At the same time domestic oil production and exports fell rapidly, thus undermining the regime’s rentier foundations and its capacity to subsidize agriculture
  • The climate crisis narrative reached its apogee in 2015, in the run-up to the UN Paris conference on climate change, when countless politicians and commentators turned to the example of Syria to illustrate the urgency of international action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
  • regurgitated as a statement of fact in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and by Western liberal politicians and eco-socialist campaigners alike
  • climate change is also much more than a physical reality and looming environmental threat: It is simultaneously an object of discourse, debate and rhetoric, a potent meta-narrative that can be invoked for explanation, legitimation, blame avoidance and enrichment.
  • climate change is already regularly invoked to questionable ends across the Middle East and North Africa. It is used to explain away ecological catastrophes actually caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion, to make the case for investment in new and often unnecessary mega-projects, to obscure state mismanagement of local environmental resources and to argue against the redistribution of such resources to oppressed and minority groups
  • blaming climate change is often a distraction from the real causes of socio-ecological crisis
Ed Webb

Ahead of COP27, Egypt is highly vulnerable to climate change - 0 views

qz.com/-for-climate-change-1849657612

Egypt water agriculture food land climate COP sustainability SDGs

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Oct 22 - No Cached
  • Adel Abdullah cultivates a subsistence living off of six acres of peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and pomegranates. He is one of millions of smallholder farmers working in the Delta. He walks barefoot in his farm as a show of reverence to the land. The soil is pale and thin, almost as sandy as the beach, and choked by mounting concentrations of salt, left behind by periodic coastal flooding and pushed into underground aquifers by the rising sea.“This is the first place to be affected by climate change,” Abdullah says. “The barriers help a bit with flooding, but the salty soil is still really killing us.”
  • he takes irrigation water from the nearby Kitchener Drain, one of the largest and most polluted canals in Egypt that aggregates wastewater from the farms, businesses, and households of an estimated 11 million people in the Delta. By the time water reaches Abdullah’s farm, it may have been reused half a dozen times since entering Egypt in the Nile, each time accumulating more salts and pollutants and losing beneficial nutrients.
  • Abdullah is forced to douse the farm in fertilizers, pesticides, and salt-suppressing chemicals, all of which further degrade the soil. Those inputs, on top of the rising costs of irrigation systems and machinery, eat up any potential income Abdullah might earn
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  • The Nile Delta—where agriculture employs one-fifth of the country’s workforce and is responsible for 12% of its GDP and much of its food supply—is being hammered by rising sea levels, rising temperatures, and a growing shortage of water.
  • rapid urbanization and population growth
  • Climate adaptation solutions that could keep environmental problems from turning existential—fixing the battered and wasteful irrigation network, expanding affordable access to improved seeds and climate-smart farming technologies, and more effective and equitable regulation of urban development on agricultural land—are being rolled out by the government and research groups, but often slower than the pace of climate impacts. That’s left Egypt’s economy and food security exposed to growing risk.
  • “We’re really squeezed and marginalized here, and the government isn’t helping,” said one farmer down the road from Abdullah, who requested anonymity to speak frankly (with tens of thousands of political prisoners, Egypt’s restrictions on free speech are also gaining prominence ahead of COP27).
  • his children see no future in agriculture
  • Around 1805, an Ottoman general named Muhammad Ali took control of the country, and founded the dynasty of kings that would rule—eventually under British colonial supervision—for 150 years. One of Ali’s most enduring marks on the country was the establishment of the first modern network of dams and irrigation canals in the Delta, which allowed tens of thousands of new acres to come under cultivation.
  • water and land played a crucial role in Nasser’s legacy. 12% of the country’s arable land was owned by the aristocracy; Nasser nationalized this land and distributed it to about 340,000 impoverished rural families. He also further extended Ali’s irrigation network and oversaw construction of the Aswan High Dam, which brought an end to the Nile’s ancient seasonal flooding and fixed the river in its present position, with just two remaining branches forking through the Delta.
  • Egypt’s population has since more than quadrupled, to 104 million. Yet the flow of the Nile, which supplies more than 95% of the country’s water, has remained more or less constant. In the 1990s water availability fell below the international “water poverty” benchmark of 1,000 cubic meters per person per year.
  • Egypt has managed that scarcity by meticulously recycling agricultural water and, in recent years, curtailing the production of water-intensive crops like cotton and rice and importing 40% of its wheat and other food staples.
  • The population is still growing quickly, and could reach 160 million by 2050. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that is nearing completion upstream could cut the flow of Nile water into Egypt by a quarter during the as-yet-unknown number of years it will take to fill its reservoir. By 2100, climate change-related heat waves upstream could reduce the Nile’s flow by 75%, Abousabaa said.
  • current annual demand for water is about 35% higher than what the country receives from the Nile, groundwater, and a very small amount of rain—a deficit of about 20 billion cubic meters. To cover it, she said, Egypt will need to use every drop multiple times, aggressively minimize wastage, and boost the supply by investing $2.8 billion in dozens of new desalination plants with the aim to produce 5 billion cubic meters annually by 2050.
  • Egypt has made clear that COP27 will focus primarily on wringing climate finance out of the rich countries that are most responsible for climate change.
  • rising temperatures and falling rainfall mean crops—which consume 86% of Egypt’s water supply—will require more irrigation to survive.
  • The unpredictability makes it difficult to identify solutions, Salah says: “Climate change is like a big black box.”
  • “For the last two years, with heat wave after heat wave, we lost more than half the crop. It’s really sad.”
  • The farm relies on groundwater brought up from wells on the property, and Nasrallah says the suburbs are draining the aquifer. In the last four years he has had to dig an extra thirty meters to find water—and deeper wells mean higher electricity bills for pumping. Some wells have dried up altogether. Recently, government officials told him he had to stop watering the grass on a soccer field he built for his workers.
  • Urbanization is also spreading in the inner Delta, as many farmers decide that constructing housing is more profitable than growing crops. Since the 1970s, about 14% of the Delta’s arable land has been converted to urban development
  • Individual farms are also becoming smaller with each generation as, in keeping with longstanding Egyptian custom, land is divided among a father’s heirs (with sons traditionally taking a larger share than daughters). Urban development degrades the Delta’s soil and drives more farming into the desert, leaving the entire food system more vulnerable to climate impacts. Land fragmentation leads to the inefficient use of water and other resources and raises the costs of distribution for farmers.
  • in some cases, the government’s own plans are responsible, most recently in August when thousands of people living on a Nile island near Cairo that was primarily used for farming were evicted to make way for a state-sanctioned development project.
  • The network started by Muhammed Ali now includes about 33,000 miles of delivery and drainage canals across the country, enough to wrap around the globe, that range in size from small rivers to something a child could hop over. Delta residents say they used to bathe in these canals, drink from them, and raise fish in them. Now many of them, especially at the ends of the network, are polluted with farming chemicals and sewage, and choked with trash.
  • Between seepage, evaporation, and water wasted by farmers who flood their fields instead of using controlled irrigation hoses, nearly one-third of the country’s water is lost in the irrigation system between the Aswan High Dam and the sea
  • The soil is dark and appears rich, but is crusted with a visible layer of salt, a problem that affects up to 40% of Egypt’s arable soil.
  • Fixing the irrigation network is a priority for the government. Eman Sayed from the Irrigation Ministry said her agency has lined about 3,700 miles of canals with concrete in the last two years and is aiming to finish another 12,400 in the next few years. The ministry is also helping farmers cover the cost of installing drip irrigation systems, which researchers at AUC found can cut farmers’ water consumption 61% per year; today such systems cover only one-sixth of arable land in Egypt.
  • Authorities have also begun to restrict production of water-intensive crops like rice and bananas, although farmers say there is little enforcement of these rules, and both crops are still widely cultivated throughout the Delta.
  • On the western fringe of the Delta, farms and suburbs are gradually overtaking the desert as the central Delta grows more crowded. Here, water is even scarcer and the impacts of climate change are more pronounced. But in this and a few other desert areas around Egypt, the government is working to link more than 1.5 million acres to groundwater irrigation, and says it is about one-third of the way there. Land reclamation could take some pressure off the Delta, and sandy soils are well-suited for the production of citrus fruits that are one of Egypt’s most lucrative exports.
  • On the horizon, an offshore natural gas platform is visible. Egypt, which seized the disruption of Russian energy supplies to Europe because of the Ukraine war as an opening to boost its own exports of natural gas, is now contributing more to the problem than ever before; an independent review of its new climate strategy ranked it “highly insufficient” for averting disastrous levels of carbon emissions.
  • By 2100, Noureldeen says, sea level rise could inundate nearly 700 square miles of the coastal Delta and displace four million people.
Ed Webb

Drought may have doomed this ancient empire - a warning for today's climate crisis - Th... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...climate-change-drought-history

history archaeology Turkey ancient climate agriculture drought foodsecurity

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • A new analysis published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that the Hittites endured three consecutive years of extreme drought right around the time that the empire fell. Such severe water shortages may have doomed the massive farms at the heart of the Hittite economy, leading to famine, economic turmoil and ultimately political upheaval, researchers say.
  • n accumulating field of research linking the fall of civilizations to abrupt shifts in Earth’s climate. In the ruins of ancient Egypt, Stone Age China, the Roman Empire, Indigenous American cities and countless other locations, experts have uncovered evidence of how floods, droughts and famines can alter the course of human history, pushing societies to die out or transform.
  • It underscores the peril of increasingly frequent and severe climate disasters. But it also points to strategies that might make communities more resilient: cultivating diverse economies, minimizing environmental impacts, developing cities in more sustainable ways.
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  • “Things like climate change, earthquakes, drought — they are of course realities of our lives,” Durusu-Tanrıöver said. “But there are human actions that can be taken to foresee what will happen and behave accordingly.
  • In the half-century leading up to empire’s collapse, the scientists found, the rings inside the tree trunks gradually start to get narrower — suggesting that water shortages were limiting the junipers’ growth. Chemical analyses of the kind of carbon captured in the wood also showed how drought altered the trees at the cellular level.
  • cuneiform tablets from that time in which Hittite officials fretted over rising food prices and asked for grain to be sent to their cities. But Manning said the empire — which was known for its elaborate water infrastructure projects and massive grain silos in major cities — should have been able to survive this “low frequency” drought.
  • between 1198 and 1196 B.C., the region was struck by three of the driest years in the entire 1,000-year-long tree ring record. The abrupt spurt of intensely dry weather may have been more than the Hittites could bear. Within a generation, the empire had dissolved.
  • “Very few societies ever plan for more than one or two disasters happening consecutively.”
  • “But I think it’s naive to believe that three years of drought would bring down the storerooms of the Hittite empire,” Weiss said. He argues that the longer-term drying trend, which has been documented in other studies, was probably more significant.
  • “What’s a crisis for some becomes almost an opportunity for others,” Manning said. “You have adaptation and resilience in the form of new states and new economies emerging.”
  • Durusu-Tanrıöver blames an unsustainable economy and centralized political system. The intensive agricultural practices required to support the capital city probably exhausted the region’s water resources and weakened surrounding ecosystems
  • parallels to modern urban areas, which are both major sources of planet-warming pollution and especially vulnerable to climate change impacts like extreme heat.
Ed Webb

'Apocalypse soon': reluctant Middle East forced to open eyes to climate crisis | Climat... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...to-open-eyes-to-climate-crisis

climate energy economy GCC Gulf UAE KSA Saudi Kuwait Qatar Oman Bahrain

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Nov 21 - Cached
  • In Qatar, the country with the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world and the biggest producer of liquid gas, the outdoors is already being air conditioned.
  • In the United Arab Emirates it is estimated that the climate crisis costs £6bn a year in higher health costs. The salinity of the Gulf, caused by proliferating desalination plants, has increased by 20%, with all the likely impact on marine life and biodiversity.
  • The Middle East is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. By the end of the century, if the more dire predictions prove true, Mecca may not be habitable, making the summer Haj a pilgrimage of peril, even catastrophe
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  • The ruling elites are all dependent on oil rents for the survival of their regimes. They need the oil business to stay alive for them to stay in power. Their system is based on continued oil rent, but ultimately, the citizens’ long-term interests are with a liveable climate
  • The precise point oil demand will peak has been contested, and depends on a myriad of assumptions about regulation, technology and consumer behaviour. But many people say demand will peak in about 2040, and then decline.
  • the International Energy Association’s report Net Zero by 2050, by contrast, proposed oil demand fall from 88m barrels a day (mb/d) in 2020, to 72 mb/d in 2030 and to 24 mb/d in 2050, a fall of almost 75% between 2020 and 2050. It argued that the Gulf has all three elements needed to switch to renewables: capital, sun and large tracts of vacant land.
  • Opec’s own projections suggest oil demand will rise in absolute terms through to 2045, and oil’s share of world wide energy demand will fall only from 30% to 28%. Hardly a green revolution.
  • The Gulf States are still highly reliant on oil and gas exports, which remain more than 70% of total goods exports in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman, and on oil revenues, which exceed 70% of total government revenues in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. In Vision 2030, published in 2016, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, promised to turn the country into a diversified industrial power house. The reality is very different. The World Bank shows Saudi Arabia is still 75% dependent on oil exports for its budget.
  • Aramco, the Saudi company with the largest carbon footprint in the world, is not trying to diversify at the rate of Shell or BP. Indeed, it has just announced an investment to increase crude capacity from 12m barrels a day to 13m barrels by 2027
  • If you see the lifestyle in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is based on endless consumption
  • The region is responsible for only 4.7 % of worldwide carbon emissions, dwarfed by the pollution from Europe, America and China. The oil that the Middle East exports is logged against the carbon emissions of the users, not the producers.
  • The Gulf’s self-proclaimed first mover, the UAE, was the first country in the region to ratify the Paris agreement and is now the least dependent on oil for government revenues. Last week it announced a “net zero initiative by 2050” to be begun with $163bn (£118bn) of investments and a new minister for climate change and the environment, Mariam Almheiri. The announcement came after the UAE ordered an 80-day brainstorming session in every government department from June. It was the first petro-state to embrace net zero in domestic consumption.
  • Gulf states are deeply competitive, so a flurry of news is emerging. Qatar has appointed a climate minister; Bahrain is targeting net zero by 2050; Kuwait has a new emissions plan.
  • Fossil fuels shipped abroad are not on the Saudi’s carbon ledger, owing to UN accounting rules, and the promised internal reduction in emissions is dependent on a heavy bet that unproven blue hydrogen and carbon capture technology will work.
Ed Webb

Peter Schwartzstein | Climate Change and Water Woes Drove ISIS Recruiting in Iraq - 0 views

pschwartzstein.com/...-drove-isis-recruiting-in-iraq

Iraq Syria Turkey water agriculture economy ISIS extremists recruitment

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Nov 17 - Cached
  • With every flood or bout of extreme heat or cold, the jihadists would reappear, often supplementing their sales pitches with gifts. When a particularly vicious drought struck in 2010, the fifth in seven years, they doled out food baskets. When fierce winds eviscerated hundreds of eggplant fields near Kirkuk in the spring of 2012, they distributed cash. As farming communities limped from one debilitating crisis to another, the recruiters—all members of what soon became the Islamic State—began to see a return on their investment.
  • By the time the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) seized this swath of Iraq—along with most of the country’s west and north—in a brutal summer-long blitzkrieg in 2014, few locals were surprised to see dozens of former fertilizer market regulars among its ranks.
  • ISIS appears to have attracted much more support from water-deprived communities than from their better-resourced peers
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  • Across rural Iraq and Syria, farmers, officials, and village elders tell similar stories of desperate farmhands swapping backhoes for assault rifles. Already battered by decades of shoddy environmental policies, which had hobbled agriculture and impoverished its dependents, these men were in no state to navigate the extra challenges of climate change. And so when ISIS came along, propelled in large part by sectarian grievances and religious fanaticism, many of the most environmentally damaged Sunni Arab villages quickly emerged as some of the deep-pocketed jihadists’ foremost recruiting grounds.
  • Some 39 percent of those polled in Salahaddin cited drought as a reason for their displacement. Studies from neighboring Syria, large parts of which enjoy similar conditions to northern and western Iraq, suggest that anthropogenic climate change has tripled the probability of long, debilitating droughts.
  • Years of below average rains in the Kurdish region and Nineveh governorate, the only parts of Iraq where rain-fed agriculture was historically possible, had increased the country’s dependence on the Euphrates and Tigris, the Fertile Crescent’s two great rivers. At the same time, upstream Turkey and Iran were relentlessly damming them and their tributaries. Turkey has built over 600 large dams, including dozens of major ones near the Iraqi and Syrian borders. The Tigris and Euphrates’ combined flow in southern Iraq has subsequently shrunk so much that the Persian Gulf now barrels up to 45 miles upriver at high tide (the rivers used to project freshwater up to 3 miles out to sea).
  • water was becoming a resource that in some parts of Iraq only wealthier landowners could afford
  • By 2011, much of the Iraqi countryside was in desperate financial straits. Some 39 percent of people in rural areas were living in poverty, according to the World Bank. That’s two and a half times the country’s urban rate. Almost half lacked safe drinking water. The problems were so devastating in 2012-13 that tens of thousands of villagers ditched their fields altogether, preferring to try their luck in the slum districts of nearby cities instead.
  • Hussein torched some of southern Iraq’s most bountiful date plantations for fear that Iranian saboteurs might use them as cover to attack oil facilities around Basra. Where once 12 million palm trees stood, there’s now just miles of dusty scrubland laced with oil spills
  • When severe water shortages killed off countless livestock in 2011-12, jihadists descended on the animal markets to size up the frantic farmers, many of whom were trying to sell off their remaining cows and sheep before they too succumbed to drought. “They just watched us. We were like food on the table to them,”
  • After several years of energetic groundwater extraction near the oil refining town of Baiji, Samir Saed’s two wells ran dry in early 2014, forcing him to lay off the two young men he employed as farm laborers. Jobless and angry, he suspects they soon joined ISIS
  • the jihadists expertly exploited the desperation in Iraq’s agricultural heartland by rationalizing its inhabitants’ woes. They spread rumors that the Shia-dominated government was delaying crop payments and cutting off water to Sunni farmers. In fact, the lack of rain wasn’t due to climate change, but really a man-made ploy designed to drive Sunni landowners from their rich fertile fields, their emissaries suggested. Broke and unable to deal with their fast changing environment, many farmers ate it up.
  • The jihadists adopted scorched earth tactics as they were beaten back, laying waste to hundreds of thousands of acres of prime farmland. And so for returning farmers, climate change and shoddy governance are now among the least of their worries. ISIS fighters ripped up buried irrigation pipes to mold makeshift mortars. They poisoned wells, blew up water canals, and carted off everything that was of any value, notably generators, tractors, and water pump parts.
  • More or less broke after the oil price crash, the Iraqi state can’t afford to pay farmers for crops they’ve delivered to state silos, let alone cover the multi-billion dollar agricultural clean up bill
  • Turkey has almost finished building the Ilisu Dam, which threatens to further cut the Tigris’ flow when it comes online, probably next year. Hotter temperatures are evaporating more and more surface water—up to six feet worth in Iraq’s lakes every year, according to Nature Iraq, a local NGO. As Baghdad’s relations with the upstream Kurdish region deteriorate, farmers might once more bear the brunt of the dispute. Kurdish authorities have cut off water to mostly Arab areas on several occasions in the past
  • If Iraq can’t get a grip on its crumbling environment, the next war might not be far off.
Ed Webb

Thirsty crops, leaky infrastructure drive Tunisia's water crisis | PLACE - 0 views

www.thisisplace.org/i

Tunisia energy water agriculture infrastructure climate sustainability

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • "We used to grow much more wheat, we used to plant tomatoes, but we don't have (enough) water,"
  • Poor planning, sparse water resources and the worsening impacts of climate change have combined to create a crippling water crisis in Tunisia, say civil society groups.
  • Due to random cuts to water supplies, debt and management issues with the GDAs and the poor quality of water that runs from the taps, Marzougui said about three-quarters of the population have problems accessing clean water.
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  • The country's irregular rainfall patterns are accentuated by climate change, with periods of droughts and record high temperatures oscillating between torrential rain and floods, according to the agriculture ministry.
  • latest government figures also reveal that poor infrastructure means in some regions about half of water is lost before it even reaches the tap
  • It is mostly women who carry the burden of fetching water
  • "It costs a lot of money and there is still (more) water lost through the network (than desalination stations are projected to produce)."
  • "We need a lot of water during Eid - for cooking, showering, for washing the intestines of the sheep," she said, referring to the traditional method for preparing meat during the holiday. "The infrastructure is bad, we lose water in the distribution network. The summer months are peak tourist season, so there is a lot of water consumption," said Louati of the OTE. "And because of climate change, the availability of water varies more than before."
  • In 2017, the minister of agriculture created a committee dedicated to prioritising climate change in the management of agriculture and water. "We are in front of a fait accompli - we need to do with what we have and it is only going to become less (water)," said Rafik Aini, coordinator of the committee and senior negotiator in climate change at the agriculture ministry.
  • Tunisia's new Water Code, which was approved by ministers in September and is waiting to be debated by parliament, includes climate change as a factor to be considered in water policy decisions, unlike the original 1975 code.
  • In addition to repairing the water network, Aini told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the government's 2050 strategy for water will involve desalination projects powered by renewable energy.
  • Even for houses on the grid, water is not guaranteed. Nomad08 recorded 3,000 cuts between 2016 and 2018 across the country, lasting up to 60 days at a time.
  • In January, a study by the U.N. University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) warned that the global levels of surplus salty brine produced by this method were 50% higher than previous estimates.
  • Desalination would also have "profound impacts" on the sea ecosystem, where this waste is mostly dumped, the report found.
  • the "politics of agriculture needs to change," said Gafrej. "With precious and rare water, we do not have the right to produce certain cultures like watermelons."
  • about 80% of Tunisia's natural water resources are used for agriculture, according to last year's government figures. Thirsty crops like oranges, watermelons and tomatoes are grown for export abroad, mostly to Europe.
  • In intensive farming regions, like Kairouan, groundwater is being extracted at a faster rate than the underground supply is renewed, as well as from non-renewable groundwater sources. A government report noted that these resources are exploited up to 400% in certain regions.
Ed Webb

The Ouarzazate Solar Plant in Morocco: Triumphal 'Green' Capitalism and the Privatizati... - 0 views

www.jadaliyya.com/...-plant-in-morocco_triumphal-gr

Morocco energy environment neoliberalism globalization land water EU economy

shared by Ed Webb on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • a solar mega-project that is supposedly going to end Morocco's dependency on energy imports, provide electricity to more than a million Moroccans, and put the country on a “green path.”
  • This analysis examines the project through the lens of the creation of a new commodity chain, revealing its effects as no different from the destructive mining activities taking place in southern Morocco.
  • What seems to unite all the reports and articles written about the solar plant is a deeply erroneous assumption that any move toward renewable energy is to be welcomed. And that any shift from fossil fuels, regardless of how it is carried out, will help us to avert climate chaos. One needs to say it clearly from the start: the climate crisis we are currently facing is not attributable to fossil fuels per se, but rather to their unsustainable and destructive use in order to fuel the capitalist machine. In other words, capitalism is the culprit, and if we are serious in our endeavors to tackle the climate crisis (only one facet of the multi-dimensional crisis of capitalism), we cannot elude questions of radically changing our ways of producing and distributing things, our consumption patterns and fundamental issues of equity and justice. It follows from this that a mere shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, while remaining in the capitalist framework of commodifying and privatizing nature for the profits of the few, will not solve the problem. In fact, if we continue down this path we will only end up exacerbating, or creating another set of problems, around issues of ownership of land and natural resources.
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  • the acquisition of 3000 hectares of communally owned land to produce energy
  • "green grabbing"
  • the transfer of ownership, use rights and control over resources that were once publicly or privately owned –or not even the subject of ownership– from the poor (or everyone including the poor) into the hands of the powerful
  • This productivist creation of marginality and degradation has a long history that goes back to French colonial times. It was then that degradation narratives were constructed to justify both outright expropriation of land and the establishment of institutional arrangements based on the premise that extensive pastoralism was unproductive at best, and destructive at worst.
  • the discursive framework rendered it "marginal" and open to new "green" market uses: the production of solar power in this case at the expense of an alternative land use - pastoralism - that is deemed unproductive by the decision-makers. This is evident in the land sale that was carried out at a very low price.
  • various deceptive laws with colonial origins that have functioned to concentrate collective land ownership within the hands of an individual land representative, who tends to be under the influence of powerful regional nobles
  • meetings masquerading as a "consultation with the people" were only designed to inform the local communities about a fait accompli rather than seeking their approval
  • The land, sold at a cheap one Moroccan dirham per square meter was clearly worth a lot more. As if things were not bad enough, the duped local population were surprised to find out that the money from the sale was not going to be handed to them, but that it would be deposited into the tribe's account at the Ministry of Interior. Additionally, the money would be used to finance development projects for the whole area. They discovered that their land sale was not a sale at all: it was simply a transfer of funds from one government agency to another.
  • privatizations in the renewable energy sector are not new as of 2005, when a royal holding company called Nareva was created specifically to monopolize markets in the energy and environment sectors and ended up taking the lion's share in wind energy production in the country
  • he government had effectively privatized and confiscated historical popular sovereignty over land and transformed the people into mere recipients of development; development they are literally paying for, provided it would one day materialize, of course
  • There is no surprise regarding the international financial institutions' (IFIs) strong support for this high-cost and capital-intensive project, as Morocco boasts one of the most neoliberal(ized) economies in the region. It is extremely open to foreign capital at the expense of labor rights, and very advanced in its ambition to be fully integrated into the global marketplace (in a subordinate position, that is).
  • The World Bank’s disbursement levels to Morocco reached record levels in 2011 and 2012, with a major emphasis of these loans placed on promoting the use of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) within key sectors
  • It seems that production of energy from the sun will not be different and will be controlled by multinationals only interested in making huge profits at the expense of sovereignty and a decent life for Moroccans.
  • The idea that Morocco is taking out billions of dollars in loans to produce energy, some of which will be exported to Europe when the economic viability of the initiative is hardly assured, raises questions about externalizing the risk of Europe's renewable energy strategy to Morocco and other struggling economies around the region. It ignores entirely what has come to be called "climate debt" or "ecological debt" that is owed by the industrialised North to countries of the Global South, given the historical responsibility of the West in causing climate change
  • The biggest issue with this technology is the extensive use of water that comes with the wet cooling stage. Unlike photovoltaic (PV) technology, CSP needs cooling. This is done either by air cooled condensers (dry cooling) or high water-consumption (wet cooling). Phase I of the project will be using the wet cooling option and is estimated to consume from two to three million cubed meters of water annually (Kouz 2011). Water consumption will be much less in the case of a dry cooling (planned for phase II): between 0.73 and 0.88 million cubed meters. PV technologies require water only for cleaning solar panels. They consume about 200 times less water than CSP technology with wet cooling and forty times less water than CSP with dry cooling.
  • Even if the solar plant is only using one percent of the average dam capacity, the water consumption is still significant and can become a thorny problem at times of extreme drought when the dam contains only fifty-four million cubed meter. At such times, the dam waters will not be sufficient to cover the needs of irrigation and drinking water,  making the water usage for the solar plant deeply problematic and contentious.
  • in an arid region like Ouarzazate, this appropriation of water for a supposedly green agenda constitutes another green grab, which will play into and intensify ongoing agrarian dynamics and livelihood struggles in the region.
  • If the Moroccan state was really serious about its green credentials, why is it then building a coal-fired power plant at the same time, which represents an ecocide in-waiting for the already-polluted town of Safi? Why is it also ignoring the devastating environmental and social effects of the mining industry in the country? One notable example is the long-standing community struggle in Imider (140 kilometres east of Ouarzazate) against the royal holding silver mine (Africa's most productive silver mine), which is polluting their environment, grabbing their water, and pillaging their wealth.
Ed Webb

Egyptian NGOs complain of being shut out of Cop27 climate summit | Cop27 | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ut-out-of-cop27-climate-summit

Egypt authoritarianism UN COP NGOs civil_society climate environment Sisi

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Aug 22 - Cached
  • A group of Egyptian civil society organisations have been prevented from attending the Cop27 climate summit by a covert registration process that filtered out groups critical of the Egyptian government.
  • “You don’t let a government tell the UN who is and who isn’t an NGO, certainly not the Egyptian government,” said Ahmad Abdallah, of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), one of five leading organisations unable to register to attend the conference due to the screening.
  • “the UN is colluding with the Egyptian government to whitewash this regime”
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  • The Egyptian authorities’ efforts to screen out prominent organisations with a record of criticising their rule, particularly on the issue of human rights, comes amid growing concern over their treatment of protests and civil society at the Cop in Sharm el-Sheikh in November.
  • The UNFCCC told the Guardian host nations were permitted to invite organisations at their discretion for one-time access, but that “there is no fixed written policy” on one-time registration. The UK did not recommend any NGOs for one-time admission to attend Cop26.
  • The secretariat does not consider itself to be competent to unilaterally identify additional organisations from the host country
  • Abdallah said the Egyptian government wished to use Cop27 “to portray a different image of Egypt, one where people are kept away from cities suffering from pollution, poverty or repression. Part of this image is keeping critical voices out so that the only ones heard in Sharm el-Sheikh are those praising the government.”
  • Since coming to power in a military coup in 2013, Sisi has moved to strangle civil society activity. The state has demanded that NGOs receive government approval to continue operating and has outlawed funding received from abroad as a way to curtail their operations.
  • Organisations tracking detentions by security services, use of torture by state bodies or the state’s crackdown on civil rights have found their offices raided, their founders targeted with asset freezes and travel bans or their premises forcibly closed by the authorities.
  • Abdallah told the Guardian the ECRF had applied to attend Cop27 not just to represent Egyptian citizens but also to provide legal assistance in Sharm el-Sheikh to anyone detained for protesting.“Not allowing ECRF to attend strips participants from our protection, meaning protection from a watchdog organisation that can actually support them,” he said. “No one else is doing this.”
  • Climate justice activists have said Egypt should not be allowed to host Cop27 while thousands of prisoners of conscience remain behind bars, particularly the British-Egyptian activist and blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah, now more than four months into a hunger strike. Abd El-Fattah, imprisoned on terrorism charges for a social media post, told his family during a recent visit that he believed he would die in prison.
Ed Webb

Climate migration in Iraq's south brings cities to crisis - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...q-climate-crisis-drought-basra

Iraq water energy urbanization urban migration economy unemployment politics climate

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Sep 22 - Cached
  • Iraq as the fifth-most-vulnerable country to climate change. Temperatures have increased by 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in three decades, according to Berkeley Earth, well above the global average, and in the summers, the mercury now regularly hits 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit)
  • burning crops and desiccating marshes
  • As upstream dams in Turkey and Iran weaken the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a salty tide is creeping north from the Persian Gulf, poisoning the land
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  • changing climate is forcing families to sell off their livestock and pack up for urban centers such as the region’s largest city, Basra, in search of jobs and better services
  • As hotter, more-crowded cities become the future of a warming world, a lack of preparedness will only exacerbate the discontent already fraying the social fabric
  • decades of U.S.-backed sanctions and war, combined with the weight of corruption and neglect, have left Basra’s infrastructure unable to adequately support the 2 million people the city already houses — let alone the rising tide of newcomers.
  • According to official figures, Basra province has a population of over 3 million — an increase of at least 20 percent in 10 years. And most of that growth has been in its urban areas
  • nearly 40 percent of farmers across the country reported an almost total loss of their wheat crop.
  • Social media has been awash with photos showing water buffaloes lying dead on the cracked mudflats of southern Iraq’s dried-out marshlands
  • 12 percent of residents were newcomers who had settled in Basra over the past decade, mostly because of water scarcity and a lack of economic opportunities. The number is even higher in other southern Iraqi cities, such as Shatrah and Amarah.
  • water degradation in the province cost Iraq $400 million in lost animals, palm trees and crops in 2018 alone
  • As he saw it, migration was only making the situation worse, and he felt that the slow tide of arrivals was changing his city. “Their mind-set is different; we don’t know how to deal with them,” he said. “They don’t respect the laws here.”
  • Decades of government neglect in rural areas, particularly in the education sector, have left many of the migrants illiterate.
  • often struggle to access the city’s formal labor market and instead rely on temporary employment as construction workers or truck drivers, or hawking goods from carts in the street. And their habits and attitudes clash with those of their urban cousins.
  • political leaders in southern Iraq have started blaming the city’s crime rate — as well as other problems — on its migrants.
  • A few years ago, huge demonstrations decrying corruption and unemployment were crushed with deadly force. Since then, every summer has brought scattered daily protests over authorities’ failure to provide basic services.
  • “This is how you drive these people into criminality, by discriminating,” she said. “They move to irregular neighborhoods where there’s no proper public services and no employment. And then social issues will emerge.”
  • When a heat wave forced the shutdown of Basra’s power grid in August, the homes of newcomers and longtime residents alike were plunged into darkness as millions spent sleepless nights drenched in sweat
  • “My dreams in this country are being lived by a dog in Europe,”
Ed Webb

As climate change worsens, Egypt is begging families to have fewer kids - The Washingto... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...op27-climate-change-population

COP Egypt politics economy climate development food agriculture birth population

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • In public speeches, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has repeatedly scolded families for having more than two children, calling the population crisis a national security issue that has hindered progress on development goals.
  • More than one billion people already live in Africa. By 2050, the populations of at least 26 African countries are expected to double.
  • rising temperatures increasingly threaten the country’s food and water supplies
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  • As the host of COP27, Egypt has vowed to champion African concerns, which include how rapid population growth may heighten countries’ vulnerability to climate change. Africa is already severely impacted by climate change despite being responsible for only around 3 percent of global CO2 emissions.
  • The effects of Egypt’s soaring population are felt in its traffic jams and crowded malls, its overflowing classrooms and packed apartment buildings. But residents of urban areas remain somewhat sheltered from the environmental stresses on rural communities and agriculture, which is vital to the country’s economy.
  • The country “is nearing ‘absolute water scarcity,’” according to a recent report published by UNICEF and the American University in Cairo. The government has sought to restrict the amount of farmland that is used for growing water-intensive crops such as bananas.
  • In agricultural areas, the “policy of just having two children is totally out of touch,” Khamis said. When the government aggressively pushes for families to have fewer children, it can come off as “simply using the people as a scapegoat for the government’s shortcomings on economic growth.”
  • According to Egypt’s 2021 family health survey, around 65 percent of married women between the ages of 15 and 49 were using modern family planning — an increase of 8 percentage points from 2014. Around 63 percent of those using contraceptives said they obtained them from government-run facilities.
Ed Webb

Desert Cucumbers: The Sahara Forest Project Comes to Tunisia - Tunisialive - 0 views

www.tunisia-live.net/...desert-cucumbers

Tunisia agriculture economy climate environment food desertification

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A $30 million, high-tech agricultural facility covering 10 hectares in the desert in Tunisia’s south is scheduled to open in 2018. The facility, which is a highly sophisticated green house, will use solar energy to power its operations and seawater to irrigate crops and maintain humidity. The extracted salt from the seawater will also be sold commercially.
  • hoped to be a new environmental solution to create green jobs through profitable production of food, water, clean electricity and biomass in desert areas. The first pilot project opened in Qatar in December 2012, and another facility will be launched in Jordan later this year
  • Although there are no numbers or estimates available for Tunisia yet, the Qatar facility directly employs 6,000 people, with a further support staff of 30,000. Tunisian unemployment is estimated around 15 percent countrywide and even higher among young college graduates
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  • It has also become increasingly difficult to maintain a stable agricultural output as the country faces droughts and floods due to climate change
  • 1 percent of Tunisia’s energy supply is based on renewable energy sources, but the Tunisian government has pledged to increase that number to 30 percent by 2030
Ed Webb

The Role of Corruption in the Syrian Civil War | GAB | The Global Anticorruption Blog - 0 views

globalanticorruptionblog.com/...uption-in-the-syrian-civil-war

Syria assad corruption violence war civil_war analysis economy climate environment agriculture food security

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • the pervasive corruption of the Assad regime, which contributed to the outbreak of the civil war in at least three ways
  • the Sunni majority felt the economic repercussions the hardest
  • the arrival of large numbers of Syrian farmers and Iraqi refugees into the cities, which forced a large population to interact with corrupt officials on a more regular basis
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  • violent outbursts against corrupt officials were the first spark of what would become a full-blown civil war
  • corruption also worsened desertification in Syria, an important environmental driver behind the Civil War
  • The drought was a known issue among the general population and in the government, but attempts to combat the disaster and stall the desertification of the countryside were hampered by corruption
  • Even as the government was attempting to address the issue, the very officials in charge of controlling water use were undermining the regulations
  • Many have pointed to Assad’s younger brother and uncle, who served in his cabinet and in the military, to explain Assad’s aggressive posture towards the early protests. Both figures were able to wield a high degree of influence in Assad’s government due to their familial connection to Assad’s father, the founder of the current Baathist regime in Syria. Their connection to the military made them potential threats to Assad’s own rule if he went against the wishes of his commanders and took a more conciliatory role towards the protesters.
  • entrenched nepotism and concentration of power
  • it is important to remember that systemic corruption can at times lead to violence
Ed Webb

Agriculture in Europe to decline as Asian output grows: UN, OECD - 0 views

www.yahoo.com/...t-grows-un-oecd-131008078.html

Africa MENA food water security agriculture

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Jul 18 - No Cached
  • Agricultural production in Western Europe is set to decline over the coming decade, with output in Africa and Asia expected to increase, the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said
  • Middle East meanwhile faces a rising threat of food insecurity, the report said, as conflict, climate change and poor policy all have the effect of keeping the region overly reliant on imports
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, crop production is set to expand by 30 percent, with meat and dairy both set to grow by 25 percent
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  • the region's food security is set to remain dependent on global markets, because "domestic production capacity will remain insufficient to meet the region's growing consumption needs"
  • The Middle East, which is mired in conflict and political unrest, has a "high and growing dependence" on imports for key food products, the report said, leaving the region in a state of increasing food insecurity.Arable land and water are growing more scarce in the region, both because of climate change pushing temperatures up, and as a result of poor agricultural policy from governments."It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the water issue in the Middle East and North Africa region," the report said."Along with conflict, it is the most profound man-made threat to the region's future,"
Ed Webb

Alaa Abdel Fattah undergoes medical intervention by Egyptian authorities amid hunger st... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...er-strike-medical-intervention

Egypt COP rights prisoner activist activists

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Nov 22 - Cached
  • The family of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the British Egyptian political prisoner on a hunger and water strike in prison, was informed by Egyptian officials Thursday that he has undergone “a medical intervention with the knowledge of a judicial authority,” they said.
  • The United States is a close ally of Egypt and provides more than $1 billion in military aid to the country each year, but has repeatedly criticized its human rights record. Abdel Fattah’s family has made repeated public appeals to the White House to intervene in the case.
  • Abdel Fattah, who is 40 and a once-prominent activist in the 2011 revolution, has been in and out of prison for the past decade on charges human rights groups decry as attempts to silence dissent. He was sentenced to five years in prison last year after he was found guilty of “spreading false news undermining national security.”
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  • His case has become a central topic at COP27 — especially after an Egyptian lawmaker confronted his younger sister, Sanaa Seif, at a news conference discussing his case.
  • a lawyer in Cairo has since filed a case against Seif, accusing her of “conspiring with foreign agencies hostile to the Egyptian state” and “spreading false news,” among other allegations. The filing alone does not ensure the case will be pursued, but the family said it amounts to an intimidation tactic after Seif’s outspoken support of her brother at the international conference, where Egypt hoped human rights issues would not take center stage.
  • the message #FreeAlaa has spread throughout the conference, garnering support from climate activists. On Thursday, some attendees dressed in white — the color of prison uniforms in Egypt — and gathered for a protest over climate justice and to express solidarity with political prisoners here.
  • The protests would be unthinkable anywhere in Egypt outside the U.N.-controlled zone at COP27 due to tight restrictions on public gatherings.
  • On Thursday, the siblings’ mother — who has waited outside each day this week for a letter from her son — was asked to leave the area of the Wadi el-Natrun prison complex outside Cairo where he is being held.The family’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, then announced on social media that he has been approved to visit Abdel Fattah and was on his way to the facility — his first visit since early 2020. When he arrived, he said, prison officials refused him entrance to the facility — saying the permission letter he received that morning was dated the day before.
  • The family, who last heard from him in a letter last week that he would stop drinking water on Sunday, has repeatedly warned that he could die before the conference ends next week. Seif said Wednesday that she does not know if he is still alive.
  • Several world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, raised his case directly with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi. Under the terms of his sentencing, the presidency is the only office with the authority to pardon him. But despite days of demands, his family has still not had proof of life or seen any indication he may be released.
  • U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Türk called on Egypt to immediately release Abdel Fattah. “No one should be detained for exercising their basic human rights or defending those of others,” he said. “I also encourage the authorities to revise all laws that restrict civic space and curtail the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association.”
Ed Webb

Syria: Cholera surge sparks fears of uncontrollable outbreak in Idlib camps | Middle Ea... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...era-surge-fears-outbreak-camps

Syria water climate health disease conflict

shared by Ed Webb on 27 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • the outbreak is linked to the presence of bacteria responsible for cholera in the waters of the Euphrates river, the river's water level has suffered a serious decline because of climate change and is, in many areas, transforming into swamp land.
  • “The lack of treated drinking water through water stations and the irrigation of vegetables from the Euphrates river were the main cause of cholera infecting my wife and child.”
  • "We do not have potable water because of the interruption of pipe water, which makes us buy water from tanks filled from surface wells, which are not subject to sanitary control at all,"
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  • cholera crisis is partly a result of the effects of climate change but also a consequence of the civil war
  • the war has damaged two-thirds of water treatment plants, half of pumping stations and one-third of water towers.
  • Turkey has justified stopping the pumping of the station, claiming it was due to the cutting off of electricity by the SDF, which controls the power station in al-Darbasiyah, which feeds the Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad regions.
  • "We demanded several times that Alouk station come under international auspices and that a UN flag be raised on it in order [for it] not to be bombarded and interrupted," Sarhan said. "The conflict between Turkey, Russia, the SDF and Assad should not be at the expense of vulnerable people."
  • “Our concerns are not about the spread of cholera within cities, but its spread within the camps, which are an incubator environment for infectious diseases due to the weak humanitarian response in them,”
Ed Webb

Top Africa Stories in 2022 - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...iew-top-stories-2022-democracy

Africa politics economy climate

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jan 23 - No Cached
  • On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, and sanctions imposed on Russia by Western states led to surging food, fuel, and fertilizer prices. Burkina Faso saw two successful coups and a third foiled putsch. There were failed power grabs in São Tomé and Príncipe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and against Mali’s military junta, sparked by armed groups’ escalating attacks and creeping inflation on food and services. It was a continuation of a trajectory set in 2021, a year that saw four successful coups in Africa (in Chad, Guinea, Mali, and Sudan).
  • Tunisia is just one of many countries experiencing a rollback of democratic gains. Amid an economic crisis worsened by the pandemic and made even more acute by the war in Ukraine, democratic backsliding is increasing. As reported in Africa Brief this year, Sudan’s democratic future still hangs in the balance, and Mali’s putsch leaders agreed to a two-year democratic transition that would allow coup leader Col. Assimi Goïta and other military members to run in general elections in 2024. Ibrahim Traoré, an army captain in Burkina Faso, proclaimed himself the new president of the country’s military junta in the country’s second coup in eight months while Guinea’s military rulers issued a three-year ban on public demonstrations to combat growing calls for democracy. And around 50 people were killed by security forces as Chadians took to the streets to demand a quicker transition to democratic rule.
  • Recent elections in Kenya and Angola showed democratic gains as Kenyans defied their outgoing president’s chosen successor and young Angolans increasingly challenged their one-party state. Africans want more democracy even if their leaders want less of it.
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  • In the midst of this global energy crisis, African leaders have argued that their nations should also be allowed to ramp up fossil fuel use to improve domestic energy access—given they had contributed so little to historic carbon emissions. Indeed, 43 percent of Africa’s 1.4 billion people still lack access to electricity. As a result of soaring energy prices, the number of people without access to energy across Africa rose for the first time in decades, threatening to erode all gains made. According to the International Energy Agency, around 1 billion Africans will still rely on dirty fuels, such as firewood, for cooking in 2030. However, Western governments demanded that multilateral lenders, such as the World Bank, stop funding fossil fuel projects to reduce global carbon emissions.
  • Egypt, Africa’s second-largest economy, agreed on Oct. 27 to a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It was the country’s fourth since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took power in a coup in 2013, making Egypt the IMF’s second-largest debtor after Argentina. Long a top choice for emerging market investors, Egypt had become heavily dependent on hot money, but investors panicking over the war in Ukraine pulled around $20 billion out of Egypt between February and March.
  • Inflation in Ghana rose to 15.7 percent in March as the Ghanaian currency lost 16 percent of its value against the dollar, prompting protests in June over the soaring cost of living.
  • Africa is seeking more than just climate reparations as it looks to transform the global system. African leaders want a permanent seat for the African Union at the G-20, two seats on the U.N. Security Council, and a reordering of global tax rules under the United Nations.
  • 2022 was a year for the restitution of Africa’s historical artifacts stolen by colonial powers. The Smithsonian Institution agreed to return its collection of Benin Bronzes and placed legal ownership with Nigerian authorities. In July, Germany handed back two bronzes and put more than 1,000 other items into Nigeria’s ownership while a digital database—known as Digital Benin, which documents Western museums’ existing collection of Benin’s artifacts—was unveiled in November. Despite this progress, there are still unanswered calls for the British Museum, the largest holder of Benin Bronzes, to return its loot. In September, the world marked the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, a fragment of written decrees issued by Egyptian priests during the reign of Ptolemy V (204 to 180 B.C.). Egyptian scholars and archaeologists renewed their demand for the stone’s return, which has been housed at the British Museum in London since 1802. Their call has garnered more than 135,000 signatures on an online petition.
  • An online archive to showcase Mali’s cultural history was launched in March, digitizing more than 40,000 of Timbuktu’s ancient manuscripts, some dating to the 12th century and originally written in medieval Arabic but translated to several languages in an online platform. Malian librarians and their assistants secretly transported hundreds of thousands of documents into family homes in a bid to save them from destruction by jihadis. Through those efforts, some 350,000 manuscripts from 45 libraries across the city were kept safe.
Ed Webb

WPTPN: Lessons from Turkey: Populist Nationalism and the Threat to Democracy | Duck of ... - 0 views

duckofminerva.com/...d-the-threat-to-democracy.html

authoritarianism nationalism democracy AKP Erdogan Turkey analysis politics

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • although the AKP uses the language of “the people” to legitimize its political rule, actually the party is largely supported by the Islamic bourgeoisie who, when compared to the rest of the population, enjoy certain class-based, ethnic and religious privileges. The strict boundaries drawn between “the people” and “the elite” create and exacerbate a polarized political climate. As a result, Turkish citizens increasingly feel like they must pick a side. Such polarization is troublesome because it leads to the erosion of societal trust, a key component of any democratic polity.
  • it is certain that new populist movements have to find an innovative method of redistributing economic favors if they want to remain in power
  • the slow erosion of democracy as a result of electoral “winning.” For Erdogan, winning in free elections entitles him to redesign the political system and the Constitution without being accountable to other political groups. The ability of Erdogan to redesign Turkey’s political institutions, especially his quest to adopt a presidential system, is made possible by his electoral popularity. Such a majoritarian notion of democracy has led to a political climate where the government disregards criticism and dismisses the demands of protestors as irrelevant
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  • In this view, anyone who criticizes the government is considered an enemy of the state
Ed Webb

Could hydroponics save Yemen from starving? | Green Prophet - 0 views

www.greenprophet.com/...onics-save-yemen-from-starving

Yemen food agriculture climate UN FAO WFP UNICEF

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • The number of food insecure people in Yemen has risen by 3 million in seven months, with an estimated 17.1 million people now struggling to feed themselves
  • More than two-thirds of Yemen’s population of 27.4 million people now lack access to food and consume an inadequate diet. Another Syria-style crisis may be on our way, and climate change and lack of water is making it worse.
  • “We are witnessing some of the highest numbers of malnutrition amongst children in Yemen in recent times. Children who are severely and acutely malnourished are 11 times more at risk of death as compared to their healthy peers, if not treated on time. Even if they survive, these children risk not fulfilling their developmental potentials, posing a serious threat to an entire generation in Yemen and keeping the country mired in the vicious cycle of poverty and under development,”
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  • 80 percent of Yemenis are in now in debt, and more than half of all households have had to buy food on credit.
  • Up to 1.5 million households engaged in agriculture now lack access to critical agricultural inputs (including seeds, fertiliser, fuel for irrigation) and are in urgent need of emergency agricultural support. Of these, 860 000 households engaged in livestock production lack access to animal feed (fodder, concentrate, mineral blocks) and many livestock-dependent households have been forced to sell their herds to cater for other household needs
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