A Slow-Motion Climate Disaster: The Spread of Barren Land - The New York Times - 0 views
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But on a recent day, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees, the river had run dry, the crops would not grow and the family’s 30 remaining cattle were quickly consuming the last pool of water.
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Scientists agree with her grandfather. Much of Brazil’s vast northeast is, in effect, turning into a desert — a process called desertification that is worsening across the planet.
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But local residents, faced with harsh economic realities, have also made short-term decisions to get by — like clearing trees for livestock and extracting clay for the region’s tile industry — that have carried long-term consequences.
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Satellite images and field tests show that 13 percent of the land has already lost its fertility, while nearly the rest of the region is at risk.
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Brazil’s northeast, the world’s most densely populated drylands, with roughly 53 million people, is among the most at risk.
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Instead, higher temperatures and less rain combine with deforestation and overfarming to leave the soil parched, lifeless and nearly devoid of nutrients, unable to support crops or even grass to feed livestock.
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Those entrepreneurs began paying landowners for their mud, and in a few years, dozens of ceramics plants employed hundreds of people.
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Increasing deforestation in Brazil has alarmed officials around the world because it threatens the Amazon rain forest’s ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere.
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At his small plant recently, a few dozen laborers laid out thousands of tiles to dry in the midday sun.
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Factories make the tiles by mixing water with clay, and then firing the result in a wood-burning oven. All those ingredients — water, wood and clay — are in short supply here.
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The operation consumes 60 to 75 cubic meters of wood a week, or enough to fill five large dump trucks.
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That can have a devastating effect. The soil and clay they extract is crucial for retaining a proper balance of nutrients and moisture in the surrounding land.
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In 2010, during another difficult dry season, Mr. Dantas said his family almost ran out of money. To feed themselves and their cattle, they decided to cash in on their mud.
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But in 2010, instead of planting, the family watched four men with shovels excavate and haul away the soil. It took them three months. They paid about $3,500 for the clay.