Population – Page 16 – Population Matters-USA

By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water -stressed areas World Health Organization

When I wrote Julys essay on the mega-drought in southwestern North America, we were in “extreme drought”. The rain started toward the end of July, although the drought hasn’t ended. Unfortunately, we are not the only area contending with drought.

Natural variability in weather patterns combined with anthropogenic climate heating have created drought in some places and flooding in others. Although those “natural” disasters are destructive in a rich country, they are often devastating in a low resource area. An example is found on the southeast coast of Africa, where some areas have too much rain and others have too little.

In March through May massive storms hit parts of Eastern Africa. From Ethiopia south to Tanzania heavy rains caused landslides, overflowing rivers and flash floods. Tens of thousands of people were displaced and hundreds killed. Crops were destroyed and many animals drowned.

The climate is much dryer in regions of the south of Africa. We visited Cape Town in November of 2018 and were careful to obey the water restrictions at that time: quick showers, only flush when you have to. The water in the reservoirs had been down to just weeks’ supply when, fortunately, the rains returned.

Some other areas in the south are not so fortunate. Currently, the Global Disaster Alerting and Coordination System reports serious droughts in parts of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa. Many people in these countries are subsistence farmers who depend on rain to nourish the crops they raise to feed their children. When it is dry, the land cannot support as many people as when rains are normal. A drought can put people’s livelihood–indeed their lives–in jeopardy. All too many starve to death in a serious drought, unless external aid comes to the rescue.

There is another plague haunting the Horn of Africa. In just one day unbelievable swarms of desert locusts consume enough food for thousands of people. Vast numbers of these insects, which can eat their body weight each day, proliferated in last year’s heavy rainfall. Scientists blame the unusual moisture on record high temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which in turn were caused by climate heating.

As these examples show, anthropogenic climate change causes different effects in different areas, even on the same coast of Africa. Although Africa is suffering, people in South America may feel the effects even more strongly.

At least 9 Latin American countries are experiencing drought. Even worse, some places have flooding, which washes away some crops, followed by drought, which kills what’s left. A recent report “Where Will Everyone Go?” (available at https://tinyurl.com/WhereWillEveryoneGo) looks at the effects of climate heating on the people in Central America. Co-researched by the New York Times and ProPublica, the authors tell the story of Jorge, a farmer in Guatemala. His crops suffer first from drought, then are washed away by flooding, then drought destroys any hope to feed his family.

Jorge pawned his last 4 goats to hire a “coyote”. He left his wife and 2 youngest children at home and entered the USA illegally over the border fence. Jorge and son are now in Houston, perhaps trying to earn enough money to bring his wife and children to safety.

This reminded me of my father’s trip to the USA. At age 4, in 1906, Louis arrived with his mother to be met by his father at Ellis Island. My grandfather had come over a year earlier to earn boat fare for the rest of the family. However, that was a different era when refugees were welcomed–in my father’s case, from religious persecution–and the barriers they faced didn’t include a 20-foot border wall.

As in all parts of the world, people in Guatemala want the best for their children. They have realized that kids do better when families are smaller. In the past decade the average number of children a woman will bear during her life has dropped from 4.4 to 2.7. However, more than a third of Guatemalans are under 15 years old, meaning that rapid growth will continue for many years.

What can we do? Fortunately, there is local action that will help make more water available locally and also slow climate change. Fossil fuel fired power plants use huge volumes of water for cooling. Trillions of gallons of Colorado water will be made available for agriculture and other uses as we shut down fossil fuel power plants and switch to wind and solar electrical generation.

Trees killed by drought and spruce beetles on Wolf Creek Pass

It is windy, hot and dry, dry, dry here. According to www.drought.gov, Durango is in an extreme drought. What’s going on? Do we need to start doing rain dances?

Past droughts have brought us some pretty destructive fires. Remember the Missionary Ridge and Valley fires in 2002? More recently the 416 fire in 2018 did dreadful things to the local economy and burnt 52,000 acres of forest. Fortunately there were no serious injuries or burnt structures. Thank you, firefighters! Very dry conditions predispose us to wildfires, of course. Even if your property isn’t burnt, we all suffer from the costs of firefighting and many of us from smoke-worsened respiratory problems.

Much of our water supply falls in the winter as snow. Snowfall this past winter started off looking good. However, in March precipitation dwindled so it seemed as though somebody turned off the tap. The cooler-than-average spring helped hold some of the moisture in the mountains, but now the snow has melted. We need the monsoons to bring us rain!

A large area in the southwest of the USA has been affected by drought–but that isn’t anything new for this region. Tree ring records tell us the Ancestral Puebloans (also called “Anasazi”) survived dry periods in the 9^thand 12^th centuries. Finally, after about 1150 it got so dry here they started migrating to the Rio Grande valley, archeologists tell us.

Reality appears more complex, however. The human population grew during the wetter years between droughts. When the megadrought hit in the 1150s, violence erupted, just as it did in Rwanda when people were starving. There were even signs of possible cannibalism in the 12^th century at Cowboy Wash, near Mesa Verde.

What are “megadroughts”? People who study droughts rely on dendrochronology (the study of tree rings) to look at the prehistoric past. A drought lasting 20 years or longer qualifies as a megadrought. Another definition is that it is any drought worse than anything the USA experienced in the 20^th century–including the Dust Bowl. From a sociological standpoint, megadroughts usually cause mass migrations of people. What is unusual is that is that people are migrating toan area of drought. We are so disconnected from the natural world that we can live in comfort with air conditioning and imported food.

The natural variability of weather and climate is thought to be the main cause of megadroughts, but there are at least two other contributing factors that are human caused. An example of a local effect is in Rajasthan, India, where the Thar Desert was once forested. Alexander the Great’s army, amongst others, cut down trees to build ships to cross the Indus River in the 320s, BCE. It is thought that this destruction of forests may have been a factor in this desertification.

Global climate heating has had a much wider effect on our climate than in just one location. It is generally accepted that the climate crisis is anthropogenic, so the more people there are and the more each of us consumes, the worse the heating.

Rajasthan is an example of how cutting down trees can change the local climate. Can planting trees help? The amazing Kenyan woman, Wangari Maathai, started a movement that may help answer the question. The Green Belt Movement she started did much more than just plant 51 million trees; Dr. Maathai used trees as an entry point for community development. Increasing women’s income, justice and reduction of poverty are among the humanitarian goals. The environmental goals are to combat deforestation, provide firewood for cooking and protect the watershed. This quote from a UN report shows success:

“Because of the deforestation, natural springs that fed the Chania River dried up, making the river’s water levels very low. The reforestation efforts of the women in the watershed have led to the rejuvenation of 65 springs. And the microclimate is enhanced in the planted areas: ‘We have noticed more rain since we planted the trees. When I came in 2008, you could walk across the river; now, it is almost back to historic levels’, said Joyce Nyambura, a Green Belt Movement Extension Officer.”

Back to the American Southwest. We are in the midst of a megadrought which started in 2000. It made worse by the increasing number of people and their demand for water almost doubling. A study has looked at the causes of this dryness and found that climate heating is a major factor for our drought. The authors calculated that only half is due to natural variation; the other half of the cause of the scarcity of water is anthropogenic.

It is too late to prevent our current megadrought, but hopefully the natural cycles of nature will bring rain to this parched land. What we can do to protect the next generations—indeed, must do–is to decrease our consumption and slow population growth.