Fossil fuel industry versus nature

Oil v Soil

It is getting drier, and it is a vicious circle

Many studies have suggested that three-quarters of Earth's land has become drier since 1990.

Droughts have been a consistent feature of our climate system, however they may now occur more frequently and with more extremity driven, in part, by the inexorable rise of greenhouse gas emissions over the last thirty years. Burning fossil fuels is transforming our blue planet.

·????? A new insight from scientists convened by the United Nations, found that an area as large as India has become arid, and it's probably permanent.

·????? A transition from humid to dry land is underway that has shrunk the area available to grow food, costing Africa 12% of its GDP and depleting our natural buffer to rising temperatures.

Climate change has essentially made the weather more volatile.

·????? When drought gives way to rain, more of it arrives in short bursts? that denude the topsoil. A stable climate would deliver a year's rain more evenly and gently, nourishing the soil so that it can nurture microbes that store water and release nutrients. ?

·????? "Soil is being lost up to 100 times faster than it is formed, and desertification is growing year on year," says Anna Krzywoszynska, a sustainable food expert at the University of Sheffield.

Anna goes on to say; "Across the world, soils have been pushed beyond their capacity to recover, and humanity’s ability to feed itself is now in danger."

The primary way that we have been making up for lost food yield is turning more forests into farms. This is accelerating our journey towards a drier, less liveable world because forests, if allowed to thrive, create their own rain.?

·????? "Water sucked up by tree roots is pumped back into the atmosphere where it forms clouds which eventually release the water as rain to be reabsorbed by trees," says a team of biologists at the University of Leeds who study the Amazon rainforest.

·????? "In the Amazon and Congo river basins, somewhere between a quarter and a half of all rainfall comes from moisture derived from the forest itself.”

Additionally, some experts have argued that the UN report understates Earth's growing aridity by overlooking the water that is held in snow caps, ice sheets and glaciers. Climate change is also melting this frozen reservoir, which serves as a seasonal source of water.

"Further, water in its bright-white solid form is much more effective at reflecting heat from the sun, its rapid loss is also accelerating global heating," says Mark Brandon, a professor of polar oceanography at The Open University.

What does this mean for agriculture?

The past few decades have been about centralisation, scale and homogeneity. Put simply, the profit motive has driven agriculture.

The future must therefore be about decentralisation, diversity and local production and consumption.

So profit cannot be the sole purpose.

"Regenerating land is a win-win, for humans and their ecosystems, if we dare to look beyond the immediate short-term horizon."

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