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SYRIA: Act now to stop desertification, says FAO
DAMASCUS, 15 June 2010 (IRIN) – An irreversible degeneration of some of Syria’s landmass could occur because of three consecutive years of drought, warns the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“If desertification is not controlled, it threatens the land and our heritage,” Abdulla Tahir Bin Yehia, head of FAO in Syria, said. “The situation is terrible in Syria and has been worsened by the past years of low rainfall.”
According to the UN, 80 percent of Syria is susceptible to desertification, defined by FAO as “the sum of the geological, climatic, biological and human factors which lead to the degradation of the physical, chemical and biological potential of lands in arid and semi-arid zones, and endanger biodiversity and the survival of human communities”.
Three years of drought have destroyed crops and livestock, ruining the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and displacing some 300,000 rural families to cities.
This year, however, there has been enough rainfall for the FAO to stop describing the situation as a drought, but uneven rainfall distribution has caused continued, widespread crop failure, putting the more than one million people already bordering on the poverty line into further jeopardy.
The World Food Programme (WFP) on 13 June said it had begun distributing food rations to 190,000 people in the eastern provinces of Hasakah, Deir al-Zor and Raqqa, but that another 110,000 people also required emergency food aid. WFP said a lack of funds was preventing it from distributing rice, oil, flour, chickpeas and salt rations.
Causes
Syria’s drought over the past three years and its increasing desertification is due to a combination of man-made and natural factors, experts say.
“There are natural causes beyond anyone’s control, as well as man-made causes,” said Douglas Johnson, a desertification expert at Clark University in the US. “In the Middle East the cause is almost entirely human activity. But that’s a simplistic statement because there is almost always an interaction with the natural environment. It is normal for the environment to fluctuate; some areas of desert may have no rain for four years, for example,” he said.
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