- UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The
world is turning to dust, with lands the size of Rhode Island becoming
desert wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions
of people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says.
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- One-third of the Earth's surface is at risk, driving
people into cities and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa.
Thirty-one percent of Spain is threatened, while China has lost 36,000
square miles to desert - an area the size of Indiana - since the 1950s.
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- This week the United Nations marks the 10th anniversary
of the Convention to Combat Desertification, a plan aimed at stopping the
phenomenon. Despite the efforts, the trend seems to be picking up speed
- doubling its pace since the 1970s.
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- "It's a creeping catastrophe," said Michel
Smitall, a spokesman for the U.N. secretariat that oversees the 1994 accord.
"Entire parts of the world might become uninhabitable."
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- Slash-and-burn agriculture, sloppy conservation, overtaxed
water supplies and soaring populations are mostly to blame. But global
warming is taking its toll, too.
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- The United Nations is holding a ceremony in Bonn, Germany,
on Thursday to mark World Day to Combat Desertification, and will hold
a meeting in Brazil this month to take stock of the problem.
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- The warning comes as a controversial movie, "The
Day After Tomorrow" is whipping up interest in climate change, and
as rivers and lakes dry up in the American West, giving Americans a taste
of what's to come elsewhere.
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- The United Nations says:
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- - From the mid-1990s to 2000, 1,374 square miles have
turned into deserts each year - an area about the size of Rhode Island.
That's up from 840 square miles in the 1980s, and 624 square miles during
the 1970s.
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- - By 2025, two-thirds of arable land in Africa will disappear,
along with one-third of Asia's and one-fifth of South America's.
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- - Some 135 million people - equivalent to the populations
of France and Germany combined - are at risk of being displaced.
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- Most at risk are dry regions on the edges of deserts
- places like sub-Saharan Africa or the Gobi Desert in China, where people
are already struggling to eke out a living from the land.
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- As populations expand, those regions have become more
stressed. Trees are cut for firewood, grasslands are overgrazed, fields
are over-farmed and lose their nutrients, water becomes scarcer and dirtier.
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- Technology can make the problem worse. In parts of Australia,
irrigation systems are pumping up salty water and slowly poisoning farms.
In Saudi Arabia, herdsmen can use water trucks instead of taking their
animals from oasis to oasis - but by staying in one place, the herds are
getting bigger and eating all the grass.
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- In Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, coastal resorts
are swallowing up water that once moistened the wilderness. Many farmers
in those countries still flood their fields instead of using more miserly
"drip irrigation," and the resulting shortages are slowly baking
the life out of the land.
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- The result is a patchy "rash" of dead areas,
rather than an easy-to-see expansion of existing deserts, scientists say.
These areas have their good times and bad times as the weather changes.
But in general, they are getting bigger and worse-off.
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- "It's not as dramatic as a flood or a big disaster
like an earthquake," said Richard Thomas of the International Center
for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas in Aleppo, Syria. "There
are some bright spots and hot spots. But overall, there is a trend toward
increasing degradation."
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- The trend is speeding up, but it has been going on for
centuries, scientists say. Fossilized pollen and seeds, along with ancient
tools like grinding stones, show that much of the Middle East, the Mediterranean
and North Africa were once green. The Sahara itself was a savanna, and
rock paintings show giraffes, elephants and cows once lived there.
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- Global warming contributes to the problem, making many
dry areas drier, scientists say. In the last century, average temperatures
have risen over 1 degree Fahrenheit worldwide, according to the U.S. Global
Change Research Program.
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- As for the American Southwest, it is too early to tell
whether its six-year drought could turn to something more permanent. But
scientists note that reservoir levels are dropping as cities like Phoenix
and Las Vegas expand.
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- "In some respects you may have greener vegetation
showing up in people's yards, but you may be using water that was destined
for the natural environment," said Stuart Marsh of the University
of Arizona's Office of Arid Lands Studies. "That might have an effect
on the biodiversity surrounding that city."
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- The Global Change Research Program says global warming
could eventually make the Southwest wetter - but it will also cause more
extreme weather, meaning harsher droughts that could kill vegetation. Now,
the Southwest drought has become so severe that even the sagebrush is dying.
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- "The lack of water and the overuse of water, that
is going to be a threat to the United States," Thomas said. "In
other parts of the world, the problem is poverty that causes people to
overuse the land. Most of these ecological systems have tipping points,
and once you go past them, things go downhill."
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- On the Web:
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- United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification:
http://www.unccd.int
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- International Center for Agricultural Research in the
Dry Areas : http://www.icarda.org/
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- University of Arizona Office of Arid Lands Studies: http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/oals/oals.html
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