John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series EGYPT and the SAHARA www.johntyman.com/sahara |
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7.3 Future Challenges : Rural and Urban Pt. I: 604-615 |
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John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series EGYPT and the SAHARA www.johntyman.com/sahara |
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7.3 Future Challenges : Rural and Urban Pt. I: 604-615 |
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| .604. The desert covers a far larger area today than it did when its northern margin was the breadbasket of the Roman world. In part this may be due to climate change, but human intervention has undoubtedly contributed to the expansion of the desert. (Portion of ancient aqueduct at Timgad) |
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| .605. When trees are felled, either to feed stock in times of drought or as fuel for fires, their roots are lost also. And when pastures are eaten off as a result of overgrazing, there is nothing to hold the sandy soil together. (Moving sand southwest of In Amenas) |
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| .606. The people who live in the Sahara have never worried much about things they cannot change: the future, they believe, rests in the hands of Allah. However, the greatest challenge to traditional ways of life today is likely to come not from the environment but from population growth, prosperity and the continuing struggle between the forces of secularism and Islamic fundamentalism. (Cemetery at El Golea) |
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| .607. The birth rate is high: and the death rate has been lowered by improvements both in domestic hygiene and public health services. As a result, it is becoming more and more difficult for either people or nations to feed themselves from their own crops and livestock. And this has increased pressure on lands which are already overworked. (Mechanized farming near Edfu) |
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| .608. Cultivation in marginal areas has also contributed to desert expansion. In areas where at one time warlike nomadic herders fought off farmers, new lands have been ploughed during years of good rainfall, only to blow way during drought. (Degraded land south of Kairouan) |
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| .609. In the old days small fields in such marginal areas were worked with hoes and left fallow for several years after harvest. This caused little damage to the environment, but intensive, large scale, mechanized agriculture can have a devastating impact. As the population grows and there are yet more mouths to feed, fields that for centuries were cropped only occasionally are now overworked. (Rain-fed cropland south of Kairouan) |
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| .610. And whereas nomadic herds once moved continually, following the rain and giving the grasses time to recover, the building of wells in the Sahel by well-meaning aid agencies has encouraged herds to linger, and nearby pastures have been overgrazed as a result. The same has happened where nomads have settled outside towns and villages and their herds have destroyed the pasture. The wind does the rest! (Tented settlement on the outskirts of Touggourt) |
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| .611. In recent decades several Saharan countries have drilled wells to tap artesian water and have built pipelines to irrigate new agricultural developments. However, this has resulted in a significant reduction in the level of subterranean water. Some wells have gone dry as a result. Others have been deepened: for artesian waters in a desert are a fossil resource and are not being recharged. (Water point in farm area south of Kairouan) |
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| .612. The most dramatic examples of this process have been in Libya. Only 2% of Libya receives enough rainfall for cultivation and in the 1970s the government launched a massive irrigation project in the southeast of the country, in the heart of the Sahara. (Laying water pipeline courtesy Turkiye Muteahhitler Birligi) |
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| .613. Here, at Kufra, non-renewable fossil water was pumped from an underground aquifer and distributed using a pivot irrigation system, the arms of which were typically a kilometre in length --and produced round fields that could be seen from space. (Satellite image of Kufra oasis at Wikipedia) |
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| .614. Then, in the 1980s, the Libyan government announced that they would sink a thousand wells and build a “Great Manmade River” to carry fossil water from the same aquifer (in underground pipes) all the way to the coast, to support Libya’s growing population and industrial development. (Map of project at Perc.org) |
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| .615. Government representatives declared that this water supply would last a thousand years: but independent scientists suggested only 60, and by December 2011 excessive exploitation of the aquifer had already caused the lake in Kufra to dry up completely. So the long-term future of both projects (one rural and the other urban) is in doubt. (Rotary sprinkler in use in Algeria, near El Golea, courtesy J. Etienne) |
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