160 Syrian villages deserted 'due to climate change'
Some 160 villages in northern Syria were deserted of their residents in 2007 and 2008 because of a drought associated with climate change, with serious implications for peace in the region, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The report drawn up by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) warns of potential armed conflict for control of water resources in the Middle East. “The 2007/8 drought caused significant hardship in rural areas of Syria. In the northeast of the country, a reported 160 villages have been entirely abandoned and the inhabitants have had to move to urban areas,” it said. In Syria and also in Jordan, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, “climate change threatens to reduce the availability of scarce water resources, increase food insecurity, hinder economic growth and lead to large-scale population movements,” the report said. “This could hold serious implications for peace in the region,” the Canada-based institute said. The study, financed by Denmark, predicts a hotter, drier and less predictable climate in the Middle East, “already considered the world’s most water-scarce and where, in many places, demand for water already outstrips supply.” … “Some 13 percent of agricultural land was downgraded between 1980 and 2006 because of… urban expansion and agricultural, industrial and tourism activities,” Fayez Asrafy, a desertification expert, told AFP. “Rainfall shrank by 10 millimetres (a year) between 1956 and 2006 while temperatures rose by (an average) 0.5 degrees Celsius, though below the worldwide average of 0.6 degrees,” Syrian meteorologist Khales Mawed said. The IISD predicts even modest global warming would lead to a 30-percent drop in water in the Euphrates, which runs through Turkey, Syria and Iraq, while the Dead Sea would shrink in volume by 80 percent by the end of the century. …
