September 2022 – Page 4 – Desdemona Despair

Lake Sawa in Iraq, 6 July 2022. The lake is filled with only 5 percent to 10 percent of its initial area. Photo: Laurence Geai / Le Monde

September 5, 2022

Iraq’s fertile valley is dying – Authorities estimate that the Euphrates could dry up as early as 2040

By Hélène Sallon 21 August 2022 (Le Monde) – From the top of the old tourist complex built on the shores of Lake Sawa, in the province of Al-Muthanna in southern Iraq, the desert stretches as far as the eye can see. The buildings have been abandoned since the 2003 US-British invasion. “In the past, […]

People make their way through a flooded area following heavy rains in Karachi, Pakistan on 24 August 2022. Photo: Shahzaib Akber / EPA 24 August 2022.

September 5, 2022

Pakistan struggles to avert danger as floods rise, death toll tops 1,300 – More than 400,000 pregnant women in Sindh province displaced by floods, only 891 have reached relief camps

By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad 5 September 2022 ISLAMABAD/KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistani authorities are struggling to prevent the country’s biggest lake bursting its banks and inundating nearby towns after unprecedented flooding, while the disaster management agency on Monday raised its toll of flood deaths by another 24. Record monsoon rains and melting glaciers […]

Current food security outcomes, Baidoa and Burhakaba Districts in Bay of Somalia, July to September 2022 (left) and projected food security outcomes, Baidoa and Burhakaba Districts in Bay of Somalia, October to December 2022 (right). Famine (IPC Phase 5) is projected to emerge in three areas of Bay Region, Somalia, in late 2022 in the absence of urgent, multisectoral humanitarian assistance. Although levels of acute malnutrition among children and the rate of hunger-related deaths have not yet met the IPC’s technical definition of Famine (IPC Phase 5), those thresholds are expected to be reached during the October to December 2022 projection period based on currently available information that minimal humanitarian food assistance will be delivered in these areas in November and December due to funding constraints. Data: FEWS NET and FSNAU. Graphic: FEWS NET Somalia

September 5, 2022

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator says famine is at the door in Somalia – “The unprecedented failure of four consecutive rainy seasons, decades of conflict, mass displacement, severe economic issues are pushing many people to that brink”

Mogadishu, 5 September 2022 (OCHA) – The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition analysis report shows concrete indications that famine will occur in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts in south-central Somalia between October and December. Full remarks to the press by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths I have been shocked to my […]

Children use rafts to make their way along a waterlogged street in a residential area after a heavy monsoon rainfall in Hyderabad on 24 August 2022. Record monsoon rains were causing a “catastrophe of epic scale”, Pakistan's Climate Change Minister said August 24, announcing an international appeal for help in dealing with floods that have killed more than 800 people since June 2022. Photo: Akram SHAHID / AFP

September 5, 2022

Sleepwalking to destruction: World struck by relentless climate catastrophes – “We just would not get temperatures as high as we’ve seen without human-caused climate change”

By Nick O’Malley 3 September 2022 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Authorities are having difficulties finding the words to properly capture the devastation caused by the floods that have swept across Pakistan in recent days, killing more than 1400 people and displacing up to 50 million as water inundates about a third of the country. […]

A sea turtle tries to eat a plastic cup: consumer items such as food containers make up the largest share of litter origins, according to a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability and funded by the BBVA Foundation and Spanish science ministry. The study concluded: “In terms of litter origins, take-out consumer items – mainly plastic bags and wrappers, food containers and cutlery, plastic and glass bottles, and cans – made up the largest share.” Photograph: Paulo Oliveira / Alamy Stock Photo

September 5, 2022

Plastic certificates: Greenwashing or a step to climate neutrality? – “It’s quite misleading for a company to make a claim like ‘plastic neutral’ when you could still find their products in nature”

By Tim Schauenberg 5 September 2022 (DW) – Plastic waste and microplastics are everywhere. On Mount Everest, in Arctic ice and the deepest ocean trenches, in the stomachs of animals, in our food, drinking water and even our blood. Such ubiquity is a reflection of how much plastic we make, which is now 200 times more than back […]

$Deforested area in the Amazon per year (left) and Ibama infraction notices for deforestation in the Amazon (right) in January 2022. PRODES calculates deforestation rates from August through July of the next year. Infraction numbers are also shown for August through July. Data: National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Ibama, Observatório do Clima. Graphic: The Washington Post$

September 5, 2022

Deforesters are plundering the Amazon. Brazil is letting them get away with it. – “No one goes to jail. They deforested 50 square miles. There were 23 arrests. In the end, no one’s in jail. And this was the biggest deforestation ring in Brazil.”

By Terrence McCoy 30 August 2022 BRASILÉIA, Brazil (The Washington Post) – Daniel Valle sped down Highway 317, closing in on the first targets of the day. He was in a hurry. Deforestation alerts had tripled in recent weeks. Police were warning that armed criminal groups had invaded new territory. Another season of destroying the […]

A firefighter adjusts his helmet as he stands guard to monitor a fire near Saint-Magne, southwestern France on 11 August 2022. Photo: Philippe Lopez / AFP

September 5, 2022

Will the summer of 2022 hasten France’s efforts to fight climate change? – “The summer of 2022 is probably the coolest you have experienced or will experience in the next 20 years”

4 September 2022 (France24) – The summer of 2022 was a record-breaking season, marked by several heatwaves, forest fires, and severe drought. These extreme weather events seem to have increased awareness of climate change among the French. But will it be followed by concrete action? Heatwaves, fires, drought, violent storms… The summer of 2022 broke […]

Local residents cross a portion of road destroyed by floodwaters in Kalam Valley in northern Pakistan, Sunday, 4 September 2022. More than 1,300 people have died and millions have lost their homes in flooding caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan this year that many experts have blamed on climate change. Photo: Sherin Zada / AP Photo

September 4, 2022

Pakistan floods villages to save a city – Damage estimated at $10 billion – “The scale of devastation is massive and requires an immense humanitarian response for 33 million people”

By Zarar Khan 4 September 2022 ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistani engineers cut into an embankment for one of the country’s largest lakes on Sunday to release rising waters in the hopes of saving a nearby city and town from flooding as officials predicted more monsoon rain was on the way for the country’s already devastated […]

A sunken boat that sat underwater for years has been exposed as Lake Mead continues to recede after years of chronic overuse and drought worsened by rising temperatures. Photo: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

September 4, 2022

Facing “dead pool” risk, California braces for painful water cuts from Colorado River – “It’s very scary. If there’s no river, then you have no community.”

By Ian James 4 September 2022 (Los Angeles Times) – California water districts are under growing pressure to shoulder substantial water cutbacks as the federal government pushes for urgent solutions to prevent the Colorado River’s badly depleted reservoirs from reaching dangerously low levels. California has the largest water entitlement of any state on the Colorado […]

The dried-up river Tille in Lux, France in 2022. Photo: Nicholas Garriga / Associated Press

September 4, 2022

Europe was once green and water-rich. Now, it’s more and more like California – “Climate change kills. It kills people, kills our ecosystem, the biodiversity.”

By Jaweed Kaleem and Scott Johnson 4 September 2022 (Los Angeles Times) – Each spring and summer, Frederic Esniol plants millions of seeds for lettuce sold at big grocery chains, making his family farm a jewel of this historically bountiful region of France. But this year, a menacing combination of dry skies and record-setting heat […]