Humanity and environmental change
sheets this has become increasingly difficult to do and so the government of Greenland has decided to allow the extraction of iron ore, rare earths and rubies. This will provide an alternative income for Greenland’s 57,000 people and means that they will not have to rely on seal hunting. Had these natural resources not been there Greenland’s population would have found it harder to adapt to the retreating ice sheets. Many societies will attempt to reverse the effects of environmental change rather than adapt their behaviour. For instance in Ethiopia a programme run by the World Food Programme and the Ethiopian Government called the MERET programme aims to prevent desertification through a combination of reforestation, improved water security and soil erosion reduction. To date 400 million trees have been planted and 8500 watersheds (e.g. ditches, dams and terraced hills) have been built. 80 It would appear as if MERET has been a success as the areas in which the programme operated were less hindered by the drought of 2008-2009. Similarly the fishing communities surrounding the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have been left destitute after the 2 major rivers which supplied the Aral Sea, the rivers Amur Daraya and SyrDaraya, were diverted to supply cotton fields. This has caused the Aral, which was once the world’s 4th largest, to recede by 75% in size and 90% in volume 81 (see figure 8).
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Figure 8
Figure 8: A map showing the gradual shrinking of the Aral Sea since its tributaries were diverted in the 1970s.
Towns which were once on the shore line are now 70 km from the lake and this has made fishing virtually impossible largely because of their boats having become stranded miles from the lake (see figure 9) and a significant number of the Aral’s fish have perished. In an attempt to save the north Aral the people of Aralsk, with help from the Kazakhstani government and the World Bank are building a dam to isolate the meagre input of the SyrDrya and to prevent it from escaping into the Southern Aral. The Kazakhstani government has also announced a
Figure 9: Boats left stranded by the receding shoreline of the Aral Sea.
80 Source 5 81 Source 21
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