(The Conversation) – Since their inception in the 1940s, the so-called forever chemicals have woven themselves into the fabric of our modern world. But recently, they’ve been appearing in alarming news headlines about their damaging effects on our health.

PFAS have, in fact, come under intense scrutiny due to new research showing their persistent nature in the environment and potential health impacts.

So what are they and are they an issue in the UK and Ireland?

Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) are man-made chemicals, numbering approximately 4,700 variants. What makes them different is their formidable carbon-fluorine (C-F) bonds, renowned among scientists as the mightiest in chemistry.

Image by Baroco Ferison from Pixabay

This stability makes them an important ingredient in many products. PFAS, in various forms, have played pivotal roles in creating oil- and grease-resistant food packaging, non-stick cookware, water- and stain-resistant textiles, and fire-fighting foams, to name a few. Their versatility has propelled them into our daily lives.

The strength of their carbon-fluorine bonds is also what makes them resist breakdown by natural processes. Their longevity, often measured in centuries, has earned them the moniker of “legacy compounds”.

Forever chemicals

Their presence has been detected in worrying concentrations in drinking water, soil, air and even in Arctic ice. Recent scientific investigations have unveiled a concerning connection between PFAS exposure and damage to health, both in humans and animals.

These effects include an increased risk of cancer, liver damage, compromised immune function, developmental disorders and hormonal disruption.

The adverse health effects can be traced to their persistence within the human body. Unlike many substances that are metabolised and eliminated over time, PFAS accumulate in bodily tissues and fluids without breaking down.

This accumulation creates a perpetual, self-sustaining cycle: PFAS contamination permeates rivers, soil and the food chain. These chemicals find their way into the bodies of humans and animals, where they continue to accumulate over time.

The mounting evidence of PFAS-related health risks has triggered global concern. Organisations such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants have set their sights on imposing stricter regulations on PFAS use within the European Union.

There is still a lot we don’t know about the long-term health consequences of PFAS exposure, but the increasing global concern is indisputable.

In the UK and Ireland, PFAS contamination infiltrates everyday consumer products and industrial processes. In 2019, the UK Environment Agency’s screening consistently identified PFAS in surface water samples, with PFOA and PFOS found at 96% of the sites they surveyed.

The presence of heightened PFAS concentrations signifies that none of England’s rivers meet the “good chemical” status criteria established by the Water Framework Directive. The Chief Scientist’s Group report identified military and civilian airfields, landfills and wastewater treatment facilities as the likely sources of PFAS contamination.

A pressing issue in Europe and the UK is the absence of standardised regulations regarding these forever chemicals. Only two of the most prevalent PFAS variants, PFOA and PFOS, are currently monitored in the UK.

The Environment Agency’s 2021 report underscored gaps in the environmental monitoring of PFAS in British waters.

These gaps include a lack of toxicology information about how PFAS are released throughout the life cycle of consumer products and drinking water, for instance recycling and waste disposal practices. This makes it difficult to properly assess the risks forever chemicals may pose.

The solution

It’s important to acknowledge that certain PFAS play a crucial role in drug formulations and medical uses.

But the lack of research, testing, and public awareness surrounding these compounds has allowed this issue to persist for too long, mostly due to the useful properties of forever chemicals.

The intricacies associated with PFAS mean we need a holistic approach involving research to discover new chemical compounds that do not harm the environment and human health.

While the solution is complex, it is undoubtedly achievable. We need stringent regulations, more research and a global effort to eliminate PFAS. The pay off is worth it – a safer and healthier future for both our planet and its inhabitants.

Eadaoin Carthy, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University and Abrar Abdelsalam, Research Assistant in Biomedical Engineering, Dublin City University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ella Nilsen at CNN argued that although state law prohibits the export of Arizona water, using that water to produce crops like alfalfa for cattle back in Saudi Arabia is a stealth way of exporting it.

Gulf oil states are buying or leasing large amounts of agricultural land in the Third World as a hedge against food and water shortages in the future. This policy implies, though, that they will be exporting agricultural goods to themselves even if local people are in danger of starving, the way the British exported crops from Ireland during its Great Famine.

The deal had been done by Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, for reasons best known to him. It functioned as a way for Saudis to use Arizona’s water to raise alfalfa and then to export the crop to Saudi Arabia to feed its cattle. Alfalfa can no longer be grown in Saudi Arabia itself because farmers have depleted the country’s aquifers and the Kingdom receives little rainfall.

The Saudis were getting the water cheaply. As I noted last year, Nick Cleveland-Stout wrote at Responsible Statecraft, “Fondomonte, a subsidiary of Riyadh-based Almarai, has the bargain of a lifetime: for only $25 per acre annually, it can pump as much water as it wants. Nearby farmers pay six times more than the Saudi company. ” Ordinary Arizonan farmers have to pay 6 times that to lease land and get access to aquifers. Cleveland-Stout quoted Holly Irwin, who served on the La Paz County board of supervisors as saying, “We’re not getting oil for free, so why are we giving our water away for free?”

12News says that Governor Hobbs and Attorney-General Mayes have found the Saudi subsidiary, Fondomonte, in breach of its contractual obligations including “a failure to include secondary containment structures on its fuel and Diesel Exhaust Fluid storage units.” Leases of all four Butler Valley fields will be terminated by February of next year.

Hobbs said in a press release, “I’m not afraid to do what my predecessors refused to do—hold people accountable, maximize value for the state land trust, and protect Arizona’s water future. It’s unacceptable that Fondomonte has continued to pump unchecked amounts of groundwater out of our state while in clear default on their lease. I’m proud my administration has taken swift action to hold defaulting high volume water users accountable and bring an end to these leases. And moving forward, I will continue to do everything in my power to protect Arizona’s water so we can continue to sustainably grow for generations to come.”

Attorney General Kris Mayes had run for office partly on a platform of ending the Saudi company’s lease. Of the Ducey administration’s sweetheart deal for Almirai, Mayes told 12News, “I have never seen anything this egregious by state government in my life.”

Saudi Arabia has over 400,000 head of cattle, and is projected to have 443,710 by 2026. It ranks 112th in the world for cattle production. It is in the same range as Malaysia, which is crazy since only 1.6% of its land is arable, whereas Malaysia is lush, with lots of rainfall.

Beef production is highly carbon intensive and needs to be rolled back or done completely differently to forestall even more deadly global heating.

In Saudi Arabia, rainfall is below 150 mm (5.9 inches) per annum in most of the country except for the southwest, where it can reach 400-600 mm (15.7 to 23.6 inches). The Food and Agriculture Organization says that rainfall agriculture is for the most part not possible in places with less than 450 mm (17 inches) of rain a year.

Saudi Arabia also had extensive aquifers, underground water, but these are being rapidly depleted. Attempts in the 1990s to grow wheat by bringing up aquifer water have collapsed as the aquifers got tapped out. These underground lakes of water can take a long time to replenish, even if they aren’t being emptied at a rate of 5 trillion gallons a year, as they were in unregulated Saudi Arabia.

Cows are a water-intensive animal, which is why in most of the Arid Zone stretching from Morocco to the Gobi desert in China, people prefer lamb and goat meat (and sometimes camel), since those animals can be raised in semi-arid conditions, that is, they can be herded to where pasturage pops up from snow melt or sudden squalls, on land that is often otherwise just savanna. Dairy cows, in contrast, can drink 30–50 gallons of water per day. Sheep can get along with half a gallon but depending on other factors could drink 5 gallons a day.

Starting from on the excellent reporting of Ella Nilsen at CNN, I blogged this issue last November, writing:

Since Saudi water resources are insufficient to raise the alfalfa needed to feed these cows, the Saudi firm Almarai established an American subsidiary, Fondomonte, which has leased land in Arizona to grow this feed crop. The alternative would be to import beef and milk from someplace where producing them makes sense (i.e. neither Saudi Arabia nor Arizona).

The hitch, though is that much of Arizona, especially the southwest, gets only 4 inches of rain a year and isn’t much better than Saudi Arabia. Farming depends heavily on irrigating off rivers or using underground aquifer water. As for the Colorado River, it is at historic low levels.

Aquifers can be replenished by rainfall, but given the great Southwest Megadrought that began around the year 2000, many of them are having their water pumped out and not replaced. In some areas of the state, people could dig down 100 feet and hit water. Now, the water table is more like 500 feet, Nilsen says. And the aquifers had been in danger of being emptied out entirely if the state had failed to act.

Now the whole project of Americans trying to do intensive agriculture in Arizona needs to be rethought. It is one of the crazier ideas the US government ever had. Not quite as crazy, though, as essentially giving away Arizona’s scarce water supplies to Saudi Arabia.

( Middle East Monitor ) – One of the most pressing issues of the 21st century is the management and allocation of the limited freshwater resources in the world. Since an important number of those water resources are trans-boundary, crossing the political boundaries of more than one nation, the complexity of the problem has increased over the years. In dealing with trans-boundary water disputes, riparian states such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Sudan mostly prefer water diplomacy mechanisms that involve the processes and institutions through which the national interests and identities of sovereign states are represented to one another.

States’ claim of sovereignty

On the one hand, states have been the main actors in shaping trans-boundary water policies and conducting water diplomacy throughout the last few decades of water disputes. On the other hand, international organisations, international non-governmental organisations and science-policy initiatives joined the water diplomacy processes as new actors, with the coming of issues of scarcity, pollution and the sharing of water resources in order to take the attention of the international community. With the participation of these actors in water diplomacy, new approaches related to the management of trans-boundary water resources, for example, the sharing of benefits such as energy, food and services to be obtained from water resources instead of sharing water resources per se, have been developed.

With the increase in the use of trans-boundary rivers for consumption purposes, such as the expansion of irrigation since the last quarter of the 19th century, many states have claimed mutual sovereignty and rights of use over trans-boundary water resources. As a result of these discourses and actions, a series of international customary law principles have been adopted. The riparian states of trans-boundary waters have signed numerous bilateral and multilateral agreements, protocols and memoranda of understanding on the use, management and sharing of these resources. In other words, treaty (written) and customary (unwritten) international water principles of law, as well as traditional diplomatic methods, have been developed by the states as the main tools for resolving disputes regarding trans-boundary waters.

Trans-boundary water disputes in Middle East

The Middle East is regarded as one of the most challenged regions in terms of trans-boundary surface and groundwater resources management and allocation between two or more countries. In addition to the constraints of natural water resources, the region suffers from an abundance of issues that compound water security, including a rapidly growing and displaced population, uneven economic development, limited amount of water supply that is irregularly distributed, the negative impacts of climate change and variability and poor water management and allocation practices both within and between states. Some 60 per cent of the water in the region flows across international borders, complicating resource management. The geopolitical importance of the region and the conflicts that arise have consequently resulted in aggravating the usual problems of using water in a variety of settings in the Nile or Euphrates-Tigris river basins.

Nile River dispute

The Nile basin is considered one of the world’s hydro-political hotspots, and much has been debated in academic and policy circles about the likelihood of interstate conflict between the Nile countries. In the late 1920s, colonial water-sharing agreements were concluded in the Nile basin under the full control of Great Britain. Following the wave of independence in Africa in the 1950s, all upstream riparians declared void those agreements, including the most important one, namely the 1929 Nile Water Agreement, which was later replaced by the still legally binding 1959 Agreement for the Full Utilisation of the Nile Waters, under which the two riparians agreed to share the waters in proportions of 75 per cent and 25 per cent for Egypt and 25 per cent for Sudan, respectively. The 1959 agreement has never been accepted by any of the upstream riparians, causing recurring tensions and disputes over water. Moreover, tensions in the Nile basin waters were often raised by political rhetoric, particularly between the Egyptian and Ethiopian leadership. Egypt, so heavily dependent on the Nile waters, has used its military might and hegemonic status to warn the upper riparians, primarily Ethiopia, not to undertake any projects that would risk Egypt’s share of the Nile.

Article continues after bonus IC video
Al Jazeera English: “Will Ethiopia compromise on its Grand Renaissance Dam? | Inside Story

Challenging this historical status quo, in March 2011, the Ethiopian government announced plans to construct a hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, namely the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is planned to generate 6,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity, becoming Africa’s largest power plant. Concerns have been raised over the dam’s impact on Egypt. Tensions over the dam increased in May 2011, when Ethiopia temporarily diverted the flow of the Blue Nile as part of the construction process.

After exchanges of harsh rhetoric between the heads of state, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Ethiopia met and agreed to hold further talks on the construction of the dam. Hence, the water dispute in the Nile basin was intimately related to unfair clauses in the historical bilateral sharing agreements. Additionally, the increasing ability and desire of the upstream states, namely Ethiopia, to challenge Egypt’s status as a hydro-hegemon and the overall status quo constitute contemporary reasons for tensions over water. The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) was established in 1999 to find sustainable technical, institutional, legal and political solutions to the hydro-political challenges centred on a river embedded in regional geopolitical complexity.

Tigris-Euphrates basin

Trans-boundary water issues started to be a part of regional politics when the three major riparian states, namely Turkiye, Syria and Iraq, introduced major water and land resource development projects in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. In this context, large-scale dams and irrigation systems were initiated in the early 1960s. Owing to the competitive nature of these uncoordinated national water development projects, disagreements over trans-boundary water uses surfaced, and the riparian states opted for diplomatic negotiations to deal with their disagreements. As the national water development projects progressed, incompatibilities between water supply and demand occurred throughout the river basin. Even though no hot conflict was reported among the riparian states concerning water sharing, the sporadic technical negotiations could not prepare the ground for a comprehensive treaty on equitable and effective trans-boundary water management in the basin.

In the Tigris-Euphrates basin, the riparian states preferred water diplomacy mechanisms, namely diplomatic negotiations, to resolve the crises. Most of the crises were related to Iraq’s concerns regarding the impact of the construction and filling of the dams in Turkiye and Syria. Thus, diplomats and technocrats from the 3 countries met several times, although on an irregular basis, to exchange information concerning the technical details of the construction and the filling of the dams. In the period between the 1960s and the 1990s, the riparian states were too rigid in their position, emphasizing their absolute water rights over the rivers. With the emergence of a conducive overall political environment in the early 2000s, state representatives adopted a more needs-based approach by concluding a series of memoranda of understanding on the protection of the environment, water quality management, water efficiency, drought management and flood protection, with a view to addressing the adverse effects of climate change.

On the other hand, in the early 1980s, the riparian states in the Tigris-Euphrates basin managed to establish the institutional framework of the Joint Technical Committee (JTC), whose members included participants from all three riparian states. However, the riparian states did not agree to give the JTC clear and commonly agreed-upon functions. On the contrary, the states continued unilateral and uncoordinated water and land development projects, and the JTC meetings did not make an effective contribution to the settlement of the trans-boundary water dispute. It also did not provide a platform for delineating the priorities and needs of the co-riparians as a basis for addressing regional water problems.

Water diplomacy mechanisms, particularly at the trans-boundary level, have been introduced in the Tigris-Euphrates basin with the aim of reaching agreeable solutions between parties that have diverging interests as well as competing water development schemes. With the help of formal institutions like the JTC, high-level water diplomacy frameworks, water-sharing protocols and memoranda of understanding, the national interests and identities of sovereign states are represented to one another. Although these institutions may not have been effective most of the time in terms of the protection and efficient use and management of water and other related resources, they served to place trans-boundary water issues within a legitimate and peaceful realm, rather than mixing them with potentially conflict-laden issues, such as border security and territorial disputes, which might otherwise escalate into hot confrontations. However, there still does not exist a multilateral treaty regime involving all of the stakeholders concerned, including civil society organisations and private companies in energy, agriculture and the environment, as well as relevant development-related sectors, for the effective and equitable use and management of trans-boundary waters in the basin.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Egypt and Ethiopia have waged a diplomatic war of words over Ethiopia’s massive new dam – the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – on the Blue Nile, which started filling up in July 2020. The political row has threatened to get out of hand on occasion but now the two countries have finally agreed to conclude “a mutually acceptable agreement” within four months. We asked John Mukum Mbaku, the author of a recent article on the Ethiopian dam and a co-author of a book on the Nile River’s changing legal regime, to answer four key questions.

What is the context of the current tussle?

Ethiopia, whose highlands provide more than 85% of the water that flows into the Nile, has long argued that it has the right under international law to manage resources within its own borders for its national development. It sees the “Nile as a gift of God” given to Ethiopians to use for their development.

Egypt, which depends on the Nile for more than 90% of its fresh water, has argued that the Ethiopian dam represents a threat to its water security and its very existence as a people.

The decision by Addis Ababa to begin construction of the dam on the Blue Nile in 2011 exacerbated an already deteriorating relationship between Ethiopia and its two downstream neighbours, Egypt and Sudan, over access to Nile waters. After Egypt’s diplomatic efforts failed to stop construction, Cairo redirected its energies to securing a legally binding agreement for filling and operating the dam.

But no mutually acceptable agreement for filling and operating the dam was ever reached.

In August 2020, Addis Ababa began to fill the dam’s reservoir. That process was repeated in 2021 and 2022.

In 2023, Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed announced that the country would delay the fourth filling until September “to alleviate the concerns of neighbouring people”.

The dam’s reservoir filling in particular, and its operation in general, are issues that the three countries must resolve, most likely through a legally binding agreement or treaty.

In February 2022, the Ethiopian dam started producing electricity. Egyptians claimed that Addis Ababa was “violating its obligations under the 2015 Declaration of Principles” and endangering Egyptian “water interests”.

What are the main sticking points going into the talks?

An agreement would have to explicitly deal with issues that are important to Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. The most important are Egypt’s and Sudan’s historically acquired rights to Nile waters. The rights were granted by the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and the 1959 bilateral agreement between Egypt and Sudan (1959 Nile Treaty).

After estimating the average annual flow of the Nile River as measured at Aswan to be 84 billion cubic metres, the two treaties granted 66% of Nile waters to Egypt, 22% to Sudan and 12% to account for seepage and evaporation. These allocations exhausted all the Nile’s average annual flow of water. Egypt was also granted veto power over all construction projects on the Nile and its tributaries.

These rights came to be known as Egypt’s and Sudan’s acquired rights. They have been the main sticking point in efforts to conclude a treaty between all 11 Nile riparian states for the allocation of the waters of the Nile, as well as between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over the Ethiopian dam.

While Ethiopia and other upstream riparian states see these two treaties as colonial anachronisms that have no relevance to modern Nile governance, Egypt and Sudan insist that they are binding.

What impact would a breakthrough have on other Nile Basin agreements?

The impact will depend on what type of agreement is reached. Assume that both Egypt and Sudan agree to abandon the rights granted by the 1929 and 1959 treaties. They could then enter into negotiation with Ethiopia to produce a new treaty that creates rights for all three states.

Such a treaty could provide the impetus for all 11 Nile Basin states to return to the Cooperative Framework Agreement, which was expected to provide a legal framework for governing the Nile based on equitable and reasonable water use. The framework agreement has been in limbo since Egypt and Sudan rejected it.

The other Nile Basin states see these colonial-era treaties as a violation of international law principles, and a breach of the vision of the Nile Basin Initiative.

What other claims threaten the status quo?

Egypt fears that if Addis Ababa is allowed to fill the reservoir without a legally binding agreement, other Nile Basin states might also take unilateral actions. This could harm Egypt’s water security and ability to control projects on the Nile River and its tributaries.

Then, there is the matter of how to manage issues related to climate change, such as droughts and floods. The existence of the dam means Addis Ababa’s cooperation will be required. In times of drought, for example, the Ethiopian dam will be expected to release some water to help Egypt and Sudan.

Ethiopia’s right to water for agriculture and household consumption is an issue that has not yet been agreed upon by all three countries.

Egypt and Sudan are worried about the harm that could come to them from activities upstream. Egypt remains adamant that the dam will hurt its water supply and threaten domestic development.

But Sudanese officials appear to have changed their assessment of the impact of the dam. They now see it as a potential regulator of seasonal floods and provider of clean energy.

These issues should be examined thoroughly during the negotiations. The three countries should adopt a treaty or agreement that is mutually acceptable and beneficial.

Over the years, the three countries have struggled to bring meaning to terms like “significant harm” and “equitable and reasonable utilisation”. The final treaty should define these terms. It should also create a mediation mechanism, which can include referring certain specified matters to the International Court of Justice for resolution.

John Mukum Mbaku, Professor, Weber State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Juan: In your devastating post about Iraq’s drought, you could have given more attention to the crucial role of Turkey in flouting international law and damaging Iraq (and Syria) through its illegal capture of the bulk of the water of first the Euphrates and then the Tigris, building very large dams and hundreds of smaller water diversion devices on both rivers.

You might also have mentioned the dams that Iran has built on feeders to the Tigris, especially as they affect the Shatt al-Arab. The building of the Tabqa dam, the Tishrin dam, and other smaller dams in Syria also affected the water supply of Iraq. In the case of the Tabqa Dam, I witnessed personally the kind of disruption such an upstream dam could cause.

In 1974, as Syria began to fill that reservoir (Lake Assad), the water coming down the Euphrates to Iraq was greatly reduced. The Iraqi government made decisions about allocation of the remaining water and, as a result, the Dagharah/Afaq canal, that runs past Nippur (where I was digging at the time), received water only twice a week. This meant that the local farmers did not have enough water to plant and harvest grain, but did have enough for vegetable patches. A local man, who worked for us in the dig house, began to look exhausted and I found out that he was getting up in the middle of the night on those two days to go out and irrigate his fields. He knew that the Syrian dam was causing the problem. I asked him once what would happen if there continued to be tension between Iraq and Syria. He answered: “One will eat the other.”

Image of Euphrates, Iraq by David Mark from Pixabay

Farther south along the canal, the town of Afaq was allotted enough water to survive, but the area farther downstream was not. As a result, 20,000 people (mostly farmers and their families) along that canal were removed and resettled in the rain-fed area north of Baghdad. A couple of years later, when more normal water allocations were resumed, most of the people returned. With the flood of money that resulted from the nationalization of oil, the government took off of the Development Board’s shelves ambitious irrigation plans that had been developed in the 1940s and 50s, based in part on Willcocks’ grand scheme that he created for the Ottomans. To gain some security in water to offset the dams upstream, the Iraqis built dams at Haditha on the Euphrates and at Eski Mosul on the Tigris, and began but did not finish another at the Fatha Gorge.

For the south, the government revived a desalinization project that was designed to flush the salt out of fields and drain the brine into the Third River, which would dump it into a newly created marsh south of Ur and/or into the Gulf. This huge project, designed by an American company and implemented by a Dutch company, was not finished because of the 1958 revolution. When the project was revived in the 1970s, it made great headway, including the cutting of the Third River, but was halted by the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. Most important, the key project for the entire country DID see completion–it was meant to offset a situation such as had happened with the filling of the Tabqa. The project connected the Tigris and Euphrates through a deep canal and siphon system just north of Baghdad, making it possible to shift Euphrates water to the Tigris and Tigris water to the Euphrates, as needed.

There was one unfortunate result of this linkage in that, although relief for short-term water crises was assured, there were several years in which too much water was made available and often the canals, including those near Afaq, were running at peak much of the time, allowing farmers to over-irrigate. This resulted in a drastic rise in groundwater, leading to increased salinization of fields. During that period, the marshes grew in size. Gradually, chemicals from agriculture and industry led to increasingly polluted water in Iraq.

By the 1980s, people in the marshes began to say that they tended not to wade in the water because exposure to the water resulted in skin rashes. They noted that fish, frogs, and other animals were showing odd lesions. And they began to witness the diminution of the marshes, as more and more of the water was drawn off and evaporated upstream. In 1988, my last trip to the marshes, the tourist village of Chibayish, where we used to get into boats to see the marshes, was five kilometers from the water.

This had nothing to do with any move by Saddam to drain the marshes, but was just the result of all the extraction upstream, primarily in Turkey. Northern Iraq has had a history of occasional long periods of drought, but the south never had uniform droughts until recently because enough water would come down the rivers to support irrigation, even if reduced.

We know that there were historical periods in which parts of the irrigated zone in the south were abandoned, but other areas still flourished. One of the easily foreseeable results of our current crisis of global warming is the effect of the reduction of snow in the Zagros, which will create massive desertification; we are seeing early effects in the entire system of both rivers, even in Turkey. But the coming disruption in the Tigris-Euphrates basin will appear to be moderate compared to the situation for the billions of people in the countries dependent on the Himalayas.

Mac

Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country of some 220 million people, the fifth most populous in the world It has a nominal GDP per annum of some $350 billion (in the same general range as South Africa, Egypt, Iran and Chile). Its most fertile regions comprise the Indus River basin. Water is the country’s lifeblood, and it is estimated that some 74% of the Indus Valley run-off derives from Himalayan snowmelt and glacier melt. It is likely to decrease by 5% to 12% by 2050. The melting of the glaciers and the retreat of the snow cover there at the top of the world are therefore an existential issue for Pakistan.

Image by lutz from Pixabay

If the world goes on putting 36 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year and doesn’t pull back significantly, actually the melting could be twice as bad. And under the worse case scenario, where human beings just do nothing to fight climate change, by the end of this century, 2081-2100, fully 80% of the lower-lying Himalayan ice will be gone.

These findings, by the way, pertain not only to the lower levels of the Himalayas but also the European Alps, the Rockies, and the Andes.

The reason for the melting of the surface ice in the Hindu Kush Himalayas is obvious. Glacier mass changes have been accelerating because of increased heat owing to human-induced climate change. Temperatures have been going up by an average of +0.28 °C (about half a degree Fahrenheit) every decade since 1951.

The rate of mass loss in the ice between the 1970s and 2019 has increased 65%. Even just in this century, the amount of ice mass lost in 2000-2009 was -0.17 meters water equivalent. But in 2010-2019 it jumped up to -0.28 meters water equivalent.

Seasonal snow cover in the Himalayas is decreasing at an alarming rate. At the lower elevations, there has been a loss of 5 snow-cover days per decade since the 1970s.

(The Conversation) – People once believed the planet could always accommodate us. That the resilience of the Earth system meant nature would always provide. But we now know this is not necessarily the case. As big as the world is, our impact is bigger.

In research released today, an international team of scientists from the Earth Commission, of which we were part, identified eight “safe” and “just” boundaries spanning five vital planetary systems: climate change, the biosphere, freshwater, nutrient use in fertilisers and air pollution. This is the first time an assessment of boundaries has quantified the harms to people from changes to the Earth system.

“Safe” means boundaries maintaining stability and resilience of our planetary systems on which we rely. “Just”, in this work, means boundaries which minimise significant harm to people. Together, they’re a health barometer for the planet.

Assessing our planet’s health is a big task. It took the expertise of 51 world-leading researchers from natural and social sciences. Our methods included modelling, literature reviews and expert judgement. We assessed factors such as tipping point risks, declines in Earth system functions, historical variability and effects on people.

Alarmingly, we found humanity has exceeded the safe and just limits for four of five systems. Aerosol pollution is the sole exception. Urgent action, based on the best available science, is now needed.

So, what did we find?

Our work builds on the influential concepts of planetary boundaries by finding ways to quantify what just systems look like alongside safety.

Importantly, the safe and just boundaries are defined at local to global spatial scales appropriate for assessing and managing planetary systems – as small as one square kilometre in the case of biodiversity. This is crucial because many natural functions act at local scales.

Here are the boundaries:

1. Climate boundary – keep warming to 1℃

We know the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5℃ avoids a high risk of triggering dangerous climate tipping points.

But even now, with warming at 1.2℃, many people around the world are being hit hard by climate-linked disasters, such as the recent extreme heat in China, fires in Canada, severe floods in Pakistan and droughts in the United States and the Horn of Africa.

At 1.5℃, hundreds of millions of people could be exposed to average annual temperatures over 29℃, which is outside the human climate niche and can be fatal. That means a just boundary for climate is nearer to 1°C. This makes the need to halt further carbon emissions even more urgent.

2. Biosphere boundaries: Expand intact ecosystems to cover 50-60% of the earth

A healthy biosphere ensures a safe and just planet by storing carbon, maintaining global water cycles and soil quality, protecting pollinators and many other ecosystem services. To safeguard these services, we need 50 to 60% of the world’s land to have largely intact natural ecosystems.

Recent research puts the current figure at between 45% and 50%, which includes vast areas of land with relatively low populations, including parts of Australia and the Amazon rainforest. These areas are already under pressure from climate change and other human activity.

Image by Rosina Kaiser from Pixabay

Locally, we need about 20-25% of each square kilometre of farms, towns, cities or other human-dominated landscapes to contain largely intact natural ecosystems. At present, only a third of our human-dominated landscapes meet this threshold.

3. Freshwater boundaries: Keep groundwater levels up and don’t suck rivers dry

Too much freshwater is a problem, as unprecedented floods in Australia and Pakistan show. And too little is also a problem, with unprecedented droughts taking their toll on food production.

To bring fresh water systems back into balance, a rule of thumb is to avoid taking or adding more than 20% of a river or stream’s water in any one month, in the absence of local knowledge of environmental flows.

At present, 66% of the world’s land area meets this boundary, when flows are averaged over the year. But human settlement has a major impact: less than half of the world’s population lives in these areas. Groundwater, too, is overused. At present, almost half the world’s land is subject to groundwater overextraction.

4. Fertiliser and nutrient boundaries: Halve the runoff from fertilisers

When farmers overuse fertilisers on their fields, rain washes nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into rivers and oceans. These nutrients can trigger algal blooms, damage ecosystems and worsen drinking water quality.

Yet many farming regions in poorer countries don’t have enough fertiliser, which is unjust.

Worldwide, our nitrogen and phosphorus use are up to double their safe and just boundaries. While this needs to be reduced in many countries, in other parts of the world fertiliser use can safely increase.

5. Aerosol pollution boundary: Sharply reduce dangerous air pollution and reduce regional differences

New research shows differences in concentration of aerosol pollutants between Northern and Southern hemispheres could disrupt wind patterns and monsoons if pollutant levels keep increasing. That is, air pollution could actually upend weather systems.

At present, aerosol concentrations have not yet reached weather-changing levels. But much of the world is exposed to dangerous levels of fine particle pollution (known as PM 2.5) in the air, causing an estimated 4.2 million deaths a year.

We must significantly reduce these pollutants to safer levels – under 15 micrograms per cubic metre of air.

We must act

We must urgently navigate towards a safe and just future, and strive to return our planetary systems back within safe and just boundaries through just means.

To stop human civilisation from pushing the Earths’s systems out of balance, we will have to tackle the many ways we damage the planet.

To work towards a world compatible with the Earth’s limits means setting and achieving science-based targets. To translate these boundaries to actions will require urgent support from government to create regulatory and incentive-based systems to drive the changes needed.

Setting boundaries and targets is vital. The Paris Agreement galvanised faster action on climate. But we need similar boundaries to ensure the future holds fresh water, clean air, a planet still full of life and a good life for humans.

We would like to acknowledge support from the Earth Commission, which is hosted by Future Earth, and is the science component of the Global Commons Alliance

Steven J Lade, Resilience researcher at Australian National University, Australian National University; Ben Stewart-Koster, Senior research fellow, Griffith University; Stuart Bunn, Professor, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University; Syezlin Hasan, Research fellow, Griffith University, and Xuemei Bai, Distinguished Professor, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.