39.Dar Al Hayat - The “Inconceivable” Invasion

Dar Al Hayat - The “Inconceivable” Invasion

The “Inconceivable” Invasion
Tue, 17 August 2010

Husam Itani


Floods in Pakistan and forest fires in Russia, after an unprecedented heat wave in the Middle East: these events should be connected in a single line, pointing the way to the future that awaits humanity.
Traditional political thinking has begun to pay attention to economic, strategic and security considerations while authoring plans for the future. Environment, water and climate issues used to exist only as passing local elements. These elements were long hidden in the realm of the “inconceivable” and contributed, without politicians noticing or realizing it, to the change of economic and security conditions, which occupy a high position when it comes to the concerns of governments and states.
These days, there are fires and floods around the world, exacerbating the effect of wide-ranging food, health, and environmental crises. Many are mistaken in the belief that the climate and environmental situation will return to stability, and that natural disasters, from violent storms in calm areas to heat and cold waves, can be treated locally.
The floods in Pakistan are a sample of what awaits humanity in the coming years. This is not only in terms of the numbers of casualties, displaced, and those threatened with contagious diseases, but also the fact that these problems overlap with low agricultural production, and the growing need for energy amid the melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, which is thought to exceed the Pakistan flooding disaster. Perhaps Pakistan is a model for overlapping crises, in a country suffering from chronic sectarian and political unrest, which has appeared in a number of civil wars between the north and south.
The fires in Russia, meanwhile, hint at a new food crisis that experts do not believe will exceed that of 2008, which led to a sharp rise in the prices of milk and meat products. However, it sheds light on the harsh realities of food security in the third world. Egypt, which is the world’s leading importer of wheat, is being called on to search for short- and long-term alternatives due to the sharp imbalance in its imports.
The Egyptian wheat situation is no more than the tip of the “inconceivable” environmental and food iceberg in the Arab world. The Egyptian wheat problem appeared a few months after a no less dangerous threat, namely the decision by a number of African countries to review the division of the Nile’s water. Not far off is the issue of Darfur, which began as an environmental problem caused by desertification and the loss of pastoral lands to farmers, which became a political and ethnic crisis from which Sudan suffers.
Iraq and Syria are watching with trepidation the reducing water supplies of the Tigris and Euphrates, which flow from Turkey, while planted areas in these two Arab countries are dropping at unprecedented levels. This is prompting rural residents to migrate to cities and live in unenviable conditions; recent flooding that struck Jeddah and Riyadh have astonished observers.
The point is that neglecting the inter-linkages of seeming out-of-control environmental issues and the world’s politics, and the insistence on an approach to new problems with an old mentality, is costing humanity tremendously in terms of lives and money, and most importantly, the ability to anticipate the future of coming generations.