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Desertification: When lakes simply disappear – and what we can do about it

Lakes and large expanses of water are not only the natural basis for sports skippers and commercial skippers to pursue their hobbies or activities. But more and more water is drying up worldwide, but also right on our doorstep, in Europe. What are the reasons for this? And what can we do for our environment?

In many sci-fi blockbusters, our future world is depicted as a gigantic desert planet due to climate change, according to a post on wetter.de about desertification. A look at the ongoing desertification reveals that the cinematic future does not seem so far-fetched.

Around a third of the world’s land area is already dry land. If, in precisely these areas, natural resources are overused by humans, then these dry areas will spread bit by bit and run the risk of becoming deserts. This is called desertification.

The problem: “Climate change is warming many lakes worldwide faster than the oceans and the air. Together with human mismanagement, the accelerated evaporation leads to increased water scarcity and the loss of habitats for birds and fish,” wrote National Geographic in a 2018 article on desertification.

Satellite images show the extent of global desertification.

On almost every continent, lakes are suffering from a combination of overuse and increasingly extreme droughts. Satellite images show the shocking extent of this. The African Lake Chad, for example, has been shrinking since the 1960s, and only a narrow strip of it remains.

In eastern China’s TaiHu Lake, washed-out fertilizers and discharged wastewater have caused a cyanobacteria bloom, and the warm water increases their growth. The bacteria threaten the drinking water supply of two million people.

Lake Tanganyika in East Africa has warmed to such an extent that the fish stocks that feed millions of people in the four countries bordering the lake are at risk. In Venezuela, the water level behind the Guri Dam, which is home to an important hydroelectric power plant, has dropped dramatically in recent years. To save electricity, the state has even had to cancel school lessons.

According to the Caspian Sea, Lake Urmia in Iran was once the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East. But over the past 30 years, it has shrunk by about 80 percent. The flamingos that used to find saltwater crabs here in abundance have almost all disappeared.

An impressive example is the almost complete disappearance of the Aral Sea.

Another “blatant example” is the disappearance of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, the National Geographic article continues. The death sentence for the lake was primarily due to ambitious Soviet irrigation projects that diverted its tributaries.

Since the construction of the Kokaral Dam on the Kazakh side in 2005, the northern part of the Aral Sea had recovered to such an extent that fishing was possible again, as a field investigation by the author in August 2024 revealed.

But then climate change struck mercilessly: for about five years now, the most important tributary, the Syr-Darija, no longer carries enough water to continue to replenish the northern Aral Sea. The lake is shrinking again, becoming saltier, and there are fewer and fewer fish species in the lake.

 

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Aral Sea Timelapse: 1984 – 2023 (Current Aral Sea Timelaps on Google Earth)© Google Earth | YouTube

 

Desertification does not stop at our doorstep either, as the example of Spain impressively demonstrates.

But desertification does not stop at our doorstep either. “The desert is also expanding in one of the favorite holiday destinations of Germans: a large part of Spain is dry,” warns wetter.de.

Many forest areas have fallen victim to the construction boom in holiday regions. Vegetable growing also requires a lot of scarce water. While in the past, resource-conserving dry farming was the norm, corporations are now cultivating lettuce, peppers and citrus fruits on a large scale.

“Water supplies are shrinking dramatically,” the article continues. The provinces of Murcia, Alicante and Almeria in southeastern Spain are most affected by the spread of the desert; 80 percent of Spain’s water consumption goes into agricultural irrigation.

There is no common vision in the EU for effectively combating desertification by 2030.

In a special report published in 2018, the European Court of Auditors wrote that desertification in the EU is generally ‘an increasing threat caused by climate change and human activity’, adding that Europe is increasingly affected by desertification. The report warned that Europe is increasingly affected by desertification.

The risk of desertification is greatest in “southern Portugal, parts of Spain and southern Italy, southeastern Greece, Malta, Cyprus and the areas bordering the Black Sea in Bulgaria and Romania”. Studies have shown that these areas are often affected by soil erosion, salinization, loss of soil organic carbon, loss of biodiversity and landslides. The problem is “urgent”.

The Court stated in the report that “the risk of desertification in the EU is not being effectively and economically addressed”. While desertification and land degradation are an increasing threat, action to combat desertification is “not coherent”. There is no common vision in the EU on how to achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030.

According to the report, the EU and member states committed in 2015 to achieving so-called “land degradation neutrality” in the EU by 2030. However, a full assessment of land degradation at the EU level has not yet been carried out, nor has a methodology for such an assessment been agreed.

There is “no coordination between Member States” and the Commission has “not provided practical guidelines on the subject”. So far, there is still “no clear, common vision in the EU of how land degradation neutrality can be achieved by 2030,” the Court criticizes.

The effects of desertification are also referred to as “man-made deserts”

“To make desolate” or ‘to devastate’ – this is how the origin of the word ‘desertification’ is translated, explains utopia.de in a guidebook. The term describes a special form of land change in drylands due to climatic and human influences. The results would therefore also be referred to as ‘man-made deserts’.

Desertification is a process in which humans destroy the soil, water and vegetation in dry areas through overuse. In contrast to natural droughts, the causes of desertification lie in human activity in combination with climatic conditions.

What can be done about it? The most effective countermeasure is to switch to more sustainable land use and a more careful use of resources, advises utopia.de. This includes, for example, reforestation. More trees and vegetation would not only mean more root systems to protect the upper soil layers from erosion, but also the restoration of a functioning ecosystem.

Cultivation methods adapted to local conditions are also an important countermeasure. Cultivation in terraces or with the help of stone walls and hedges, for example, prevents the upper fertile layers of soil from being eroded by wind and rain.

Conscious consumption against desertification in German-speaking countries

“We in Germany can also make a small contribution to combating desertification through conscious consumption by questioning the production of many raw materials that consume enormous resources and increase the pressure on agriculture,” the guide continues.

Cotton, for example, requires large amounts of water. For precisely this purpose, the water from the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan was used for decades to irrigate huge cotton fields, resulting in the drying up of the Aral Sea, which used to be the fourth largest inland sea in the world (see above). And: “You can actively conserve resources by wearing your clothes for as long as possible or buying second-hand”.

“What can we do to stop desertification?”, is also the question posed by the weather experts at wetter.de. Even if Germany is not directly affected by desertification, “our consumer behavior has an impact on water consumption and the use of land in the affected countries”. It is worth “rethinking our own consumer behavior in this country and not buying an orange or two”.

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