Lake Tuz no longer 2nd largest in Turkey due to climate change and waste

Lake Tuz No Longer Second Largest Lake in Turkey

Lake Tuz, located in central Anatolia and known as the second-largest lake of Turkey, can no longer carry that title as it has shrunk by 85 percent over the last 90 years due to global warming, drought and the over usage of its water for irrigation purposes.

Aksaray University department of engineering, geodesy and photogrammetry engineering instructor Semih Ekercin spoke with the Anatolia news agency on Tuesday and said he examined the changes to the coastlines of Lake Tuz, second in size only to Lake Van, located in eastern Anatolia, and Beyşehir Lake, located in the western part of central Anatolia.

Ekercin said he even received support from NASA during the course of his study, adding that after examining satellite maps of Turkey provided by the US, Japan and France, he found there was a serious shrinkage of Turkey's lakes.

Ekercin said Lake Tuz covered 216,400 hectares in 1915. "Lake Tuz has shrunk at an alarming rate from then on. The water surface area of Lake Tuz decreased to 92,600 hectares in 1987," Ekercin said. "I clearly detected from the satellite images that the area of Lake Tuz decreased to 32,600 hectares in 2005. Drought, the over usage of water in the lake basin for irrigation and global warming have led to the loss of water in the lake.

snip

Ekercin said there is a need for urgent and radical measures to protect Lake Tuz. "If the necessary measures are not taken, by 2015 Lake Tuz will no longer exist."
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Radical measures indeed. The World Water Forum is taking place this week in Stockholm... but like every other year, what "radical" plans will come from it? Every year there are meetings, forums, dinners, and talks. And every year we see scenarios like Lake Tuz in Turkey continuing to play out before our eyes. We talk, and yet while talking still continue to perpetuate the climate change/global warming that is dropping levels in waterways worldwide. We talk, and yet continue to pollute our waterways until they are of no use to us or other species and cause the death of many rivers worldwide. We talk, and yet we still do not have a sufficient global plan to deal with the affects of climate change/drought that are slowly and silently creeping to all corners of this world as we continue to waste water with inefficient agricultural practices, infrastructure, and greed.

Those who know of and remember the tragedy of the Aral Sea in Russia see a hauntingly familiar and frightening pattern here. People care more for their own selfish sustainment than for only using what they need, which is considerably less than what they want. How many lakes and rivers will we run dry before we realize that we are running out of time to fight for the sustainability of this planet? Where is the plan? Where are the politicians? The World Bank doesn't have that plan. The IMF doesn't have that plan. The G8 doesn't have that plan. Will the World Water Forum in Stockholm have that plan?

The loss of Lake Tuz like so many other waterways, the Murray River in Australia as a starker example is a harbinger to us that something is terribly wrong.

Why aren't we listening?

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

How many more?

Water water everywhere, but what will we drink?

Many take water for granted, but as we all know we cannot live without it. However, much of it in the United States and other countries worldwide is polluted beyond human use. We have managed to pollute and toxify the very resource we need to survive, thereby reducing the amount of potable water in our world as our population continues to rise. This presents geopolitical issues as well as poverty, health, and social issues...especially as multi-nationals continue to buy up water for profit to control its distribution.

Who decides who is worthy to have water? Who decides who is worthy to have clean potable water? Who decides who gets to live and who is to die? It is one thing to truly have water scarcity in the form of no water... but to see water all around you and not be able to drink or use it is truly a moral tragedy. Please do all you can to conserve this precious resource, and pass on to those in government that demanding corporate accountability for polluting our natural resources is something that should be more important than covering for their crimes. Climate change has now also been put into motion, so preserving the freshwater we have left is imperative to our continued survival.

Water is life.

Notice the ripples in the water as it moves constantly to the rhythm of life even as we kill it. This particular waterway was poisoned with Pcbs and dioxin to make Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. We don't see any fish here anymore.

Is this the legacy we are going to leave for the future? I sure hope not.

Thanks for listening to this.

Flow-In Theatres This Fall

A must see documentary on the growing privitization of scarce water by corporations looking to profit from the global water crisis. I am very gratified to see this movie coming to theatres this fall. This is an issue I have been talking and reporting about for years. Water safety has always been at the crux of my environmental concern and action, though I am disheartened to see it come to this stage.

In reading of the pervasive and severe droughts that now exist on every continent of our world save Antarctica, this documentary could not have come out at a better time. I am hoping this does for the global water crisis what Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth did to wake people up to the challenge of climate change, which is inextricably linked to the global water crisis.

Please pass this on to all you know. Our water future depends on it.

Students Design Solutions To Global Water Crisis

Students Design Solutions To Global Water Crisis

NEW YORK.- AIGA, the professional association for design, today issued an ambitious call to action, tasking the next generation of creative thinkers with developing solutions to the global water crisis in its first annual Aspen Design Challenge, dubbed “Designing Water’s Future.” The international contest challenges cross-disciplinary student teams to develop design solutions that encourage responsible water use, provide access to freshwater to those in need and increase awareness about the importance of water conservation.

The rules and guidelines for the Challenge were distributed to thousands of faculty and students at more than 250 universities from Beijing to Boston, and are available to all with the launch of the Aspen Design Challenge website (www.aspendesignchallenge.org). Winners will have the opportunity to refine and develop their concepts with world leaders and policy makers at the Aspen Environment Forum, and their solutions will be discussed at the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, and the World Business Summit on Climate Change.

The Aspen Design Challenge is a joint project developed by AIGA and INDEX:, a global nonprofit design network, with the purpose of engaging the millennial generation in solving an emerging set of global issues. The Challenge is issued as part of the Aspen Design Summit, an international conference organized for leaders from business, the public sector and nonprofit organizations. The idea for “Designing Water’s Future” grew out of discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, led by Brian Collins, chairman of Collins:, a New York-based transformation design firm, and journalist J. Carl Ganter, co-founder of Circle of Blue, an international network of leading journalists, scientists and communications designers that connects humanity to the global freshwater crisis. AIGA has partnered with Circle of Blue and Collins: for their expertise, knowledge on the issues and ability to provide resources to ensure that the students’ ideas are realized and brought to international attention.

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There are no restrictions on the type of solutions that students may submit. Print design, web applications, environment design, physical devices, data presentation tools and other approaches are all encouraged, as are proposals for the conceptual framework or method of dissemination that may propel these designs into public consciousness. Design students are encouraged to lead cross-disciplinary teams of engineers, artists, ethnographers, anthropologists and scientists, and to consider the social, cultural and scientific significance of water use.

“The global water crisis is a universally threatening and immensely complex problem,” said J. Carl Ganter, director and co-founder of Circle of Blue. “The causes are many—climate change, population growth, overuse—and the ramifications are felt in all areas from environment to security to economic development. This is where we need design students to step in. Design is the intermediary between information and understanding. Young people have the fresh perspective we need, and it is their future which is most at stake.”

Spain Sweats Amid 'Water Wars'

Spain Sweats Amid 'Water Wars'

Spain is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Climate experts warn that the country is suffering badly from the impact of climate change and that the Sahara is slowly creeping north - into the Spanish mainland.
A dry fountain: Spanish children are learning about climate change

Yet in Spain itself there is little consensus about what is to be done. Indeed, such is the disagreement that journalists and politicians alike are calling it "water wars".

A farmer and politician, Angel Carcia Udon, said: "Water arouses passions because it can be used as a weapon, a political weapon, just as oil is a political weapon".

And water in Spain has set region against region, north against south and government against opposition.

When the city of Barcelona nearly ran out of water earlier this year, the fountains were switched off and severe restrictions were introduced.

The government of Catalonia pleaded for water to be transferred from rivers like the Ebro, in neighbouring regions, but they refused.

Instead, the city imported tonnes of litres of water from France and accelerated work on the giant desalination plant on the edge of Barcelona, which promises to provide 180,000 cubic metres of water a day.

Parched land

But Barcelona is not alone in its insatiable thirst. Apart from the far north, the entire country is suffering, especially the parched areas on the Mediterranean coast, from Catalonia, down through Valencia, Alicante, Murcia and Almeria.

Mr Udon, whose Popular Party (PP) believes in transferring water around the country, said: "It's incomprehensible that, in one country, there is an excess of water in one place and a deficit in another.
The landscape of eastern Spain looks more parched than usual

"Even more incomprehensible is that they expect us to use water from desalination plants, which is expensive and would force us to raise prices."

But when the present PSOE Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero got into power in 2004, they cancelled all the PP's plans to send water from the north-west to the arid zones of the south-east.

Instead, the government is building more desalination plants, adding to the more than 900 already in Spain - the largest number in any one country outside the Middle East.

They are working night and day at the one at Llogrebat, close to Barcelona airport. The general manager, Juan Compte Costa, assured me that it was the most cost-effective and energy-efficient desalination plant yet.

end of excerpt.



Countries all over the world I fear will be led into the same trap of desalination because people refuse to conserve water and press governments to shore up infrastructure, present conservation initiatives, and work on efficient agricultural irrigation along with facing overpopulation and climate change by cutting CO2 emissions. And let's face it, that is because there is money to be made from building desalination plants by the companies building them and the politicians calling for them.

Companies (like Dow Chemical) will be pushing drought stricken areas to build them even if they still have a chance to save enough water to provide for their cities. And while I would be for it in truly dire circumstances with the proper safeguards, building such plants is not enough because they cannot be built in time to do what is necessary to provide for people now. Also, desalination plants are expensive, energy intensive, and the full effects of returning brackish water back into the seas on marinelife is not fully known. And what of the land to build them?

This world is now truly in a situaiton that is a viscious cycle of its own making, all because the human species cannot seem to do the one thing that will get us out of this... act and change.

Cyprus is running out of water

Climate change and a rising population in the region are lending to a drought that is now at crisis stage in Cyprus. I find it very hard to comprehend why so many people do not take this seriously. Water is the mainstay of our lives. Without it we die. The people of Cyprus and actually the entire Mediterranean area are now seeing rising temperatures with less water due to water evaporation due to global warming/climate change and a rising population. It is now changing the very way farmers and others there live.

This is now a global crisis that must be addressed along with the climate crisis. We cannot continue to take water for granted and expect it will be there when we need it. For the people of Cyprus as well as people in Australia, Asia, Africa, South America, and now North America, this is just a foretaste of what is to come if we do not get serious about water conservation, more efficient irrigation, and cutting Co2 emissions.

And there are many who would not fight over oil, but any of us pushed to our limit would fight for water to survive. I know I would. This will be a great test of moral will and humanity. There is not one continent besides Antarctica (which is melting) that has not been hit by drought in some form or other... that is not just a natural fluke. Also, if we keep polluting the freshwater that is left while population increases, we are only pushing ourselves that much closer to extinction, and I truly do not believe that is 'shrill' any longer.

Entries on this blog concern droughts in Spain, Italy, China, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, India, the US, South America, Southeast Asia, Australia, the Mediterranean... this is a global crisis with global ramifications due to political corruption, lack of political and moral will, corporatization of freshwater sources in an attempt to commoditize a scarce resource for profit, major pollution, glacier melt, climate change, political apathy, human apathy, mismanagement of resources, old and decaying infrastructure that wastes water, wasteful irrigation practices (wastes about 70% of water globally)... and on and on and on... but instead of people learning from examples like Cyprus and Australia, we continue the same wasteful behavior thinking that water will always be there for us when we need it... and of course, thinking 'desalination' will be a savior when it is merely just a bandaid.

It is interesting to me to observe the human species and our way of always trying to find short cuts to never have to do anything to change our own behavior and comfortable lifestyles thinking that any change will ultimately threaten that. Instead we think we can simply continue to waste and pollute this resource and then take it from the sea... to do what exactly? Then run the seas dry as we continue to not face the 400 lb gorilla in the room: population?

Well, people have been warned on this just like they were regarding global warming/climate change, and it seems all people on the whole wish to do is read it and move on... So when Monsanto, Nestle, and other multinationals own all of the water in the global market thus stripping any human rights to water as well as our food then I suppose that is when we will see the showdown... or when climate change completely destroys our eco systems... or when a catastrophic event occurs to try to rouse us into our senses... only, by then it may just well be too damn late.

In the case of Limassol, Cyprus. their reservoirs are empty and they must now depend upon Greece for tankers to supply their water...which I do not believe is very clean regardless of what is reported. Greece is also a country already feeling the effects of drought and desertification as well. This now also has political repercussions as the Greek South and Turkish North both go without the water they need as desertificaiton spreads. As water becomes scarcer desalination is now the option, only dessalination is expensive, harmful to marine life, and energy intensive, thus perpetuating the very atmosphere that lent to the drought in the first place. However, now it is the only choice in a place where climate change is making itself known firsthand.

And what happens when the Turkish North which has the same problems protest that Greece is only selling water to the Greek South as desertification continues to creep Northward? A war over water?

Both sides working on solutions to Cyprus drought

On the other hand, perhaps this severe drought will transcend political divisions to bring peace to the people of Cyprus working for a common solution to a moral crisis. We can only hope, and hope that a solution for these people comes soon.

Ceremony Marks "Death" of Australia's Greatest River

Ceremony Marks "Death" of Australia's Greatest River

Thousands of people rallied in southern Australia Sunday to protest the dwindling water levels in one of the country's greatest rivers, claiming the loss was causing an environmental disaster.
The 5,000-strong crowd gathered near the mouth of the 2,530 kilometre (1,569 mile) Murray to hold two minute's silence to mark the 'death' of the river, which forms part of Australia's most important agricultural region.

Kym McHugh, mayor of the local Alexandrina Council, said the ceremony near the South Australian town of Goolwa was to "underscore this eleventh hour bid to save the nation's greatest river." "It sent a very clear message by saying we've had a lot of talk about the river system, a lot of science, we all know what the problem is -- we just want politicians to have the will to fix it up," he told national news agency AAP.

"They need to secure water upstream and send it down."

Water levels are so low in the Murray River, due to drought and irrigation, that the freshwater lakes the river feeds into are turning to acid.

The federal government last week said there was not enough water in the system to save the freshwater lakes, leading to suggestions that ocean water could be used to prevent the lakes from drying out.

But the council wants the government to release water held in storage in upstream states into the river so it can flow down and prevent an environmental, economic and social disaster in the region.

"We need to give these lakes another chance," McHugh said.

The Murray, along with the 2,740-kilometre Darling River and 1,690-kilometre Murrumbidgee River, form the Murray Darling Basin, which accounts for some 40 percent of the nation's agricultural production.
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This is a tragedy. All it would take is the political will to save the Murray-Darling basin and yet it is left to die? The Australian government must act now to save this great river. Anything less is immoral. I thought Kevin Rudd would do the right thing. I am disappointed to see it come to this. What are people thinking? This river basin supplies 40% of their agricultural production. Just how do they expect their people to live?

Australia's Epic Drought-The Situaiton is Grim

I posted this in April of last year... and this is where we are today. Anyone who does not believe that climate change is now upon us is simply living in denial. This is why I am disappointed in Kevin Rudd. The first order of business for him after being elected to replace John Howard was to have Australia sign the Kyoto Treaty. So why is the great Murray Darling basin being left to die?

We really better start getting serious now about connecting the dots between the climate crisis and the global water crisis. This tragedy is just a foretaste of what will come should we continue to sit and wait for "political will" to lead us. It must be MORAL will that now takes over for the sake of our planet and ourselves.

Will I be sitting here in another year reading and writing about another tragedy like this in Africa, Asia, South America or even in America? I surely hope not.


UPDATE:

Outrage Over Paroo River Diversions

Excerpt:

The Queensland Government is facing accusations that it has allowed a large dam and diversion channels along the Paroo River.

Satellite images reveal a dam and more than 10 kilometres of channels have been built along the river on the Queensland-New South Wales border, despite a moratorium stopping any development.

The moratorium was imposed by the Queensland Government in the middle of 2001, to stop the building of dams, levees and channels on the Paroo River.

But satellite images taken in July 2002 and June 2008 reveal that storage dams and water diversions have been built since.

Richard Kingsford from the University of New South Wales says the moratorium has failed.

"This essentially does breach that agreement because it does allow for water to be diverted out of the flood plain for irrigation," he said.

end of excerpt

It appears the Queensland govt has allowed the building of dams and diverting water from this region in spite of a moratorium placed on such construction. I suppose the Aral Sea doesn't ring a bell to these people?

UPDATE:

Rudd Government Looking To Buy Back Water Rights to Send Water Downstream

Is it too late? It may just be, and this is truly sad.