WOULD YOU STAY IF YOUR HOME BECAME A DESERT?

A few years from now, my home town in the Mediterranean will experience drastic change as global temperatures rise by 2°C.  According to the studies, the whole of southern Spain will become a desert.

By the middle of this century, experts estimate that climate change is likely to displace between 150 and 300 million people.  If these people were the citizens of a single country, it would be the fourth-largest country in the world.  Yet neither the world as a whole, nor the individual countries immediately facing large migrant influxes, are prepared to support such high numbers of ‘climate migrants’.

What does the future offer for those who can’t flee from their homes?

These satellite images of the most vulnerable places were driven by concern for the effects of the climate crisis.  The effects and the scale of our interactions with the environment can be clearly seen on publicly-available satellite images.  The project’s ambition is to help us better understand the issues that are fuelling migration and the loss of fertile soil.

One way to fight climate change is to make your own glaciers.  As snows dwindle and glaciers recede, people in the mountains of northern India are building huge ice cones called Ice Stupas that provide water into summer.  This 33.5m high Ice Stupa near the village of Shara Phuktsey won first prize for the largest Ice Stupa in a 2019 competition.  Its nearly two million gallons of stored water helped irrigate fields in four villages.  The stupa also drew tourists.  Ice climbers came to scale its steep flanks.

L- The south face of Lhotse captured from the Island Peak Trail at sundown, 4,873m.
R- Bacillus sp. on blood agar isolated from a swab of stones on Lhotse Glacier.

Svalbard is a remote Norwegian archipelago, lying approximately midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.  It is home to The Global Seed Vault—sometimes referred to as the ‘Doomsday Vault’—which houses seed samples from all over the world that can be preserved for centuries and can be used as an emergency supply in the event of large scale natural or human-made disaster.

Built deep into an Arctic mountain, it is a feat of imagination, innovation, and engineering, preserving our past while safeguarding future generations.  It currently holds over 1 million seed samples and represents the world’s largest collection of crop diversity.  Owned by Norway’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Global Crop Diversity Trust provides continuing support for the operations of the Seed Vault, while each country or institution retains ownership and access rights to any deposits made.

The Vault burrows over 140 metres into frozen rock, where a naturally permanent temperature of minus 18°C ensures the safety of its contents in case the electricity supply ever fails.  A few years ago, in the wake of record-high temperatures, the entrance to the vault was breached by melting permafrost.  Major repairs had to be made in 2018 to prevent any further damage.  The damage to the vault was a direct result of climate change.

A farm dam sits on the outskirts of Cape Town.  In early 2018, after years of sustained drought, the city faced yet another water crisis.  Severe water restrictions had been enacted, and as supplies continued to dwindle and time ran short, city officials announced that extreme measures might be necessary.  They even named the date: May 11th, 2018.  On that day, water to the homes of local communities in the area might be turned off, so that people would need to queue to collect their supplies of water at designated standpoints.  Fortunately, thanks to the resolve of the local community and the timely arrival of the rains, this situation was narrowly avoided.  All the same, it serves as an important reminder for us to treat our natural world with respect, as these severe climactic events are becoming ever more frequent.

Image from a wider story titled – Day Zero – By Joel Redman

This employee of The Eden Reforestation Projects, a nonprofit that employs local citizens to grow and plant trees around the world, examines a sapling.  Photographed on assignment for Givewith.

A group of scientists looking for life amid the snow during the polar night at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard.  The Arctic is warming in response to climate change, and the impacts of warming are felt by microorganisms – causing changes to adaptation, colonization and survival of microbes in these Arctic systems.  These microbes can also affect downstream ecosystems and alter the climate, due to their ability to reproduce, drive biogeochemical reactions (including photo-chemistry), and cycle nutrients.  Scientists are anxious to discover where these microorganisms come from, what they use as food, what defense mechanisms and survival strategies they use, and how they are able to endure the long polar night.

July 19, 2019 - Berlin, Germany: Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg (C) attends a ‘Fridays for Future’ protest.  The protesters are calling for urgent measures to combat climate change.

From a series shot for Popular Mechanics documenting an underground farm in South London, UK where edible plants are grown 33 metres underground in an old air raid shelter.

An ever-changing, complex dialogue is going on right beneath our feet.

Mycorrhizal fungi weave themselves into the tips of roots, joining them into a vast, highly intricate, collaborative structure that has the ability to communicate and organize itself collectively.  These subterranean networks feed plants, protect them from disease and aid the rapid absorption of carbon from the atmosphere.  Neither plant nor animal, they are members of their own natural kingdom with a combined biomass that exceeds that of all animals.

Fungi have been found to harness compounds that can aid in the treatment of cancer, diabetes and potentially even diseases such as HIV and the Zika virus.  Already 15% of all vaccines and biologically produced drugs, including many antibiotics like penicillin, come from fungi.

A recently found type of mycelia growing in the soil of a landfill in Pakistan has been found to break down polyurethane plastic in a matter of weeks.  Others are able to degrade harmful heavy metals, absorb pollution from oil spills, consume persistent pesticides and even rehabilitate radioactive sites.

The abilities of fungi are manifold.  They are used as biocontrols of plant disease, as biofertilizers, as elements of a solution for food insecurity, in agricultural waste disposal, as biofuel, in soil regeneration and in plant-based commodities.  They are one of the most promising agents in relieving the pressures we put on the natural world and its resources.  Mycology deserves our attention and support, as its findings time and again contribute to the solutions needed for many of our ongoing challenges.

Although fossilized mycelium have been traced back further than any other life-form, more than 90% of the estimated 3.8 million still remain unknown.  As we continue to erode our forests, damage our soil through mechanised industrial farming and fuel climate change as a whole, fungi are disappearing and with them their potential to save us.

In our quest for a sustainable and reciprocal relationship between man and nature, mycology offers us a view of our past and the possibility of a more symbiotic future.  A future where human and non-human animals, plants and fungi co-exist together in thriving ecosystems.

The Kompost Series symbolizes our organic relationship as the ultimate form of exchange with mother earth.  I see beauty in what many others see merely as waste.  My series provides a visual answer to several questions focussing on regenerating and examining the concept of coherence within the process and actions of humanity towards the late respect for nature in the crucial times in which we now live.  The series also seeks to win recognition for the beauty of forgotten existential ways to make things right.  Compost is a universal language.  Carnations, Lemon, Leeks, Orange.