Climate Change and Extreme Drought

Gran Canaria Sand Dunes With Ocean In Distance, Maspalomas, Canary Islands, SpainIn one of the most dire predictions regarding global heating to date, British scientists at the renowned Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research report that severe drought as a result of global warming threatens to spread across half the Earth's land surface by 2100, turning one third of the planet into a desert.

Here in the Canary Islands too, the predictions are no better. According to this report in Canarias Ahora, some 329,000 hectares of the Canaries - that is 43% of the archipelago's surface - suffers an intense process of erosion from the rain and wind. Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria are the islands which suffer most acutely and these processes cause the loss of more than 12 tons of land per year.

In fact, these are just some of the conclusions drawn by a study carried out by the Council for the Environment and Territorial Management of the Canary Islands Government recently, diagnosing the process of desertification the archipelago and, which will serve as a basis for a plan to of action to fight against the problem.

The report warns that the Canary Islands have a high risk of desertification in all of the islands, except La Palma. Fuerteventura is in first place, with 59.4% of its territory exposed to intense erosion, followed by Gran Canaria (56.7%), La Gomera (47.1%), Tenerife (41.9%), Lanzarote (30.6%), El Hierro (15.8%) and La Palma (8%).

The council says that the ecosystems and agriculture of the Canarian archipelago are characterized by their fragility, which makes them extremely sensitive to the processes of environmental degradation. Man's intervention, together with severe climatic limitations, the topography and building on the islands add up to a progressive decrease in the biological potential of the land.

The study indicates that the worst problems in the western islands are in La Gomera and in Tenerife, where, as well as the effects of man's intervention, winds from the oceans, the proximity of the coast and alterations in very old geological material are causing large quantities of salts to be accumulated in the soil.

Other visible manifestations of the desertification in the Canary Islands are the increase of salination in irrigated areas, where low quality water is used to irrigate crops and by the abuse of non-organic fertilizers; the progressive deterioration of the soil; the reduction in forest areas (more than 70% less than 400 years ago) and the increasing abandonment of traditional agricultural methods. In the last 50 years, 10,000 hectares of previously cultivated land has been abandoned.

The next stage will be the identification and documentation of the areas that are most vulnerable or affected, so that special priority measures can be taken. The Council for the Environment also say that the key piece in the fight against desertification is the coordination of policies between different sectors. That it is. Unfortunately, that last is not something I have ever seen to work in practice on these islands.

El 43% de la superficie canaria está sometida a intensos procesos de erosión