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Dec. 7, 2007
Ecological challenges
Environmental study predicts desertification.
EVA COHEN
Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Angel Gurría was in Israel in the beginning of November to discuss its entry to the OECD and "the Israeli economic situation and challenges ahead."
One of the biggest obstacles faced by Israel in getting accepted into the OECD is its lack of environmental awareness, which derives in part from the inconsistency in how the country is classified. Under the OECD, Israel is classified as a First World country, while according to the Kyoto Accords, Israel is considered Third World. Due to this discrepancy, there is a large gap between where the country "should" be, and where it is as far as keeping clean and environmentally conscious.
In other First World countries, like Canada, there has been a considerable amount of media attention addressed to the issue of global warming. There are campaigns to protect the environment and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Such phenomena are scarcely found in Israel. Only recently has a national consciousness begun to arise in regard to participating in the global effort to stem accelerated climate change.
In October 2000, Israel produced a document entitled Climate Change, Israel National Report under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Impact, Vulnerability and Adaptation. The paper gives forecasts on the anticipated effects of climate change that the country will sustain through to 2010. The research, commissioned by the Ministry of Environment and conducted by the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, Sede Boker Campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, predicted that, from 2000 to 2010, the country would experience drastic changes to its rainy season. Specifically, the climate changes include estimates of a mean temperature increase of 1.6°C to 1.8°C, a reduction in precipitation by between four and eight per cent, an increase in evapotranspiration (evaporation from plants and soil) by 10 per cent, delayed winter rains, increased rain intensity and shortened rainy season, a greater seasonal temperature variability, increased frequency and severity of extreme climate events and greater spatial and temporal climatic uncertainty.
All of these aspects combined can devastate a region if the proper steps aren't taken to accommodate and adapt to them. The report outlines some ways of coping with the changes, such as varying the time of harvest and introducing new plants and animals to ecosystems.
"The problem with the changes in the rainy season has been remote and secondary to Israelis," said Dan Rabinowitz, a senior lecturer at Tel-Aviv University. "The [knowledge] has become better, especially since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, but not dramatically."
Rabinowitz pointed to the same statistics found in the 2000 government commissioned report and said the rainfall patterns have already changed, but that the reality of it just doesn't interest many people in the country. "Only about three to four per cent of the country's population is involved in agriculture," said Rabinowitz. "People are not interested in statistics."
According to Tamar Gannot, staff attorney at the Israel Union for Environmental Defence and legal advisor to Adam Teva V'Din, an Israeli environmental nongovernmental organization, this is unacceptable.
"Israel has to join the global community on issues regarding the environment and climate change; we have been lingering behind," said Gannot. "This doesn't make sense. Israel is a small country on the desert line, it's coastal and we get really affected by climate change."
Rabinowitz, Gannot and many others believe that, if the government takes charge and implements clean air acts, recycling programs and other "green" initiatives, with conditions that must be met within specific deadlines, the country will be forced into the direction of acting responsibly in regard to the environment.
"The Clean Air Act bill in the Knesset right now is very important legislation," said Gannot. "We need coherent, up-to-date laws, not laws from the 1960s. What has been done so far is not enough."
Eva Cohen is a freelance writer living in Haifa.
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