Over-grazing and desertification in the Syrian steppe root causes of war (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Over-grazing and desertification in the Syrian steppe root causes of war (2015)

theecologist.org

83 pointsjoveian62 comments

This will likely be a pattern across the planet as unsustainable practices are still the norm and will likely be so for many more decades.

The timescales of climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss are too slow to be perceived as "real" risks. But they create underlying stresses that may push human systems beyond thresholds and tipping points at "random" times.

In other words, indirect impacts may be much more visibly damaging, although the causal links not easy to internalize.

For the majority of people the detrimental outcomes of their own behavior might as well be attributed to supernatural forces, "others" or any other deflection of responsibility.

Cattle grazing is a climate disaster, and you’re paying for it

https://grist.org/climate-energy/cattle-grazing-is-a-climate...

Blame it on the goats? Desertification in the Near East during the Holocene

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316721412_Blame_it_...

Environmental Implications of Livestock: Goats

https://epar.evans.uw.edu/research/environmental-implication...

Alan Savory's holistic planned grazing seems to have worked for both preventing and reverting the desertification of brittle land.

Would be very interesting to see more attempts at using it in these places, especially since it would be hard to make the land worse.

>We find all of Mr Savory’s major claims to be unfounded.... Scientific evidence unmistakably demonstrates the inability of Mr Savory’s grazing method to reverse rangeland degradation or climate change, and it strongly suggests that it might actually accelerate these processes

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019005281...

> We conclude that transitioning to regenerative agriculture involves more than a suite of ‘climate-smart’ mitigation and adaptation practices supported by technical innovation, policy, education, and outreach. Rather, it involves subjective, nonmaterial factors associated with culture, values, ethics, identity, and emotion that operate at individual, household, and community scales and interact with regional, national and global processes. Findings have implications for strategies aimed at facilitating a large-scale transition to climate-smart regenerative agriculture.

(Majority of farmers in the study are holistic practitioners)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09593...

I don't understand the relevance of that study here? The study is not looking at effectiveness of "holistic grazing"? There's not any environmental analysis here nor anything quantitative. It's mainly looking at interviews with people and talking about the friction in using those kinds of techniques

‘It’s Pseudoscience’: George Monbiot Blasts Regenerative Grazing In Heated Debate with Alan Savory

https://plantbasednews.org/news/environment/george-monbiot-r...

Monbiot said that there was no empirical evidence that holistic management could mitigate the climate crisis. He went on to say that there is also no evidence it can offset the emissions it produces itself. On the contrary, he said that there’s “loads of contradictory evidence showing that grazing livestock systems are a major net loss of carbon into the atmosphere.” He highlighted that there had been several papers published recently that found removing animals from land allows more carbon to be sequestered. “Far from livestock grazing helping to mitigate climate breakdown, it actually accelerates climate breakdown,” he said.

He pointed out that Savory’s claims had been debunked repeatedly, and added that there are “several words” that can be used to describe a claim for which there is no evidence or that has already been debunked. “One of them is pseudoscience,” he said. “One of them is mumbo jumbo… But perhaps the most appropriate one in this case is bullsh*t.”

The debate: https://www.youtube.com/embed/rhwEaCmQ2XE

> “…the controversy over the effectiveness of HM can be traced back to the narrow terms in which HM was initially studied, at a time before social-ecological frameworks were developed. Studying a different agricultural paradigm was inhibited because—within an industrial farming paradigm—the only credible way to establish the value of an agricultural practice was to frame it in narrow, positivistic terms that removed the rancher as a thinking, adaptive agent, instead focusing solely on generic treatment efficacy for increasing forage, reducing desertification, and fixing carbon. […] A more holistic approach to co-producing scientific knowledge about HM, grounded in enhancing the capacity and agency of ranchers, should be seen as part of the system change that HM is attempting to leverage within agriculture.”

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338777621_A_half_ce...

"Monbiot’s approach falls squarely into the “narrow industrial paradigm” Dr. Gosnell warns about. In his opening remarks, Monbiot insisted that carbon sequestration is simply not adequate, and to address climate change livestock advocates must demonstrate permanent carbon capture in the soil. This demand, however, is the perfect example of applying reductionist thinking to complex living systems."

https://savory.global/statement-on-the-allan-savory-george-m...

So Savory is unable to show any empirical way in which his method works to help the situation, and we should just take their word for it?

And asking for evidence is reductionist?

> L Hunter Lovins: George Monbiot’s recent criticism of Allan Savory’s theory that grazing livestock can reverse climate change ignores evidence that it’s already experiencing success

> Claims that Savory’s approach has been discredited in the academic literature are based solely on two papers, one of which Monbiot cites. Both have been countered in academic and professional literature by papers which find that Savory’s method meets the claimed ecological, economic, and quality of life enhancing goals. It improves grass density, soil moisture, soil bulk density, standing crop biomass, and soil organic matter, an indicator of increases in soil carbon.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19...

My first question would be, "How many cattle does George Monbiot run"?

I don't know anything about Allan Savory but I think it's likely he would know more about what's happening on his land than not, eh?

This is one of those things that always made me wonder. Theory is lagging behind practice by significant margins.

> he would know more about what's happening on his land than not

If you want to make policies, we need scientific facts, experiments and measurements, not gut feelings.

Otherwise you might end up killing tens of thousands of elephants and making things worse for decades (sorry, couldn't resist).

Yeah, I'll cop to it: Having only gotten an hour into the above-linked video, Alan Savory sounds kind of like a BS artist. Even if he's on to something with the emphasis on oxidation and desertification he still comes off poorly from a scientific POV, IMO.

George Monbiot is a bit harsh but it's understandable, I'd be a bit mad myself in his shoes.

Amazing how anyone could take him seriously after that debate. Yikes.

Precisely this.

I'd argue that ALL wars are foundationally resource wars - in contrast to the limited scope of what most historians would point to as "resource conflicts" that are more acute conflicts.

Iran-Iraq is a perfect example of this

1. Proto-states of Iraq and Iran claimed monopoly access to the Shatt Al Arab [1] river starting 3000 years ago (the original resource conflict)

2. These proto-states eventually signed a treaty in 1937

3. Iran stopped abiding by the 1937 treaty in 1969 - because they wanted fewer constraints on their use of the resource

4. Iraq and Iran then agreed to the Treaty of Algiers in 1975

5. Iraq kicked off the first derivative conflict by invading Iran - because they wanted fewer constraints on their use of the resource - this time funded by the Kuwaitis

6. The second derivative conflict started when Iraq invaded Kuwait to cancel the debt it had with Kuwait leading to the....

7. Third derivative conflict called Desert Storm

The desire for greedy monopolization of resources to the exclusion of others - based on a fear of persistent and forever scarcity is the ACTUAL root problem. There's plenty of river to go around as was proven time again with treaties, but greedy avarice rules the day and the entirety of the Levant has handicapped itself with these repeated insane wars based on fake scarcity.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatt_al-Arab

>I'd argue that ALL wars are foundationally resource wars -

I mean, this much should be obvious. When Prussia, Russia and Austria partitioned Poland, they weren't exactly happy about the polish citizens they acquired.

It's far from obvious in the gov/policy world - either out of ignorance or because they don't actually care about anything but keeping their own power.

As in, if you were to interrogate policy makers and elected officials, they have no incentive nor interest in solving root problems

I think the world would benefit from a truly objective international negotiation facilitation organization. And yes I'm aware that "objective" isn't a platonic object - but I think we can get close to that for human systems if properly organized (like Médecins Sans Frontières).

> ALL wars are foundationally resource wars

I can't see any conflict over resources between Russia and Ukraine. Both countries have abundant natural resources, including minerals and water; both are large net exporters of food.

As far as I can see, that war is primarily about ideology, not natural resources. At a pinch you could argue that Russian naval access to the Black Sea is access to a natural resource; but then Russia had unquestioned access to the Black Sea before the invasion of Crimea.

>As far as I can see, that war is primarily about ideology, not natural resources.

The area of Ukraine is and has been the Bread-Basket of Europe since pre-modernity and also is EXTREMELY strategic for logistics routes from the "East" to the "West"

Which is why it has literally forever been disputed territory

So yes the conflict is foundationally about food and logistics access

https://www.farminglife.com/country-and-farming/why-is-ukrai...

> and also is EXTREMELY strategic for logistics routes from the "East" to the "West"

But Ukraine was serving Russia nicely as a logistics channel, until Russia started strangling its own channel by using oil and gas pipelines through Ukraine as a political lever. That behaviour long precedes 2014.

If Ukraine was a vital logistics channel for Russia, why would they deliberately sabotage it? But they did this repeatedly, under cover of various transparent excuses.

The "breadbasket" thing is irrelevant; it was not called "the breadbasket of Russia", because Russia didn't rely on Ukraine for food.

There was discontent and unrest, for various reasons, but the war began when billions worth of weapons and ammunition were poured in. And so-called “advisors”. First covertly then overtly.

Freedom guns. So free they even made Al Qaeda rebrand themselves. Like a freedom loving corporation.

Its always awkward when the treasury department needs to reshuffle their terrorist organization designations because the same organization is getting bombed in one country and gets a shipment of money, guns and explosives in another. Gets especially surreal when you got members of the group in gitmo, I guess you just hand them some weapons crate on their way out the door. Maybe the CIA can start to issue work visas for terrorists.

Perhaps terrorists should just name themselves after whatever the state department is calling them, seems to work fine for the wikipedia.

"were poured in" "Nice" use of the passive form. Do you think there weren't any weapons before? Or that advisors were needed to start an insurrection?

Google "1982 Hama massacre" le "Alois Brunner".

The scale of the Syrian civil war would not have been possible without substantial foreign assistance at the onset.

You can look at reports of weapons seizures along the Iraq/Syria border in the lead up to the conflict.

There is anothing wrong with using the passive voice.

Sure, maybe it played a part, but to say that overgrazing that started 50 years prior was the “root cause” turns quite the blind eye to the Arab Spring: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

Arab Spring apparently was augmented by food scarcity, too: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-an...

Which was created by the us pivoting away from food aid towards bio fuels. But the arab spring is the end result, the outcome. Mismanaged resources are at the core, the root cause. Im not interested in the flash symptoms of a crisis. The interesting part is the little rock that starts the avalanche and how we can prevent such cascades in the future..

The incompetenes of the government might have lead to desertification but that's merely scratching the suface level of the problems. The article is full of confirmation bias and tunnel vision from an author who wants to think his work is the center of the universe.

If you're seriously contemplating the author's idea, just try answering this simple question. If there was no desertification whatsoever, everything else the same, would the war still happen?

It's honestly disgusting to throw away the blood of people and their struggles, and try to frame it as some sort of fairytale butterfly effect.

Edit: Funny how me, a Syrian, is being down voted by people who claim to know more about his own country

Could you explain what you mean and where the author is wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U10p3Tn9V5Y

Because I know for a fact, that no one on the ground was losing sleep over desertification.

I'm not dismissing its ecological affect, but to claim it's the root cause, I see as belittling and trying to erase what the people were actually fighting for:

If you're in the mood for harsh history lesson, there's a list of root causes here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Syria

> Because I know for a fact, that no one on the ground was losing sleep over desertification.

Why does that matter? What people lose sleep over or not can be due to totally trivial reasons or for reasons that are far removed from the actual biggest threat facing them.

A list of massacres is not a root cause; those are symptoms of something.

Surely massacres are not a symptom of desertification?

Loss of water, living space, and farming livelihoods absolutely leads to nasty stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_conflict

Syrian massacres are a symptom of protestors and rebels gathering at a certain point and the government using military force and now we are back to square one.

I have read a bunch of them and the massacres are clearly in response to resistance movements so they cannot be the root causes. The problem isn't a trigger happy government that just needs to get it's hand off its weapons and then peace sets in.

If anything, if I had to point to a root cause based on almost no research I would start here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Syrian_Revolution and not with some random massacre.

No one loses sleep about root causes. Most people tend to only care about the symptoms that result from it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_U.S._airstrike_in_Baghu...

"According to the report by The New York Times, the crowd had been identified as civilians by U.S. drone operators based in Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar. The drone operators were reportedly stunned seeing the first 500 lb bomb dropped, followed by a second 2,000 lb bomb on the survivors; 80 people were killed including Islamic State fighters according to The New York Times report.[2]"

How on earth is dropping a bomb supposed to be a root cause? If you really wanted to point out root causes you would link to the most important massacres instead of expecting us to do your research for you.

I feel you, this happens to me sometimes. Arrogance and ignorance are a dangerous mix. Many people know nothing yet argue aggressively about the Middle East.

People with full bellies are less likely to rebel. If would be syria x 1000 if the south of US couldn't feed themselves for example.

I do agree that the author merely correlated without proving causal relationship. But I think it might also be correct that had the syrian economy been doing well, there wouldn't be a civil war.

But Syria was doing fairly good economically circa 2010?

According to world bank[1] Its GDP per capita was competitive relative to the region. It was ahead of Turkey, for example, and far better than most its neighbors (except Gulf countries).

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2010...

i don’t agree with the article but i think there was a big urban/rural divide in poverty. Sure, Damascus was doing great but I think a lot of the rebels came from outlying areas

According to the original post, the economy not working out for rural syrians was a thing back then. Look at China, they put up with the CCP because the economy continues to do well for most. Communists have a strategy where they appease/convert the rural working class first and then cities natually fall, they do that knowing cities only function because rural people let them.

Very interesting, you appear to be a rebel supporter whereas almost everyone from Syria that I have met in the more affluent circles I am in in the US appears to have heavy sympathies for the regime.

The role of the Ataturk Dam is something that I rarely see mentioned in this context.

Nature destruction spawns war, as it always does.

Mayans learnt a few things about how much profitable is deforestation in the middle term [1]. At war with everybody until their collapse. Spaniards arrived just in time to see the bulk of the work done yet.

Ethiopians applied the same recipe... with the same results

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-did-the-ma...

Fascinating if true, though hardly a "root" cause. Overgrazing doesn't happen by itself, even TFA acknowledges that nationalization of the steppe by the Soviet Union in 1958 played a key role in the degradation of the ecosystem. But such nationalizations also didn't occur in a vacuum, the SU did so out of a variety of ideological and practical reasons.

It wasn't the Soviet Union that nationalized the steppe, it was the Syrian government. At no point in time was Syria part of the SU.

The article only mentioned the Syrians got the idea from the Soviets.

I really doubt the poster was stating that Syria was part of the SU. It was an analogy, which you can tell from the plural "nationalizations".

This immediately came to mind as well. IMHO they are root causes, but not the only one. It takes human decisions to start and continue wars, and those decisions have things that influenced them.

> Over-grazing and desertification in the Syrian steppe root causes of war (2015)

They forgot the part where Syria has oil and the US want it.

Tragedy of the commons.

Crisises produce incompetent populist governments that produce stupid plans like "let's saw the bakery into pieces - that way nobody will ever go hungry again". After that it spirals right into the loop deformation. We are not so different from animals once we bump every generation into the environments resource ceiling.

The root causes of war in Syria are the Alawites. Headed by Assad, and his father before him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez_al-Assad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites

Daddy Assad got swept into power as part of a military coup by the Ba'ath Party shortly after the same thing happened in Iraq with another familiar character, Saddam Hussein.

He then proceeded to rule with the iron fist of a socialist military dictator (with the backing and advice of the Soviets). Up until the year 2000 people in Syria only had access to state sponsored television/radio/news until their information sphere got embiggened first with satellite dishes and later with smartphones which caused the minority tribe in charge to lose control of their internal propaganda narratives.

Note on the map all the lines are straight as Syria was never an actual viable country by design.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–Picot_Agreement

It is a violent tribal society. This goes much deeper than the basics of Sunni/Shia splits, if you are the wrong tribe or clan or from the wrong village or wrong family you deserve a gruesome death, 'etc. This pattern repeats across most of the Middle East region which traditionally needed strong rulers/empires to forcefully hold it together.

I assure you the guys from the various rebel factions, ISIS, 'etc, who beheaded people and cut out their hearts on YouTube were not complaining about over-grazing or human rights.

It didn't start with climate change, it started back here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_the_Ottoman_Empir...

Yes, partition of the sick man of Europe. And resulting vacuum power.

One interesting thing is that the Human Development Index of Syria just before the war was much higher than that of India and in par with China (and the world average). Now it's collapsed.

Thank you for this. It feels like this article undermines the history of the region. To even evoke the Arab Spring, to me is an easy way to sound informed without acknowledging how/why the affected regions “sprung”. It’s an interesting supporting detail, but maybe “root causes” is a pun or something.

"It was the Alawites" is an astonishingly reductive conclusion.

Assad himself is has a Sunni wife; many non-Kurdish Sunnis - perhaps a plurality - continue to support his government, just as do many Christians.

And even if that wasn't true, how can you blame "all Alawites" when not even all Alawites support Assad?

Disclaimer: author works for the European Defence Agency.

Mankind punished for sinning against the environment.

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