Author George Santayana once famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
This maxim seems especially poignant in light of the twin conflicts occurring in the Western and Eastern hemispheres. Because this isn’t the first time we’ve seen massive border walls being built to stop refugees fleeing environmental degradation. This is also not the first time we have seen instability in the Middle East exacerbated by conflicts over precious water resources.
History seems to be teaching us some lessons. Consider the cautionary tale of the rise and fall of Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamia, which arose in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, was the first true civilization. It consisted of individual city-states with populations comparable to modern towns and small cities. They were separated from each other by canals and stone borders, and connected by trade and commerce. These interconnected city-states ultimately emerged as a response to environmental stresses caused by climate.
Agriculture took root in this aptly named Fertile Crescent region some 10,000 years ago when it was relatively green and humid. But long-term changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun caused the region to steadily dry out over the next few millennia, making it too dry for rain-fed agriculture 6,000 years ago.
It is often said that “necessity is the mother of invention,” and this was certainly true here. The challenges of an arid climate led to innovations in irrigation, and the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (Mesopotamia translates as “land between the rivers”) constituted an ideal laboratory for early hydrological engineering. Did.
However, engineering projects require specialized labor and division of labor. In addition, thanks to irrigation techniques that harnessed the water of two rivers, farmers were able to grow an abundance of crops. This allowed others to perform other roles such as construction. It was a symbiotic relationship.
The social organization, division of labor, and hierarchies introduced by civilization increased the power and influence of city-states, and by 4,300 years ago, they had merged to form the first great empire, the Akkadian Empire, which at its peak The area extends from present-day Kuwait in the south, through parts of Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and extends to southern Turkey in the north.
Civilizations became more resilient because irrigation could support agriculture even as regions became increasingly arid and rainfall became increasingly intermittent. But as we have learned, resilience has its limits. autumn The Akkadian Empire about 4,200 years ago.
The likely cause was a massive volcanic eruption that cooled and dried out subtropical regions, including the Middle East, for more than a decade. The Akkadian Empire became dependent on the productive power of the northern part of the empire. Agricultural surplus from the north was usually distributed to other regions and used to support large armies. However, as grimly reported in The Curse of Akkad, prolonged drought devastated agricultural productivity. “Large arable land yielded no grain, flooded fields yielded no fish, irrigated orchards yielded neither syrup nor wine, and heavy clouds prevented rain.”
Agrarian collapse was followed by a large-scale southward migration of northern populations. The caravan encountered opposition from southerners, including the construction of a 160-mile-long wall known as the “Amorite Slayer.” The bridge, which stretches from the Tigris River to the Euphrates River, was built in a desperate effort to keep migrants out amid worsening climatic conditions.
It’s difficult, even impossible, not to draw a connection to another wall that former President Donald Trump promised to build on the U.S. southern border to keep out Mexican and Central American refugees. During Biden’s presidency, what might have been dismissed as a cynical ploy by an authoritarian president to appease a xenophobic base and bleak outlook suddenly came alive. The ongoing fear campaign by right-wing media to scare the American public with apocalyptic narratives about a mass invasion by hordes of dangerous and lawless immigrants is clearly bearing fruit, and Democrats are being driven to support this ploy. ing.
There are multiple factors behind the migration currently underway. However, anthropogenic climate change and its negative impacts on food and water are important underlying factors. Regarding people attempting to cross the U.S. border, UN adviser Andrew Harper said: “Climate change is reinforcing underlying vulnerabilities and grievances, leaving people with no choice but to move.” Ta. Building a wall will not solve the larger problem of increasing food and water insecurity and associated conflict on a warming planet.
And nothing reminds us of that fact more than what is happening in the Middle East, once the stronghold of the Akkadian Empire.
Insurgency erupted in Syria in mid-March 2011, culminating in the Syrian Civil War, which has now claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and triggered the largest mass migration in history. The root cause was Syria’s decade-long drought, perhaps the worst in 1,000 years. The devastating impact on agriculture of droughts caused by unprecedented climate change has forced rural farmers into the cities of Aleppo and Damascus, where they compete with existing populations for food, water, and space. Conflict, insecurity, and violence have created a favorable recruiting environment for the international terrorist organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS.
Decades ago, agronomist Daniel Hillel argued that while conflicts in the Middle East are nominally about land disputes, they are fundamentally always about water. The fight over access to fresh water has directly fueled tensions between Israel and Palestine, which are now escalating into full-scale war.
Hillel argued that peace in the region can only be achieved if water needs are met. Given that freshwater resources in the region are projected to continue to decline due to climate change, a logical extension of Hillel’s maxim is to address underlying factors, such as climate change-driven competition for precious water resources. Only then can peace be achieved.
There is an even bigger lesson here for all of us. We understand that civilizations are resilient and fragile at the same time. The Akkadian Empire reduced its vulnerability to limited water resources by means of civilization: a large workforce capable of carrying out water storage and irrigation, and the transportation of resources from places of surplus to places of scarcity. I was able to reduce it. However, as we see, vast civilizations are fragile and require cooperation and some degree of common interest among diverse communities. The empire collapsed under the impact of an epic drought.
How will that affect today’s truly globally connected, planetary civilizations? Will they be vulnerable to collapse under severe climate change? How large must that perturbation be?
Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of the book.Our fragile moment: How lessons from Earth’s past can help us survive the climate crisis”
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