AFRICA NEWS/Environment Woes Key Source Of Sudan ConflictsThe Darfur region of Sudan.
by Lucie Peytermann
Nairobi (AFP) June 22, 2007
Lasting peace in Sudan will not be possible unless the fractious country takes serious steps to address alarming environmental woes, said a UN report published Friday. Decades of war have devastated Africa's largest country and fresh competition for its resources continue to fuel conflict, said the report by the United Nations Environment Programme said.
"Long-term peace in the region will not be possible unless these underlying and closely linked environmental and livelihood issues are resolved," it said.
In its report, entitled "Sudan post-conflict environmental assessment", the UN agency stressed that desertification and land degradation had been a key source of conflict in impoverished Darfur.
"Northern Darfur -- where exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conflicts to be triggered and sustained by political, tribal or ethnic differences -- can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from ecological collapse," the UN said.
The conflict in Sudan's parched western region of Darfur erupted in February 2003 when rebel groups complaining of marginalisation and demanding a greater share of the country's resources took up arms.
According to the UN, the Darfur conflict has left some 200,000 people dead. A bitter two-decade long north-south civil war ended in January 2005, after killing an estimated 1.5 million people.
The report identified a string of critical issues, such as population displacement, desertification, land degradation, deforestation, water projects, chaotic urbanisation and pollution from the country's booming oil industry.
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"Sudan's tragedy is not just the tragedy of one country in Africa -- it is a window to a wider world underlining how issues such as uncontrolled depletion of natural resources like soils and forests allied to impacts like climate change can destabilise communities, even entire nations," he said.
Source: Agence France-Presse
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And once again the human race should be learning a stark lesson from the horrors perpetrated by our own hand in the Sudan, but we won't. We learned nothing from the Crusades... We learned nothing from Guernica... We learned nothing from the holocaust during WW2... We learned nothing from Rwanda...We learned nothing from Bosnia... We learned nothing from the horrors still occurring in the Middle East which seek to subjugate Palestinians and Israelis alike...and we will once again on the whole turn our heads to what is happening in the Sudan that was indeed spawned by environmental devastation caused by greed.
To have hope for the future is a daily struggle in light of the violence and devastation we see our Earth being pummelled with... but again, it is by our own hand that all of this horror is occurring. So does reason not tell us that that which can be perpetrated by evil, can be undone by good? That which spawned hatred, can also spawn love? That which perpetrates war can also perpetrate peace?
The overriding fact regarding the solution to reversing all of the devastation we see on our planet today environmentally comes down to us making moral choices to reverse the damage done. The question is, is that even possible now? And if so, are we in time? Will the kneejerk reactions of human nature that govern emotion over reason and morality continue to stand in the way of us ever truly evolving to the kind of species we were meant to be?
For even though we have everything we need to feed all of our people, tend to all of our sick, and heal the hearts of all of our people, we chose to allow the resources that aid their sustanence to be manipulated by those with selfish motivations as the horror continues to intensify all around us. From the earliest spaces in time to present day, man has done the same in reaction to crises...taking resources by force by whatever means possible to exploit the poor, the weak, the sick, and all who are deemed unworthy of sharing in the beautiful bounties of this planet put here for all of us.
I say this century must see a new renaissance. A transformation and transcendence to a new level of thought, and a resolve and moral courage unseen in any times past. But is that moral courage lost on us? Are reports put out by organizations just pieces of paper with words on them? Are the images we see on our televisions just stimuli we use to pass the time?
We are now far beyond the self -refllection stage as this global crisis has been thrust upon us by our own indifference to seeing the big picture in lieu of believing that it will somehow just fix itself, or be fixed by those with only selfish motivations in their hearts we place our trust in through their own malicious manipulation of our beliefs.
Darfur is but one stark example of the spiral we are taking downward as a civilization as a result of that, and that should outrage all of us, but more importantly it should motivate us and challenge us to lift ourselves out of this descending spiral to that transformation.
This is why I place faith in Live Earth and support wholeheartdly the environmental endeavors of my environmental leader, Al Gore, and all of those on this planet sincerely working to see that renaissance. This is why I see it as more than just a concert, but an historical event of such proportions globally as to wake the populace up to that transcendence of thought to shake the very foundations of this status quo that has strangled all of the good out of this planet and replaced it with nothing but a dark void.
So as a citizen with the power of my voice and the strength of my character, I will see July 7th as the beginning of a new chapter for our world, because without the health and balance of this planet coming first and surpassing all other distractions, we will never see the balance of heart and mind that will be required of us now and of future generations to never ever allow another Darfur again.
Live Earth
From a distance...
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