Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The drought in Tuvalu, which led to a state of emergency being declared earlier this month, is likely to last until January, the government warns. There has been no significant rain for six months as a result of the La Niña weather pattern. UNICEF New Zealand and the New Zealand government are sending a solar desalination unit to keep open one of the Pacific island's main schools.

"We believe that this [current crisis] is indeed the facts of climate change," said Pusinelli Laafai, permanent secretary of home affairs and chair of the national disaster committee. "We think [industrialized countries] have an obligation to help us, if not to restore what was damaged or taken away, at least to assist us in some sense, to mitigate the effects of what they have done." Drought is also affecting neighbouring Tokelau, which has also declared a state of emergency. The 1400 residents of three main atolls ran out of fresh water earlier this month and are relying on bottled water.

Restoring degraded lands is crucial to addressing poverty, food scarcity and the loss of the world’s biodiversity, according to speakers at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Korea. A new United Nations report, Global Drylands: A UN system-wide response, setting out a common vision and agenda for action across the organization on drylands management, was launched during the meeting.

"If we protect, restore and manage land and soils we can tackle many challenges simultaneously, such as poverty, food and energy insecurity, biodiversity loss, climate change, forced migration and geopolitical instability," said United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in a video message. "These issues are linked. The stakes are high, let us therefore work together to make intelligent land use a cornerstone of sustainable development," he continued. "Degraded lands mean degraded lives," said Luc Gnacadja, UNCCD executive secretary. "But degraded lands are not dead lands; they are sick lands in need of stewardship. In that regard, there is a statement of hope coming from the grassroots level, which we must enhance and sustain."

More frequent and severe drought has contributed to a "catastrophic regime change" in aquatic desert ecosystems, from which many species may not recover, American scientists report. "Populations that have persisted for hundreds or thousands of years are now dying out," said David Lytle at Oregon State University (OSU). "Springs that used to be permanent are drying up. Streams that used to be perennial are now intermittent. And species that used to rise and fall in their populations are now disappearing."

The research examined the effect of complete water loss and its impact on aquatic insect communities in a desert stream in Arizona's French Joe Canyon before and after severe droughts in 2005, 2008 and 2009. Six species disappeared when the stream dried up and 40 others became more abundant. Large-bodied "top predators" like the giant waterbug disappeared to be replaced by smaller predators such as aquatic beetles. "Our study focused on a single stream in isolation, but this process of drying and local extinction is happening across the desert Southwest," said co-investigator Michael Bogan of OSU. "Eventually this could lead to the loss of species from the entire region, or the complete extinction of species that rely on these desert oases."