Sand Is Wiping This Tunisian Town Off the Map - Motherboard
▻https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/drowning-in-sand-tunisia-sahara-desertification
Old Mahlel is located a few kilometers outside of Douz, a town in south Tunisia affectionately nicknamed “the gateway to the Sahara,” and mostly a tourist stop before long treks through the desert. Now in his mid 40s, Ameur spent his entire life in this village, working as a tour guide and taking care of his animals. But six years ago, his family had to move. The Sahara, which covers 3.6 million square miles, or roughly the size of the entire United States, had steadily encroached onto Old Mahlel. The villagers were effectively pushed out by desertification.
“Desertification is a complicated issue,” sighs Nabil Ben Khatra, coordinator at the Observatory of the Sahara and Sahel, an intergovernmental organization based in Tunis that focuses on issues in arid zones across the African continent. The UN officially refers to the process as “the persistent degradation of dryland ecosystems” brought on by climate change and aggressive human abuse. As environmentalist Allan Savory said more succinctly in a 2013 TED Talk, desertification is “a fancy word for land that is turning into desert.”
#Tunisie #désertification #désert (dommage que ce #sable ne soit pas utilisable dans la construction, cela permettrait de préserver celui des fleuves et côtes maritimes)