Prayers Still Haven't Ended Cyprus Drought

"WE NEVER THOUGHT SUCH A SCENARIO COULD EXIST"

FALL 2009 - These are the words of Sophocles Aletraris, head of the Cypriot water development department. Expect to hear them repeated around the globe in the coming decades, as humans run out of clean water supplies, while making sure there is plenty for Coca Cola manufacturing and gold courses.

This divided island nation is in the fourth year of a severe drought that is thought to be a pre-cursor of climate changes in the Mediterranean Basin. Water reserves are now at their lowest since 1908. The Kouris Dam in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains is normally full, but since the drought it has run completely dry. Engineer Michaelis Televanathos, who helped design it, says: "When we looked back at the actual design criteria we used, and statistics for rainfall, we believed that after building the dam until the year 2010 we should have no water problem whatsoever.

"It is project that you build and you hope that it will solve a major problem. The weather has proved us wrong, dramatically wrong."

Once known as the "Green Island" of the Mediterranean, Cyprus' forests now cover less than half of Cyprus. Over the years forest fires and drought have decimated scores of trees, with blackened stumps or brown trees a blight on the landscape. The forestry department has started placing water stations around the forests to help the animals remain in their natural habitat. Cyprus hosts forest species up to 1,500 years old in remote area, but these and the islands pine forests are starting to show signs of strain.

Meantime, Greece is sending tankers of water from the mainland, but not everyone gets some. Cyprus' farming community is particularly vulnerable. Resources are so stretched that none of the water shipped from Greece will be available to them, and farmers will be forced to adapt by planting drought-resistant strains of cereal.

LET'S GET GOD TO FIX IT!
In early 2008, congregation in churches across Cyprus began praying for rain. The Greek Orthodox Archbishop, Chrysostomos II, in a circular distributed to churches, said: “We will all be given the chance to send prayers to our Heavenly Father to end the drought on our island. We have no doubt God will hear our prayers and send us the rain we so badly need.”

Church attendance last week was reported to be unusually high. “We all felt the urge to pray for rain,” Nicola Michaelides said, after a service at Ayyios Pavlos Church in Nicosia with her three children. “It should be winter, but it feels like summer. Something is wrong.”

The head of the Cyprus Water Authority, Christodoulos Artemis, said that he was happy that his efforts to cope with the months ahead were receiving a spiritual backing in the form of church prayers: “I am encouraged by the prayers. Everything helps.”

At the present time, however, God in his wisdowm has chosen to ignore the prayers?

Desert Wasteland in the Eastern Mediterranean

Once considered a subtropical paradise, approximately 50% of Cyprus' forests have been destroyed by drought, wildfire and overdevelopment. Rainfall in Cyprus has fallen about 20 per cent over the past 35 years, a situation similar to the surrounding regions of the Mediterranean and North Africa. Barcelona, for example, has become the first major population center to import water by ship.

Climate change is not only about a rise in temperature, but also about extreme weather conditions, and drought is one of them. Desertification is also becoming a serious problem throughout the area and widely regarded as a longterm trend that most nations have done little address. Smart money is invest in desalination technology.