A Petition for the Reforestation of Romania

Experts have repeatedly voiced concern about the desertification process, which is presently gaining momentum in Romania's southern regions. Hundreds of hectares are annually turning here into sand dunes and in the following 50 years the fertile farm land here could become, in a worst case scenario, completely barren. Scarce precipitations and the hot weather in the past years are among the causes of this process and according to experts, to prevent it, we need protection forest curtains in many areas.

According to representatives of Greenpeace Romania, who have launched a petition for the reforestation of Romania's southern regions, we need green forest barriers to protect us from drought, flooding, storms and pollution. Greenpeace has cautioned that in the following 30 years over 40% of Romania's territory will turn into a dryland affecting over 11 million Romanians for whom drought is to become the new normal.  Here is more from forest and wildlife campaigner Ciprian Galusca

Cipria Galusca: "The ecosystems we have in the southern plains are scarce; we don't actually have forests or other types of vegetation here except for crops. As few as they are, these frail ecosystems are soon going to suffer from the lack of precipitations and hot weather. This mixture of hot weather and scarce raining has a devastating effect, creating drought, drylands, improper conditions for life and will eventually take its toll on the human communities in the region as well."

          Weathermen issued no less than 132 red warnings for hot weather last summer, the highest number in history. And we actually have little time to prepare a response. It is not enough to protect the forests we still have in the mountains, which have constantly been plagued by illegal logging in the past years. What we need is a national network of forests to protect cities, the most vulnerable communities and farmland, the Greenpeace campaigners have explained.

Ciprian Galusca: "60% of the precipitations that we have in a certain area comes from big airwaves, water that evaporates from oceans and seas, the world climate in short. But we owe 40% of the precipitation to the vegetation in a certain area or the lack thereof. Things are quite clear and simple here; without forests we cannot keep water into the soil, so forests are extremely important in our attempt to create and keep the right humidity vegetation needs to survive. For this reason, we believe that forests in Romania's plain areas are of crucial importance in the process of preventing desertification. However, the idea of forest curtains in these dry areas is not a Greenpeace idea. This project is older; it was first presented and implemented in Romania between the two world wars after authorities had figured out that the country's south was to be exposed to wind and sun and that crops and communities here needed protection. Unfortunately, the communist authorities that followed had a different agricultural policy and cut down the trees, a situation that carried on in the 1990s, and we eventually ended up with no forest curtains in Romania's southern regions."

The climate change is already upon us with a vengeance and in the absence of forests, Romania's southern plains are drying up. In the past decade alone, Romania paid 330 million euros in damages to the farmers affected by drought, which is not a solution either for the state or their welfare, as Ciprian Galusca pointed out.

Last year, wells in villages dried up right at the beginning of summer and in late August we started counting the dry lakes. Only 6% of Romania's plains benefit from shady areas, while the country's major cities are heavily affected by succeeding heat waves and pollution. It is high time we reconstruct the natural barrier offered by forests, a solution lost to ignorance, greed and mismanagement.

Through the petition that we mentioned before, Greenpeace wants to put pressure on politicians so that they may take the right measures for the reforestation of the national network of these green barriers. The organisation has called on people to sign the petition to support this endeavor, which will allow for the creation of a working group to issue the needed legislation by the end of the year. Funds aren't scarce in this area because the European Union boasts a series of ambitious environment programmes.

(bill)