AGRICULTURAL BIO-SALINE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN KUWAIT
Agricultural production in Kuwait is constrained by harsh weather, scarce rainfall, saline irrigation water, rapid depletion of groundwater resources, and low soil fertility...Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KIRS) developed a conceptual and strategic framework for Bio-saline research program in the 1980's aiming at developing technologies and plant varieties that will sustain agricultural productivity. Within the overall objectives of this program, the development of salt-tolerant crops by applying conventional breeding techniques and the latest biotechnological approaches of tissue culture and recombinant DNA...
Those bastids still using that evil, evil, evil GM stuff even after all that was done to cure the problem?
See below the fold.
Despite her total familiarity with the subject, however, 30-year-old "Dr. Rola" is a part-time volunteer, not a paid full-time employee of the committee. Educated in British and American schools in Beirut, and then at U.S. universities, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and is a full-time economist with the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, one of the leading research institutions in the Arab world.
That institution, like everything and everyone in Kuwait, has its own sad story. The occupying Iraqi army carried off to Baghdad its millions of dollars worth of scientific equipment, destroyed the records of ongoing experiments, some of them underway for years, and released, lost or ate the hundreds of hybrid fish, shrimp, domestic animals and plants being developed for agricultural purposes in the sub-tropical marine, desert and marsh environments characteristic of the Gulf.
See here.
A bit more colorful is this account of Saddam's fine efforts:
A New Zealand ornithologist and I went into the office of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, which had been destroyed by the Iraqis, and salvaged papers on an oil spill emergency contingency plan, developed by the Kuwait government. It outlined the wild life habitats most at risk on the coast, and steps to protect it in case of an oil spill. That office was booby trapped; we found a mine in these papers a week later.
See here.
Things went a bit awry for Saddam in Kuwait so he did what he could elsewhere:
Saddam's rule turned Eden into a wasteland
QURNAH, Iraq - Of all Saddam Hussein's crimes, the most enduring may be the salt-encrusted moonscape that was once an Eden, where punishment by water diversion has put to death an ancient way of life.
Not only did his regime kill many thousands by artillery shelling, firebombing reed hamlets or summary execution to quell rebellion after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, it dried up the heart of the Fertile Crescent.
Satellite photos and up-close inspection reveal an ecological calamity along the Tigris and Euphrates that scientists say is matched in scale only by the deforestation of Amazonia and the drying of the Aral Sea.
I would rank the vast destruction of the Baltic Sea by conventional agriculture right alongside any other ecological disaster.
And now, environmental specialists say, unless massive resources are put urgently to work to reverse the damage Saddam caused, the cradle of civilization will be forever barren desert.
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Thick reed beds teeming with life once covered 8,000 square miles, the size of Massachusetts. Now 97 percent of the main marshes are dry. Less than a third is left of eastern marshes that reach into Iran.
Rice paddies and fishing grounds are gone. The gray wolf, the smooth-coated otter, the honey badger have died out. Some birds are now extinct, and global migrations have been disrupted. When wind blows, blinding sandstorms strip off what topsoil remains.
Tough toupee. If there are no WMD's, who cares? We have done our bit to mess things up a bit more and will leave - some day.
Greenpeace and other ecoterrorists are not quite as mean as Saddam. They really do care about dirty water, about flora and fauna going extinct. They worry about global warming. No climaticide deniers they.
But they also get overwrought about those horrid frankenfoods like PETA does about animal experiments.
And that is not exactly helpful to a hurting planet no matter how evil Monsanto is.
What's the answer?
Science, of course.
Science and technology can come to the rescue if allowed despite all the mean people around.
There is no need to continue destruction of the planet and its life forms.
The former Eden that was the Cradle of Civilization will never be the same. The extinct birds will sing no more. The dead will stay dead but the desert can bloom again.
But not if we deny the tools that science is providing and tell lies about them.
Best, Terry