Friday, 29 August 2008 01:00 | and posted in Environment
The Sea of Galilee is the lake upon which Jesus sailed and by whose shores he walked and taught and called his first disciples to follow him. But now the water level in the lake has dropped to its lowest recorded level and is set to fall even lower. The current water level is now threatening the very sustainability of the lake by decimating fishing levels and running the risk of over-salination. The levels are fast dropping towards a point of no return.
This crisis has been brought about by a combination of global warming and man-made over-consumption. The region of Galilee has had four years of successive droughts, with rainfall less than half of the annual average and very little snow melt coming from the peaks of Mount Hermon. At the same time, Israel has been worsening the situation by relentlessly pumping the lake's water on to their farmland for irrigation and also to supply their homes with water.
With an election on the horizon, placing strict restrictions on water usage from the lake could prove politically suicidal and Israel's political parties are unlikely to be willing to alienate the powerful farming lobby by doing so. Israeli farmers use 40% of Israel's fresh water for irrigation, some of which is used to grow fruit such as bananas and types of berries, which are alien to the desert, in order to export them to the West.
