When Dust Gets in Our Eyes

If you live in metropolitan Australia, chances are you rarely think about soil erosion. If you live in a regional or remote area, you probably battle with wind and/or water erosion on a daily basis. That is the reality: soil erosion is ever-present in Australia with severe impacts on society, the economy and the environment. Yet, erosion is rarely acknowledged as a threat. The public debate around land degradation is close to non-existent.

In a time when climate change and related natural disasters become increasingly hard to ignore, few are raising their voice about land degradation. Have you ever seen a post on social media, an article from a think tank, a dedicated community organisation, political speech or celebrity that is raising awareness about land degradation?

Dust storms are a type of severe wind erosion event, a useful case-study for exploring the causes and consequences of land degradation and the impact of the silence surrounding rural and land management issues. Like many other key environmental issues, dust only comes into public debate when a disaster happens. The government tends to fund dust research more after large red plumes leave blankets of dust over metropolitan areas. Yet, dust erosion is constantly and slowly releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and removing nutrients from the land that grows our food, like a parasite that is slowly draining our capacity to live well into the future.

We cannot wait for the impacts of wind erosion to become any more apparent before we start discussing dust storms. Dust storms – a silent, pervasive phenomenon, ought to be more widely and sensitively understood. This article is a background briefing and a manifesto. It will explain why you should care about dust storms and what we could do to address the issue. It aims to start a discussion.

Why You Should Care About Dust Storms

News stories on wind erosion appear in the “rural” section of the news, as if it is only an issue of concern and consequence to rural communities. This is simply not the case. Not only should supposedly rural issues be of concert to all, but directly or indirectly, dust threatens everyone.

Dust storms threaten many aspects of the social-ecological system: human health, food security, the integrity of ecological and physical systems and the economy. Dust can carry pathogens, spread disease, exacerbate respiratory illnesses and cause deaths.[1] Dust storms remove sediment and nutrients from agricultural land, causing farms to lose productivity and profitability.[2] Sediment and nutrients deposited in the ocean threaten the health and longevity of our fisheries and marine ecosystems.[3] The deposition of nutrients from dust storms in the ocean can increase the number of photosynthetic organisms in the water. These organisms draw more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, contributing to ocean acidification, and put more oxygen into the water, causing eutrophication and algae blooms.[4] In addition, dust storms release carbon from the soil into the atmosphere in huge quantities.[5] This carbon can then form carbon dioxide, a harmful greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change. Furthermore, dust storms can change cloud formation and the behaviour of solar radiation in the atmosphere.[6] Therefore, dust storms influence global and regional climate, threaten the capacity of our agricultural systems to feed us into the future and impact our environment and health in profound, though often under-researched, ways.

Yet, as is often the case, the impacts of dust on the economy seem to speak loudest of all. The economic impacts of dust storms illustrate the adage that natural events only turn into natural disasters because of the presence of humans and their infrastructure. City and metropolitan areas, with higher populations and more infrastructure, are more economically impacted by dust storms than rural areas.[7] Dust storms delay flights and other transportation services, impair commercial activities, damage infrastructure, place stress on health care systems, cause absenteeism from employment and create lots of mess which must be cleaned up. On the 22^nd September 2009, a large dust storm dubbed Red Dawn passed across the eastern coast of Australia, producing a thick red haze, bringing transport to a standstill and leaving behind a thick layer of sediment. One study found that this dust storm cost New South Wales approximately AUD$303million dollars.[8]

We are uncertain about the exact nature and extent of the impacts of dust storms: it is basically impossible to measure or predict them exactly. Yet, land managers observe their impacts on a daily basis and there is a relatively extensive understanding of the severity of the threat of dust storms in the academic literature – the estimates are good, based on good science. Yet, the threat of dust storms is not widely disseminated to the public, even though we can be certain that we ought to worry about dust storms. But can we do anything about them?

Anthropogenic causes mean there are behavioural solutions

While dust storms can be entirely natural phenomena, caused by erodible soil and strong winds, humans exacerbate the potential for dust storms.[9] This is particularly true in Australia,[10] due to the geographical extent, type and high degree of land modification.

We have removed vegetation that protect soils from erosion.[11] We have ploughed the land ad infinitum, destroying the soil structure that prevents the soil from eroding. We have interrupted and diverted the natural flow of rivers, exposing highly erodible soil types to highly erosive wind systems. We have released greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, causing climatic changes which increase the susceptibility of the land to erosion by reducing rainfall

Ultimately, it is certain worldviews and socio-economic imperatives that have led to land management practices and actions that exacerbate wind erosion. Human desires for comfort, convenience and cleanliness[12] mean that we are constantly consuming the Earth’s resources in ways that create global climatic changes. Utilitarianism, the imperative to tame the land, and productivism, the imperative to produce more, have guided land management in Australia both at a community and policy level.[13] Such worldviews and policies led to deforestation, intensification of agriculture and alterations to the hydrological cycle without consideration of the environmental impacts on soil erodibility.

However, there is a debate about the extent to which humans cause dust storms. This is despite a swathe of evidence that land management influences soil erodibility. We must not let the debate over the role of humans in causing dust storms translate into a lack of action like the debate over whether climate change is natural or anthropogenic has impaired action on climate change. We know the impacts of dust storms and we have strong hypotheses about how human action exacerbates and could potentially mitigate dust erosion. Because how we act and think impacts dust generation, we have the capacity to address dust erosion by changing our thought processes and actions. We must act.

What is to be done?

What exactly should we do to address dust storms? There are three key areas to consider: mitigation, adaptation and culture change.

As dust erosion is exacerbated by human actions, we must try to mitigate dust erosion. Mitigation involves acting to reduce the occurrence of dust storms by targeting those actions mentioned above that exacerbate dust storms. As such, mitigation needs to focus on reducing soil erodibility by increasing groundcover and revegetating cleared land, reducing soil disturbance by implementing best-practice agricultural techniques and restoring the natural flow of rivers.

Mitigation is economically, socially and ecologically imperative. Tozer and Leys[14] conclude that even a small investment in mitigating dust storms would be economically efficient given the cost of dust storms. Mitigating dust storms would have co-benefits for soil health and productivity, improving our chances of remaining food secure into the future. Preventing dust erosion could even help mitigate climate change by improving carbon sequestration in soils. Dust begets climate change – because dust changes atmospheric conditions. Climate change begets dust – because a drying climate leads to more erodible soils. When determining how to mitigate dust erosion and climate change, these links should not be ignored. By addressing one, we address the other, so any mitigation efforts are valuable.

However, as dust is also a natural phenomenon, we must adapt to its presence. Adaptation involves taking action to cope with the inevitable presence of dust. We need dust storm preparedness strategies such as warning systems and services to assist the health, transport and commercial sectors prepare for and deal with dust storms. We should have support mechanisms for land managers who are on the front lines of dust erosion. We could look towards techno-solutions, such as power lines that do not lose efficiency when they become covered in dust.

Finally, because the way we think impacts how we adapt and mitigate and manage land, to address dust storms we must critically reflect on how we act and how we think. The paradigms, world views and culture that guide our actions need be altered to make adaptation and mitigation possible. Agriculturalists and land managers must move away from utilitarianism and productivism towards a biosensitive approach to agriculture which focusses on maintaining the health of the land holistically.[15] While this will require fundamental shifts in our economic systems, food supply chains and consumer demands, spreading and sharing knowledge and spreading the practice of alternative agricultural techniques such as minimum till, direct seeding, pasture cropping and time control grazing will help reduce wind erosion. Such education and critical reflection will not occur if the issue of land degradation remains silenced in public debates.

Conclusion

Humans exacerbate dust erosion, so humans can mitigate it. There are so many reasons to act on this issue, yet it is ignored because people and policy makers in metropolitan areas are not brought face-to-face with dust every day.

Anyone can take action and everyone will benefit from doing so. Land managers who tackle dust will increase their resilience to climate change and experience co-benefits such as reduced input costs, less infrastructure damage and improved stock and crop health. Civil society groups who tackle dust will be undertaking actions with positive environmental, economic and social consequences and tangible results. Governments who tackle dust appropriately will avoid costs, improve public health, improve food security and improve the health of our environment.

Soil health must be maintained in order for humans to survive. Land degradation threatens the capacity of the Earth to support our ever-increasing demands. It is time to break the silence, start a dialogue and take action to avoid land degradation.