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This Northern Hemisphere summer is witnessing an arc of fire sweeping across continents\u2014and scientists view it as a grim harbinger of a very challenging future on Planet Earth. Anthropogenic climate change is the critical factor driving the conflagrations. Enter: climate change and cannabis.<\/p>\n
United Nations Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\u00a0told ministers<\/a>\u00a0from 40 countries meeting to discuss the climate crisis in Berlin on July 18: \u201cHalf of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n And from Northern California to the Rif Mountains of Morocco to the Balkans and Himalayas, many of the areas hit the hardest are world centers of cannabis cultivation. This clearly poses special challenges for an agricultural sector still struggling to win the legal space necessary for responsible and ecologically sound practices.<\/p>\n California Fires<\/strong><\/p>\n Large areas of Northern California\u2019s cannabis heartland, the Emerald Triangle, have been devastated by wildfires in recent years. This year the Triangle\u2014generally defined by the counties of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino\u2014has thus far been spared. But fires encroach ominously on the enclave. Making\u00a0national headlines<\/a>\u00a0is the Washburn fire in the Sierra Nevada, which has penetrated Yosemite National Park and threatens the famed\u00a0Mariposa Grove<\/a>, which protects more than 500 ancient sequoias.<\/p>\n But there have been fires closer to the Triangle. In mid-July the Peter Fire in Shasta County, which borders Trinity on the east,\u00a0consumed over 300 acres<\/a>, with three homes among several buildings\u00a0destroyed<\/a>\u00a0in the town of Anderson. Then, in late July, the McKinney Fire in Siskiyou County, bordering Trinity on the north, became the biggest of the year so far,\u00a0consuming 55,000 acres<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Klamath National Forest<\/a>.<\/p>\n UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0that the Peter Fire \u201cis another example of a fire in the wildland-urban interface that will likely have a modest final footprint but has the potential to be quite destructive within that footprint, given the number of structures in the path.\u201d<\/p>\n Taking a regional view of how this year\u2019s fire season is playing out, Swain\u00a0tweeted<\/a>: \u201cLate-season precipitation kept things fairly damp across much of the northern third of California through late June\u2026 This helped suppress early-season wildfires across much of the state, although activity has recently picked up and\u2026fuels (heavy brush\/dead and down tress) are now at or near record dry levels once again.\u201d<\/p>\n This alarming climate change and cannabis landscape can only be met with trepidation in the Triangle. In 2020, the August Complex, centering on Mendocino and Trinity, passed the one-million-acre mark, prompting coinage of an entirely new term: \u201cgigafire<\/a>.\u201d In cannabis-producing homesteads, growers (both licit and illicit) were faced with the dilemma of whether to evacuate or stay to protect their crops. Many chose to resist evacuation orders, at great risk to themselves.<\/p>\n And last year, fires in Siskiyou County\u00a0exacerbated social tensions<\/a>\u00a0over a recent influx of Laotian immigrant cannabis growers. One Laotian man evacuating from the fire zone was killed by police at a checkpoint, leading to protests.\u00a0This June, Siskiyou\u00a0again saw wildfires<\/a>, although they were\u00a0contained<\/a>\u00a0fairly quickly by\u00a0CalFire<\/a> responders.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Mediterranean to the Himalaya<\/strong><\/p>\n The climate change and cannabis scenes from Northern California are now reflected in northern Morocco, where wildfires have this month\u00a0consumed<\/a>\u00a0more than 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of the Rif Mountains\u2014the\u00a0world\u2019s most significant center<\/a>\u00a0of illicit cannabis cultivation. The provinces of Larache, Ouezzane, Tetouan and Taza\u2014where Berber farmers\u00a0produce hashish<\/a>\u00a0for the European market\u2014have been\u00a0devastated<\/a>. Homes and farms have been\u00a0lost to the flames<\/a>, as well as large swaths of pine forest. Thousands of residents have been\u00a0evacuated<\/a>\u00a0and, clearly, the state of global warming and marijuana is dire.<\/p>\n The most significant zone of illicit outdoor cannabis cultivation within Europe is the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula\u2014also now being threatened by flames.<\/p>\n Wildfires in Dalmatia, the coastal strip of Croatia, have damaged ancient olive groves\u2014as was noted with dismay by the\u00a0olive oil trade journals<\/a>. We may assume that illicit cannabis grows in the region have also been impacted. And further down the coast, in Albania\u2014Europe\u2019s largest producer of illicit cannabis by far\u2014is\u00a0witnessing wildfires<\/a>, especially in the\u00a0Mount \u00c7ika<\/a>\u00a0area of the south. Greece is\u00a0sending emergency aircraft<\/a>\u00a0to help Albanian authorities fight the blazes.<\/p>\n These North African and Balkan fires are linked to the same\u00a0extreme heat wave<\/a>\u00a0that has also meant\u00a0devastating fires<\/a>\u00a0across large areas of Spain and France.<\/p>\n But the climate change and cannabis phenomenon stretches well into Asia. Fires\u00a0began in Siberia<\/a>\u00a0in May, and Russian President Vladimir Putin\u00a0ordered prompt measures<\/a>\u2014fearing a repeat of the destruction in the 2021 fire season. \u201cWe cannot allow a repeat of last year\u2019s situation, when forest fires were the most long-lasting and intensive of recent years,\u201d Putin said.<\/p>\n And fires are also sweeping Asia\u2019s hashish hub of Nepal. Hundreds of fires across the country\u2019s mountains caused Kathmandu\u2019s air quality to become\u00a0one of the worst on the planet<\/a>\u00a0in April and May. Scientists said the forest fires across Nepal and parts of northern India were the worst in the past 15 years. The European Union\u2019s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS<\/a>)\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0in April that fires in India\u2019s Uttarakhand state, bordering Nepal, emitted nearly 0.2 mega-tons of carbon in the past month, a record since 2003. Of course, fires linked to global warming also exacerbate the greenhouse effect by releasing carbon into the atmosphere, in a vicious cycle.<\/p>\n The fires in the Himalayas ended with arrival of monsoons in June. But this carries its own risk. Dozens were killed in India and Nepal during last year\u2019s\u00a0particularly heavy monsoon season<\/a>. In another vicious cycle, lands where forests have been destroyed by fire are vulnerable to erosion and even the collapse of whole mountainsides when the rains finally come.<\/p>\n Kathmandu\u2019s\u00a0National Disaster Risk Reduction & Management Authority<\/a>\u00a0now\u00a0warns<\/a>\u00a0that two million Nepalese are likely to be impacted by floods and landslides this monsoon season. Among those at risk are clearly many cannabis growers\u2014who persist in their centuries-old pursuit despite fruitless efforts by the authorities to\u00a0eradicate their crops<\/a>.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s monsoons have already brought\u00a0disastrous flooding<\/a>\u00a0to Pakistan, where some 170 have lost their lives over the past weeks.<\/p>\n In some places, cannabis cultivation appears to be actually contributing to the vicious cycle. In past years, forest fires in Morocco have been\u00a0blamed on cannabis growers<\/a>, who often start small fires to clear land for their crops.<\/p>\n Another major African marijuana producer is Kenya\u2014despite having some of the harshest cannabis laws on the planet. February 2019 saw a huge wildfire that engulfed some 80 square kilometers of bamboo forest in a critical watershed of the Mount Kenya area. Authorities\u00a0similarly blamed<\/a>\u00a0the blaze on outlaw weed growers clearing land for their crops.<\/p>\n Small peasant producers around the world typically use fire to clear wooded lands\u2014whether they\u2019re growing cannabis, corn or cassava. But for climate change and cannabis the impacts are compounded by its illegality.<\/p>\n In many countries of the Global South, peasants displaced from the agricultural heartland by big landlords and agribusiness are left to clear forests for their fields. But with cannabis, the threat of eradication and criminal charges provides an extra imperative pushing growers into marginal forested areas. This dynamic is certainly also seen in Paraguay, which in recent years has\u00a0overtaken<\/a>\u00a0Colombia as South America\u2019s top cannabis producer.<\/p>\n In January 2022, during the Southern Hemisphere summer, wildfires swept through southern Paraguay, consuming10,000 hectares of forest and grasslands. Some 200 head of cattle and sheep were lost, and\u00a0grim videos<\/a>\u00a0showed the burnt and rotting carcasses of livestock strewn across the plains. As in California, this devastation is\u00a0becoming an annual occurrence<\/a>\u00a0in Paraguay.<\/p>\n And the origins of the fires have again been\u00a0traced to outlaw cannabis growers<\/a>. In Paraguay\u2019s 2020-21 summer, thousands of fires were registered across the country. The non-governmental organization\u00a0Guyra Paraguay<\/a>, which tracks forest fires, stated that all of them had been deliberately started, either \u201cfor agricultural reasons or to grow marijuana.\u201d (Of course, growing marijuana\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0an agricultural reason.)<\/p>\n In October 2020, the Ministry of Environment\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that armed men linked to cannabis cultivation in southern Paraguay\u2019s\u00a0Caazap\u00e1 National Park<\/a>\u00a0had prevented firefighters from containing the blazes in the area. The Paraguay fires are part of a larger dynamic of regional cannabis and climate change across South America, with the Amazon rainforest turning into savanna as canopy is lost and groundwater depleted, and, further south, the savanna\u00a0turning into desert<\/a>.<\/p>\n As\u00a0Carbon Brief<\/a>\u00a0website sums up this process of desertification: \u201cThe combined impact of climate change, land mismanagement and unsustainable freshwater use has seen the world\u2019s water-scarce regions increasingly degraded. This leaves their soils less able to support crops, livestock and wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n Legal agro-industries are certainly driving this as well, and can operate outside the law, especially in remote areas. Brazil\u2019s cattle barons notoriously maintain their own\u00a0paramilitary forces<\/a>\u00a0to usurp lands from peasants and indigenous peoples. But cannabis growers are effectively forced to operate outside of the law, to push the agricultural frontier deeper into the remaining forests, and to deal with militarized cartels instead of legitimate brokers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in the Emerald Triangle, a legalized cannabis cultivation sector faces the challenge shaping a sustainable model in a fire-prone region.<\/p>\n Lelehnia Du Bois is the founder and chair of\u00a0Humboldt Grace<\/a>, a community empowerment organization for the counties of the Triangle. Among its activities is the\u00a0Fire Recovery Project<\/a>, which raises funds for local families impacted by the conflagrations caused by climate change and cannabis. Du Bois is also involved in the Back-to-the-Land Project, which documents the history of the hippie colonists who first brought cannabis to the region in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n Du Bois is herself the offspring of the back-to-the-land generation and has been a licensed cannabis grower since 2005. Du Bois says she has seen the local climate change over the years she has lived in the Triangle. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot warmer and drier than in my childhood,\u201d she tells Cannabis Now. \u201cI\u2019m on the coast and the redwoods have brown in them, in the needles. I\u2019ve never seen that before; it\u2019s incredibly visible.\u201d<\/p>\n She recalls that in her youth, folks would facetiously call the coastal fog \u201cHumboldt County sunshine.\u201d She adds: \u201cThe 30-somethings these days don\u2019t even know what that means.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the area\u2019s cannabis growers are trying to adapt. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a lot more people dry-farm, going back to the old sustainable methods\u2014or regenerative, as they say today.\u201d\u00a0 Dry farming refers to cultivating without irrigation, drip system or other water diversions, but taking measures to preserve soil moisture. Du Bois points to the use of\u00a0h\u00fcgelbeds<\/a>\u2014a concept borrowed from European\u00a0permaculture<\/a>, in which crops are grown in mounds of decaying wood topped with compost and soil. The beds are designed to capture water as well as to fertilize.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a culture, we\u2019ve gotten used to thinking the new ways are better. But as we go deeper into crisis, were learning to go back to the old ways, where you work with nature rather than extract from nature,\u201d Du Bois says.<\/p>\n Some growers are simply using less than their allotted square footage of land under their state license. \u201cThat allows us to use less water, while growing a smaller amount of better medicine,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Duncan McIntosh is a former licensed cannabis grower in Trinity (he recently switched to strawberries and tomatoes) who is a county planning commissioner and president of the North Fork Grange\u2014representing farmers along the north fork of the Trinity River. Today, this overwhelmingly means cannabis farmers.<\/p>\n He too notes how the local impact of climate change and cannabis has shifted. \u201cFires have been ravaging the Pacific Northwest for the past ten years, and it\u2019s getting worse and worse. Last year, the Monument Fire burned a third of the county; the year before, the August Complex burned a third of county. Farmers lost water tanks and sheds and water lines to water their gardens.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere fires used to burn tens of acres, they now burn hundreds of thousands of acres,\u201d he adds. \u201cThe winters aren\u2019t as cold as they were. The old-timers say the river used to freeze over\u2014that never happens anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n In McIntosh\u2019s view, the effects of the greenhouse effect are \u201camplified by mismanagement of the forest.\u201d Ironically, the dogma of total fire suppression has allowed undergrowth to build up, providing fuel for the devastating conflagrations of recent years and impacting global warming and marijuana.<\/p>\n The North Fork Grange is now managing the 80-acre Junction City Community Park with oversight of the\u00a0Trinity County Resource Conservation District<\/a>\u00a0and a grant from CalFire. \u201cWe\u2019re eliminating underbrush, relieving pressure on the groundwater to make the standing trees healthier and more robust, and more likely to survive fire,\u201d McIntosh says.<\/p>\n They\u2019re planning controlled \u201clow-intensity\u201d burns on the site to take out the remaining brush, after the bulk of it has been manually removed. This is to be undertaken together with the\u00a0Watershed Center<\/a>, a local environmental group, and the county fire department.<\/p>\n McIntosh calls the project \u201ca rekindling of our connection with the element that\u2019s fire, which is as much a part of our environment as water. The war on fire has been about as successful as the War on Drugs. It\u2019s only amplified what they\u2019re trying to suppress.\u201d He\u2019s hoping the US Forest Service will take up the idea for the much larger areas of the county that lie within the\u00a0Shasta-Trinity National Forest<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to get back to responsible stewardship of the land, from an economy of exploitation going back to the Gold Rush,\u201d McIntosh says.<\/p>\n Du Bois portrays such efforts as part of a deeply rooted ecological ethic in the Triangle. \u201cThe back-to-the-landers who grew the weed before we called it \u2018cannabis\u2019 moved up here to be a part of nature, to live with the cycles, rather than destroying the place and being takers and extractors,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s allowed us to care the plant for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Climate Change and Cannabis: The Scary Truth<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This Northern Hemisphere summer is witnessing an arc of fire sweeping across continents\u2014and scientists view it as a grim harbinger of a very challenging future on Planet Earth. Anthropogenic climate change is the critical factor driving the conflagrations. Enter: climate change and cannabis. United Nations Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\u00a0told ministers\u00a0fromContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":56361,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6591,50,13105,273,100,3549,13251,177,16374,536,1617,2099,1961],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56360"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56362,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56360\/revisions\/56362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/NorthernCaliforniaFire.jpg\")
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<\/a>Cannabis Forests in Africa and South America<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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<\/a>An Ecological Ethic for Cannabis Cultur<\/strong>e<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Climate Change and Cannabis: The Scary Truth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"