- COP29 fight looms over climate funds for developing world
- Shanghai stocks soar to extend stimulus rally amid Asia-wide drop
- Will Tesla's robotaxi reveal live up to hype?
- 'Invisibility' and quantum computing tipped for physics Nobel
- Oil prices extend gains on Mideast tensions, Wall Street falls
- 'Dark day': Victims mourned around the globe on Oct. 7 anniversary
- Mission to probe smashed asteroid launches despite hurricane
- Oil prices extend gains on Mideast tensions, Wall Street slips
- Europe's asteroid mission Hera launches despite hurricane
- Oil prices extend gains on Mideast tensions, Wall Street retreats
- What is microRNA? Nobel-winning discovery explained
- Weather may delay launch of mission to study deflected asteroid
- China to flesh out economic stimulus plans after bumper rally
- Asian markets track Wall St rally on US jobs data
- World marks anniversary of Oct. 7 attack on Israel
- Asian markets track Wall St rally on jobs data
- Cancer, cardiovascular drugs tipped for Nobel as prize week opens
- Tunisia incumbent Saied set to win presidential vote: exit polls
- 'Difficult day': Oct 7 commemorations begin with festival memorial
- Commemorations begin for anniversary of attack on Israel
- Tunisia voting ends as Saied eyes re-election with critics behind bars
- Drowned by hurricane, remote N.Carolina towns now struggle for water
- Two elephants die in flash flooding in northern Thailand
- Tunisia votes with Saied set for re-election
- Too hot by day, Dubai's floodlit beaches are packed at night
- A 'forgotten' valley in storm-hit North Carolina, desperate for help
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- DR Congo to begin mpox vaccination campaign Saturday in east
- Meta must limit data use for targeted ads: EU court
- Oil extends gains, jobs report lifts Wall Street
- US hiring soars past expectations in sign of resilient market
- As EU targets Chinese cars, European rivals sputter
- Top EU court finds against FIFA in key transfer market ruling
- Oil extends gains, Hong Kong stocks resume rally
- 'A man provides': Ukrainian miners send families away as Russia advances
- EU states greenlight extra tariffs on EVs from China
- Hong Kong stocks resume rally, oil dips after Middle East-fuelled surge
- Crude stable after Israel-Iran surge, Hong Kong stocks resume gains
- Hera spacecraft to probe asteroid deflected by defence test
- US dockworkers to head back to work after tentative deal
- After Helene's destruction, North Carolina starts to rebuild
- Dockers end three-day strike at Montreal port
- What next for OpenAI after $157 billion bonanza?
- Israel-Hamas war causes 86-percent dive in Gaza GDP: IMF
- Milan's Morata moves house after Inter-fan town mayor 'violates' privacy
- 'Devastating' storm hits Augusta National but Masters will go on
RBGPF | -1.97% | 58.94 | $ | |
SCS | -0.15% | 12.95 | $ | |
BCC | 1.68% | 141.27 | $ | |
NGG | -1.56% | 65.48 | $ | |
CMSC | -0.53% | 24.57 | $ | |
RELX | -0.54% | 46.04 | $ | |
RIO | -0.11% | 69.62 | $ | |
GSK | -0.49% | 38.63 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.09% | 24.79 | $ | |
VOD | 0.31% | 9.69 | $ | |
RYCEF | -1.45% | 6.88 | $ | |
JRI | -0.76% | 13.18 | $ | |
BCE | -0.54% | 33.53 | $ | |
AZN | -0.78% | 76.87 | $ | |
BP | 0.78% | 33.14 | $ | |
BTI | -0.26% | 35.2 | $ |
Chile's unique Atacama desert sullied by world's junk
It may be one of the driest places on Earth -- a brutal, alien landscape where life seems impossible.
But Chile's massive Atacama desert is a unique and fragile ecosystem that experts say is being threatened by piles of trash dumped there from around the world.
Mountains of discarded clothing, a graveyard of shoes, and rows upon rows of scrapped tires and cars blight at least three regions of the desert in northern Chile.
"We are no longer just the local backyard, but rather the world's backyard, which is worse," Patricio Ferreira, mayor of the desert town of Alto Hospicio, told AFP.
The Atacama, with its striking otherworldly beauty and expansive salt flats, has also been transformed by intensive mining for copper and lithium.
Carmen Serrano, head of the Endemic Roots environmental NGO, said that most people see the Atacama as nothing more than "bare hills" where they can "extract resources or fill their pockets."
- 'Lack of global awareness'-
Chile has long been a hub for secondhand and unsold clothing from Europe, Asia, and the United States, which is either sold on throughout Latin America, or ends up in rubbish dumps in the desert.
Spurred on by the world's insatiable appetite for fast fashion, this chain last year saw over 46,000 tonnes of used clothing funneled into northern Chile's Iquique free trade zone.
Full of chemicals and taking up to 200 years to biodegrade, activists say the clothing pollutes the soil, air and underground water.
The heaps of hand-me-downs are sometimes even set alight.
"The material is highly flammable. The fires are toxic," said lawyer and activist Paulin Silva, 34, who has filed a complaint at the country's environmental court over the damage caused by the mountains of trash and clothing.
"It seems to me we need to find those responsible," she said, standing amid the discarded items which she said were "dangerous, an environmental risk, a danger to people's health."
Used cars also flood into the country from the free trade zone. Many are exported to Peru, Bolivia or Paraguay, while others end up dumped in graveyards kilometers wide in the surrounding desert.
Piles of abandoned tires are also scattered across the desert.
The mayor Ferreira lamented a "lack of global awareness, a lack of ethical responsibility and environmental protection" from "the unscrupulous of the world."
"We feel abandoned. We feel that our land has been sacrificed."
- A 'very fragile' ecosystem'-
For more than eight million years, the 100,000 square kilometer expanse of the Atacama has been the most arid desert in the world.
Rain is rare, and in some parts, non-existent.
The driest part is the Yungay district in the city of Antofagasta. Here, scientists have found extreme forms of life, microorganisms that have adapted to a practically waterless world, high levels of solar radiation, and barely any nutrients.
Scientists believe these microorganisms may harbor secrets to evolution and survival on Earth and other planets.
NASA considers the Yungay district to be Earth's most similar landscape to Mars, and uses it to test its robotic vehicles.
While it doesn't receive much rain, large banks of fog roll across the desert, allowing some plants -- and some of the world's hardiest lichens, fungi, and algae -- to grow.
Scores of brightly colored wildflower species bloom when it gets above average rain in a spectacular display that happens every five to seven years, most recently in 2021.
It is an ecosystem that is "very fragile, because any change or decrease in the pattern of precipitation and fog has immediate consequences for the species that live there," said Pablo Guerrero, a researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity and expert in desert cactus.
"There are cactus species which are considered extinct" as a result of pollution, climate change, and human settlement.
"Unfortunately, it is something we are seeing on a massive scale, with systematic deterioration in recent years."
L.K.Baumgartner--CPN