Lebanon: Climate change, water shortages threaten the cedars

The historic cedars of Lebanon, famed from biblical accounts and prized for more than 4000 years throughout the Middle East, are now threatened by climate change, Reuters reports. The cedars, which once covered vast areas of the landscape from Turkey to Lebanon, stand as a symbol of Lebanese nationalism, but an ever warming planet may wipe them out for good.

The cedars, which require a humid, moist environment and live only at high altitudes, will not cope well with the dryer conditions scientists anticipate. “[Humidity and soil moisture] are aspects that climate change could very much impact, especially in this region,” Rania Masri, an environmentalist and assistant professor at the University of Balamand in north Lebanon, told Reuters. Already over logged, efforts by the Lebanese government to protect the remaining cedars have been implemented with mixed results.