Southern Europe is not much different. Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal never had collective farms, but the relentless aging of the population and the exodus of young people to cities has left villages empty and fields and pastures abandoned.Francesco Cherubini, Norwegian University of Science and Technology calculate Over the past 30 years, Europe has experienced a net loss of farmland larger than Switzerland.
This trend is surprisingly widespread. Despite Japan being one of the most densely populated countries in the world, nearly 250,000 acres of farmland remain abandoned. Edward Mitchard, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, said that even in parts of Africa where populations continue to grow, farming is seen as an activity for the elderly, leaving fields abandoned as young people seek work in the cities. Point out that it is left as it is.
In some cases, abandonment is caused by pollution or industrial disasters rather than economic, demographic, or social factors. Hundreds of square miles of radioactive former farmland surround the destroyed nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Fukushima It is currently in a no-go zone in Japan and may be free of human habitation for centuries to come.
But nature has little regard for no-go zones. Despite radiation, wolves, bears, wild boars, lynx, and other large animals are reclaiming the original landscape, forests are encroaching, and carbon is being captured.
War can also cause damage. Over the past 19 months, the war following the Russian invasion has occupied large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine. Despite military mayhem, nature has taken over abandoned fields in some places. And even if the war ends, minefields can leave land unused and unproductive for decades.
Withdrawal from agriculture for some reason is the biggest cause of abandoned farmland worldwide, but there are other causes as well. For example, the end of the Cold War led to the abandonment of an estimated 5,800 square miles of former military training areas in Europe. Many of these areas are becoming empty of tanks and troops. nature reserveincluding former British tank bases in the Lüneburg Wilderness in western Germany and the Königsbrücker Wilderness in eastern Germany that had been vacated by Russian forces.
Normally, if left alone, nature will regenerate abandoned sites, benefiting biodiversity and the climate. Even without human intervention, carbon capture from abandoned areas in Russia is already significant. Irina Kurganova, a soil scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: Estimate The collapse of collective farming there has resulted in more than 40 million tonnes of carbon being sequestered annually in natural vegetation and improved soils.