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@npjbrooks
Apr 6 • 13 tweets • 13 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
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It's a while since I've had one of these, and not in response to anything specific - I've been very inactive on #WesternSahara lately. Must be a quiet day on a troll farm somewhere in #Morocco. Image
Anyway, I have a rule that whenever I'm trolled by agents of the #Moroccan state, I post photos of the Sahrawi controlled areas of #WesternSahara, to highlight the conflict & #Morocco's partition of this non-self-governing territory. Here's the view from Tin Gfuf, Southern Sector Image
A low granite outcrop, near Tin Gfuf, Southern Sector of the Polisario controlled Liberated Territories of #WesternSahara. Image
More of the landscape around Tin Gfuf, Southern Sector of the Polisario controlled Liberated Territories of #WesternSahara. Image
The most southerly example of a 'goulet' monument, at Tin Gufuf, some 300km south of any other such monuments recorded in the #Sahara, as far as I'm aware. Part of the the rich & fascinating #archaeology & #heritage or #WesternSahara. Image
#Archaeology in post-1975 #WesternSahara has been hampered by Morocco's occupation, the 1975-1991 war, then Moroccan mines & munitions, & now renewed fighting after Morocco breached the ceasefire & Polisario responded by attacking its wall & military bases. So no work there now. ImageImageImage
Having just been at a #heritage #LossAndDamage conference @CFAAA4, I'm thinking about threats to heritage, climate & non-climate. The conflict in #WesternSahara poses some serious threats to its remarkable archaeological heritage.
Back in 2007, we came across important rock art sites vandalised by UN peacekeepers. ImageImageImage
We recorded burial #monuments reworked as gun emplacements. #Conflict & #Heritage #WesternSahara Image
Many monuments are low-relief, and highly vulnerable to disturbance & destruction by military & other vehicles. Goulets are an example, but also stone rings & lines, half-circles, platforms, enclosures, and low-lying burial monuments. #Conflict & #Heritage #WesternSahara ImageImage
Some these appear unique in the Sahara or elsewhere, including apparent pictograms made from different coloured stone, integrated into goulet monuments, possibly depicting animals. #Conflict & #Heritage #WesternSahara ImageImageImage
Prehistoric occupation sites are also appealing to military personal, as they provide shelter, increasing risks of damage. Near Tifariti, Moroccan trenches are dug through areas rich in archeology. #Conflict & #Heritage #WesternSahara Image
The #conflict in #WesternSahara means limited capacity & resources for #heritage management, which remains a low priority. @UNESCO won't touch it because of the politics around #WorldHeritageSites in #Morocco. So this unique archaeological record remains at risk. Image

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More from @npjbrooks

Dr Nick Brooks Profile picture
Apr 5
Some thoughts that I presented at this conference on 'measuring' heritage loss & damage.

1. Use IPCC risk framework to characterise risk to different aspects of heritage (tangible & intangible). Can be quantitative or qualitative, data or experience driven.
2. Make sure #heritage is considered in national risk assessments & adaptation plans. Not just $ value, but inventories of tangible & intangible heritage @ risk, & registers for degrees of risk.
3. Use national assessments & adaptation plans as basis to include heritage at risk in NDCs, Adaptation Communications, National Communications etc., submitted to @UNFCCC as part of its Global Stocktake.
Read 6 tweets
Dr Nick Brooks Profile picture
Feb 8, 2022
I don't disagree with anything these scientists are saying (and I've worked with four of them in varying capacities). But none are endorsing the 6-8 years. Also, the concept of 'civilisation' and ideas about its collapse are thrown around very loosely here. A thread 1/
First, I'm going to say that I fully expect climate change to be associated with a fair amount of civilisational collapse. But what does that actually mean? None of my respected colleagues here are specialists in this area. But others are, and I've at done some work on it. 2/
There's a tonne of work on societal collapse during past episodes of rapid and severe climate change, and climatic reorganisation. This is certainly what we're seeing now in the climate, and it will accelerate as the world continues to warm. 3/
Read 35 tweets
Dr Nick Brooks Profile picture
Feb 8, 2022
We have x yrs left until until n% chance (based on certain assumptions) of breaching (uncertain) carbon budget for scientifically-informed but to-an-extent arbitrary 1.5°C warming threshold, after which action is still critical to prevent much greater warming.
Just pinning this here as a translation service in the context of the discussion about 'we have X yrs until climate breakdown/catastrophe / Earth becomes uninhabitable / all oceans on fire / etc.'
Things ARE really bad. The more we warm the planet, the worse they will get. 1.5°C is a reasonable threshold. Impacts of greater warming will be progressively more horrendous. But it's not fine below 1.5°C and the end of the world above it.
Read 18 tweets
Dr Nick Brooks Profile picture
Dec 10, 2020
As it's announced #Morocco will normalise relations with #Israel in exchange for US recognition of the former's claim to the disputed non-self-governing territory of #WesternSahara, I will point out that Morocco controls only ~3/4 of this territory. Some pics from the other 1/4.
Morocco entered #WesternSahara by force in 1975. The indigenous Sahrawi fought them until 1991, when the UK brokered a ceasefire based on the promise of a referendum on self-determination. This has never taken place.
In the 1980s, Morocco constructed a series of massive earthworks to secure occupied territory against attack from the Sahrawi independence fighters of the Polisario front. BY 1991 these had merged into a 1700 mile long wall or Berm, shown here in red.
Read 8 tweets
Dr Nick Brooks Profile picture
Dec 8, 2020
Today's #WesternSahara photo. There may be more. Fossil sand ripples, Wadi Erni, Northern Sector.
Enigmatic rock engravings, Wadi Erni. Similar to some I've been looking at today from the Canary Islands, but then, we know there was a link. I like to think the one of the right is a comet. But that's based on nothing except my fevered imagination.
The desert is far from barren. Something lives here, at Bou Dheir, #WesternSahara, Free Zone, Northern Sector.
Read 11 tweets
Dr Nick Brooks Profile picture
Feb 18, 2020
The application to the economic and social spheres of ideas that blend evolutionary theory with ideas of progress is the heart of the free-market ideology that has been promoted by right-wing think tanks for some 60 years. No surprise that they find a welcome in this government.
Of course, these ideas are deeply dodgy. While evolution involves adaptation to variable environmental pressures that have have nothing to do with morality, free-market evolutionism replaces this with the idea of evolution as decontextualised continuous improvement.
As such, these dogmas of progressive evolution owe more to Herbert Spencer, originator of the term 'survival of the fittest', than they do to Charles Darwin. They seek to improve the 'fitness' of individuals, firms & society, without concerning themselves what that fitness is for
Read 11 tweets

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