Just imagine. You wake up and notice that something has changed, You can no longer hear the birds singing. You look out of the window and you see a parched landscape with no sign of life. The quality of the air we breathe and the water we need to support life has deteriorated significantly. This is not a nightmare and even less so an illusion. And as you know, we are now witnessing the first effects of this phenomenon: we are not only losing the climate change battle but also the battle against the collapse of our planet’s biodiversity.
Just imagine. You wake up and notice that something has changed, You can no longer hear the birds singing. You look out of the window and you see a parched landscape with no sign of life. The quality of the air we breathe and the water we need to support life has deteriorated significantly. This is not a nightmare and even less so an illusion. And as you know, we are now witnessing the first effects of this phenomenon: we are not only losing the climate change battle but also the battle against the collapse of our planet’s biodiversity. These stark warnings were issued by the President of the French Republic on 24th March and they have gone completely unnoticed, probably due to the emphasis on other current events such as terror attacks and the SNCF train strike, rather than any sense of apathy on the part of the public. There is a very real risk, however: Deforestation, the use of pesticides and soil depletion caused by intensive cultivation, thus diminishing the capacity to absorb and filter the water. So many problems that the irrigation industry is trying to address. In this edition, you will discover how, by using tensiometers, it has become possible to manage water consumption and conserve the soil; and, in the same vein, effectively managing the irrigation of sports fields allows for significant savings to be made on water-use thanks to innovative irrigation methods. Finally, under the special section devoted to Israel, you will be made to realise how such a small arid country has been able to make the desert green again and also play a major role in supplying the world with leading-edge agricultural solutions.