Drought |
The current drought
in the Horn of Africa has caused an unprecedented food crisis that is
quickly turning into a regional humanitarian disaster.
More than 17
million people in the region are classified by the United Nation's Food
and Agriculture Organisation as food-insecure and in need of external
food assistance.
As humanitarian aid
agencies scale up global campaigns for food and medical aid, the
ethical question being asked of governments in the region and their
external development partners is how effective, if at all, they have
been in mitigating the causes and impact of natural disasters, such as
drought and floods that frequently debilitate the people in the region.
The drought
emergency is a cyclical occurrence that is predictable and anticipated,
but mitigation measures do not seem to be sufficient or are not working.
The
drought-affected persons are nearly double those affected in 2011, when
9.5 million people in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South
Sudan and Uganda were reported to have been affected by the worst
drought emergency in 60 years. The global humanitarian community
responded rapidly to save the situation, though in the worst affected
areas, the relief was too little too late to reverse the suffering of
starving people and livestock.
This La
NiƱa-induced drought has caused a substantial increase in food prices
and will have serious consequences on the livelihoods of the affected
communities.
According to
international humanitarian agency CARE International, the food shortages
caused by drought can have devastating long-term effects on children
who miss the basic nutrients. In its latest assessment, CARE says the
millions of people suffering from drought include 680,000 pregnant and
lactating mothers, who are exposed to malnutrition.
The impact of this
will be felt by their unborn children and breastfeeding babies. Their
future health and development is compromised, because they are receiving
much less than their optimal food and nutrition requirements.
Preventing next drought
Studies by
governments in the region in collaboration with the United Nations, the
World Bank and other agencies have documented the drought cycle--every
four to five years--its impact on the communities, economic losses and
cost of long-term mitigation measures.
In 2011, an
extensive assessment produced a detailed account of the historic and
current impact of drought on the communities and the economies of the
affected countries. It also recommended the type and scale of investment
that was needed to improve the resilience of the affected communities
against drought.
For Kenya, the cost
of the drought from 2008-2011 amounted to $12.1 billion, according to
the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) 2008-2011 Drought report,
produced by the government with technical support from the European
Union, the United Nations and the World Bank. The report quantified the
scale of losses in terms of flows to economic sectors and destruction of
physical and durable assets.
The International
Federation of the Red Cross, which has global experience in dealing with
humanitarian crises, has issued a detailed report on the drought and
how to prevent the next disaster.
Drought in the Horn
of Africa - Preventing the Next Disaster advocated change in policy
from emergency responses to more long-term interventions that will make
communities more resilient to drought and other natural disasters.
"It's time to
change the way we invest," said a joint report by IFRC secretary-general
Bekele Geleta, and Abbas Gullet, general secretary of the Kenya Red
Cross. Their report said while emergency aid was important, "relief
alone only deepens the danger," hence the long-term solution lies in
supporting food security programmes.
Disaster not over yet
The aid agencies
estimate they will need over $2 billion to support the hungry and help
mitigate livestock losses, even if they cannot stop the crisis. Massive
effort is focused on preventing the drought from turning into famine,
which may kill thousands or millions of people in the region. These
people need food, nutritional supplements, and post-drought recovery
interventions.
These efforts,
while particularly critical to avert the current emergency, will ease as
soon as the rains come, restoring normal food and pasture. This may
take a few more months.
The humanitarian
situation is categorised as "emergency" for Ethiopia, Somalia and South
Sudan, and "crisis" for Kenya and Uganda by the latest Famine Early
Warning System (Fews) Network report, based on projected food needs from
January through to August 2017.
But disaster may
not be over, if the rains cause flooding, which will displace people and
livestock, as well as destroy food crops in the field and increase
post-harvest losses. Such effects are evident in southern Africa, where
La NiƱa-induced drought last year was followed recently by massive
flooding in Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and
Zimbabwe--where losses of human, livestock and staple food harvests have
been reported.
Averting disaster
Averting natural
disasters will require more strategic and aggressive implementation of
the mitigation measures that have been recommended in numerous studies.
The 2011 needs assessment estimated that Kenya needed to invest some
$3.9 billion in recovery, reconstruction and additional disaster risk
reduction programmes to break the cycle of drought.
The estimate was
based on the losses and needs reported by government agencies for the
key sectors affected by the drought emergency. The largest share of the
funds targeted the livestock sector, water and sanitation in the Rift
Valley, eastern and northeastern regions, which suffered the most
devastating effects.
The other
beneficiary sectors were agriculture and agro-industry, fisheries,
education, health and nutrition, energy, environment, tourism, forestry
and wildlife.
Development
partners agreed to support the rapid deployment of these massive
recovery and reconstruction initiatives in 2012 and 2013 through their
existing and new programmes. Some of the key activities were
rehabilitation of dams and water pans in arid and semi-arid areas. The
government also pledged to establish and maintain strategic livestock
feed reserves.
While a detailed
assessment is needed to determine the extent to which mitigation
measures have been implemented, the messages from the field would imply
that pledges and delivery of some of the long-term disaster mitigation
initiatives has been less than satisfactory.
A combination of
difficulties, including government budgetary constraints, long and
protracted procurement processes and conflicts in the disaster-prone
areas have derailed the progress of the programmes.
Rapid, strategic
action would have significantly reduced the impact of the current
drought. In Somalia, for instance, rehabilitation last year of a
borehole drilled in 2009 by the Somalia Regional Water Bureau with
funding from Unicef provided "safe and sustainable water" to over 9,000
people and their livestock, according to a February 2016 Unicef report.
This saved the community from the devastating effect of the current
drought and reduced their dependence on handouts.
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