Ikiwa unataka tengenezewa Blog, Tukiko lolote la Harusi,Msiba, Mahafali, Tamasha, Matangazo auHabari yoyote usisite kututumia kupitia whatsapp 0765056399 au Barua Pepe fredynjeje@live.com. Follow me instagram @officialfredynjejeblog Twitter @Fredynjeje
NAIROBI,
23 December 2015 (IRIN) - El Niño is the largely unwanted Christmas
gift – a warming of the tropical Pacific causing drought and floods that
will peak at the end of this month, but will impact weather systems
around the globe into 2016.
This year’s El Niño has
been steadily gaining strength since March. It’s likely to be one of the
most extreme events of this nature yet seen, with the UN’s emergency
aid coordination body, OCHA, warning that “millions will be impacted”.
El Niño’s links with drought in southern Africa and the Horn, and
with heavy rains in East Africa, are well-established. Across the rest
of the continent the climate connection is less clear. Other factors
come into play, such as temperatures in the North Atlantic for West
Africa’s weather, according to Richard Choularton, the World Food
Programme’s chief of climate resilience for food.
What makes El Niño particularly bad news in 2016 is that it will be a
second tough year in a row for farmers and pastoralists in Southern
Africa and the Horn – and to a lesser extent East Africa. Eighty percent
of their populations are dependent on agriculture. Their ability to
cope with adversity has been stretched. Now they will be facing
potentially an even sterner test.
So what does that really mean for these vulnerable regions in the
coming year? With the perils of weather forecasting acknowledged, here’s
a snapshot.
Southern Africa:
More than 30 million people
are already “food insecure” – lacking access to enough food to lead
healthy lives as result of a poor harvest earlier this year. South
Africa’s maize production has traditionally been the hedge against
regional shortfalls. But this year drought was declared in five
provinces and output dropped by 30 percent.
The fear is that the region will experience another El Niño-induced
poor harvest, “possibly a disastrous one”, according to OCHA. Emergency
maize stocks are depleted, and maize prices are climbing. Governments
hard hit by the global fall in commodity prices, on which their
economies depend, will need to find the money to buy maize on the
international market. South Africa alone is expecting to import 750,000
tonnes to meet its needs.
Despite Southern Africa being a largely middle-income region, its
rural populations historically have some of the world’s worst poverty
indicators. Even in economic powerhouse South Africa, almost a quarter
of all children under five are stunted. That level of deprivation limits
people’s ability to bounce back after a shock.
The worst-affected
countries in 2016 will be Angola, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia,
Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Mozambique. “Everyone is preparing for
drought,” said Choularton. WFP, for example, is putting money and
programmes in place in Zimbabwe, in anticipation of worse trouble to
come, part of its new FoodSECuRE policy approach.
Further north, in the Horn and East Africa, which have more
complicated climate and agricultural systems, the El Niño picture is
less clear.
The Horn:
Poor rains have hit parts of Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan and Somalia
– but international media coverage has tended to focus on Ethiopia. In
part that’s because a lazy connection gets drawn with the 1984 famine,
but also because the numbers in need are so large.
With the failure of both the Belg rains and the usually reliable
Kiremt summer rains, “the worst drought in Ethiopia for 50 years is
happening right now,” Save the Children said in a statement. The
hardest-hit regions are in the north and east of the country. The UN
believes 15 million people will face food shortages in 2016, with the
next harvest not expected until June. Ethiopia has a population of close
to 100 million.
Nearly eight million people are already under the national welfare
Productive Safety Net Programme*. The government has committed $192
million to help combat the crisis, “but more help is urgently needed
from donors and the international community to support the government to
stop the situation from deteriorating further,” said Save the Children.
Meanwhile, heavy rains and flooding are predicted for Ethiopia’s low
lying south and east. The Shebelle river basin and the easternmost
Somali region are particular areas of concern, with flooding projected
to affect 315,000 people. Flooding not only displaces people, but
destroys infrastructure – washing away roads and bridges, affecting
market access, and inundating schools and clinics.
Somalia experiences the same dual risks of drought and flooding – in a
country characterised by some of the worst humanitarian and human
development indicators in the world. Drought has singed the northern
regions of Somaliland and Puntland, while heavy rains in the south and
centre of the country have caused floods that OCHA estimates could
affect some 900,000 people.
Even without El Niño about 3.2 million Somalis are in need of life-saving and livelihood support, while over 1.1 million people are internally displaced.
East Africa:
Short rains, in the right amount and at the right time – from October
to December – allow the regeneration of pasture, improve crop
conditions and boost casual agricultural labour opportunities for poor
households.
Too much – if the rains run into January and February – then animals
that are already weak from the long dry season will succumb to exposure.
Heavy rains can also trigger waterborne diseases like cholera and
typhoid. Livestock become susceptible to Rift Valley Fever (RVF) – a
viral mosquito-borne disease.
El Niño conditions coupled with the warming of the Indian Ocean along
the East African coastline is generating “highly enhanced rainfall”,
according to the Kenya Metrological Department. The government’s contingency plan
anticipated one million people at risk from flooding. The plan calls
for the provision of relief seeds for replanting and subsidised
fertilizer, as well as large-scale vaccination against RVF.
In Uganda,
the government has called on 800,000 people regarded as at risk from
landslides in mountainous regions to relocate to safer areas, where they
will be supported with relief supplies. A 2,000-strong "Civil-Military
Disaster Response Group" has been deployed to the Mount Elgon and Mount
Rwenzori regions, as well as flood-prone areas in eastern, southwestern
and western Uganda.
* An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to
the Productive Safety Net Programme as the Protective Safety Net
Programme
Source: Irin News
No comments:
Post a Comment