THE HANDSTAND

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006



EAST AND HORN OF AFRICA: Millions face hunger, in urgent need of aid


NAIROBI, 7 March (IRIN) - When Sheikh Issa left home to walk the last of his livestock to the nearest water source, some 60 km across the dustbowl of northern Kenya, 23 cows remained from his herd that was once 85-strong.

By the time he reached Arbajahan, where a diesel-powered borehole runs day and night to bring precious liquid up to the surface, nine more cows and even one of his camels, a young female, had died. Around the troughs fed by the borehole, dozens more carcasses lay rotting in the dust where they fell. The air is thick with the smell of death.

"Our animals die if we leave them in the village, where there is no pasture, or they die as we walk them to water, or they die because they cannot stand after they stop to rest, or they die even at the
borehole," said Issa, 61.

Like his father and the generations before him, Issa is a pastoralist.  He and other members of his community are barely surviving along Kenya's harsh northeastern frontier, where four consecutive wet seasons have passed with barely a drop of rain falling. Even supposedly perennial rivers have run dry. Green meadows have turned to scorched brown wastelands, and every scrap of edible vegetation has been stripped from desiccated bushes.

A regional dilemma

These desperate circumstances are echoed across the Horn of Africa, where 11 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Somalia have been affected by the current drought. Of those, seven million need immediate assistance in order to halt the onset of a serious humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

While human deaths linked to the drought have been estimated at fewer than 60 thus far, the situation is almost certain to deteriorate as more and more animals die. Pastoral communities rely exclusively on their livestock for milk and meat - the mainstays of their diet - or to be sold at market, to bring in money for maize, sugar, tea and other essentials.

Kenya's northern ethnic Somalis have in some places lost 70 percent of their cows and sheep, Oxfam has estimated. Even stocks of drought-resistant camels have fallen by 15 percent. Across the border in southern Somalia, the worst hit part of the country, one-third of all livestock is already dead, and half of those remaining are likely to die before the end of April, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation's Food Security and Analysis Unit (FSAU).

Prices for the emaciated and weakened animals that are still alive have plummeted in livestock markets across the region. In Wajir, a Kenyan provincial capital 400 miles northeast of Nairobi, the cost of an adult cow has fallen from 7,000 Kenya shillings (US $96) to 800 shillings ($11). Camels fetch less than 5,000 shillings ($68), down from 20,000 shillings ($274).

"So often a crisis is gauged by the number of people who are dying, but we need to think differently with pastoralists," said Josie Buxton, relief coordinator with Oxfam GB in Kenya. "Without their livestock, they are as good as dead."

As animals die, human malnutrition soars. The number of children suffering acute malnutrition around Wajir has jumped from a chronic level of 10 percent to 27 percent, according to the British medical relief charity Merlin. "We are sitting on a time bomb, and if it goes off, that is something that all the agencies together will be able to do very little about," said Inwani Malweyi, a doctor and health coordinator for Merlin in Kenya.



The word "Shamba" means in Kiswahili "Field" and with the term 'shamba system' is generally defined in Kenya a form of agroforestry by which farmers are encouraged to cultivate crops on previously clear cut forest land on condition that they replant the forest trees. After three years cultivating the trees would be grown enough to shadow the agricultural crops. The farmer would then have to move out of the allocated plot and would be eligible for another forest plot to be cleared. Therefore the cultivated land should be returned to the forest reserve. Most families live on self-sustaining shambas (fig. 3). Since the middle of the 19th century Kenya adopted this system to establish forest plantation by means of cheap or totally free labour and at the same time this could be a strategy to increase employment among technical low level workers and to increase national food production (Kenya Wildlife Service, 1999). Moreover, this system should have been part of a solution for the demand for timber (Cox, 1999).
The primary crops grown by the families are maize (fig. 4 and 5), bananas, beans and cassava.  Due to the two rainy seasons, two growing seasons occur each year,  which accelerate the rate at which nutrients are taken from the soil.  This continual depletion of nutrients makes it more difficult for forested land to reestablish when the plots are abandoned.

From the early 1980's the scheme has been mismanaged and abused (Cox, 1999). Many associated problems are nowadays emerging leading to the degradation of the forest. Some of the farmers are renting plots to second parties to ensure continued presence on land. Therefore trees are not re-planted and the land does not return to the reserve. Many clear cut plantation areas are not under tree growing, either replanting was not successful or not undertaken at all. Moreover about 19% of Shamba systems are encroaching into natural forest (Kenya Wildlife Service, 1999).
In late 1993, after clearing, some plantations of Cupressus lusitanica and Pinus radiata in the Naro Moru and Sirimon regions were opened, by presidential decree, to temporary farming activities.


In parts of Somalia's Gedo, Middle and Lower Juba regions and areas of Bay and Bakool, acute child malnutrition levels are twice the World Health Organisation's danger threshold of 15 percent,
according to Zlatan Milisic, country director for WFP. Even where malnutrition levels have not yet reached critical levels, the number of people in need of immediate food aid is "catastrophic", said James Morris, the programme's executive director.

The Kenyan government and aid agencies in the country have reported that 3.5 million people - or one in 10 people - need immediate humanitarian assistance. In Somalia, the figure is 1.7 million; in Ethiopia, 2.6 million; in Djibouti, 88,000, across all of the country's six rural districts; and in Eritrea, 500,000 need emergency food.

Further south, in Tanzania, 3.7 million people in 77 districts need food to tide them over until the May harvest. Of those, more than 560,000 people have been classified as destitute and in need of food aid. Poor rains and crop disease have left 2.2 million Burundians and 1 million Rwandans facing food shortages.

"We are in a full-scale crisis right now.  We're in life-saving mode - nothing less - and I cannot state it in stark enough terms," Morris told news conference on 5 March in Nairobi after a fact-finding mission in Kenya. "I have rarely seen people who are so at risk, who are so vulnerable, who are struggling so hard so far away from home with so many huge responsibilities, in such a desolate and harsh environment."

Humanitarian agencies and governments have appealed for a huge increase in outside assistance to deal with the crisis. They have cautioned that little time remains before the number of human
mortalities begins to soar.

The Kenyan government, in collaboration with WFP, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), FAO and the UN Development Programme, issued an appeal for emergency assistance in February. They asked for $245 million to address needs between March this year and February 2007, most of which ($224 million) would be used to buy 395,000 metric tonnes (mt) of food for 3.5 million people, 500,000 of whom are school children. The remainder will be earmarked for health and sanitation projects, rehabilitation of existing boreholes, trucking in water supplies and a de-stocking programme to buy pastoralists' livestock at fair prices and then donate the meat back to hungry communities.



Ethiopia has large stocks of food aid carried over from 2005, amounting to 238,000 mt of the 339,000 mt that the country's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency and humanitarian organisations estimate is needed. However, an appeal launched in late January still called for a further $166 million in assistance, 67 percent of which would be spent on non-food interventions in the health, nutrition, water, sanitation and agriculture sectors.

WFP reported in mid-February that Somalia faced a shortfall of 34,000 mt of food aid, even with current stocks and new commitments pledged to date. Care International is delivering 6,000 mt of food to 300,000 Somalis in northern Gedo as relief, alongside 1,000 mt in the framework of a food-for-work programme in Bay, Bakool and Hiran. A best estimate of food stocks in Eritrea calculated that a better than expected harvest late in 2005, combined with existing supplies, might cover the country's needs for the coming few months. In Djibouti, WFP is targeting 47,500 pastoralists with emergency food.

A painfully slow response

Despite these appeals and ongoing efforts, the international response has been painfully slow. Oxfam estimated that at most, donors have committed $186 million to fund appeals for the three countries against $574 million requested - a shortfall of $388 million.


The latest figures from WFP showed that donors had committed $18.7 million, or 8 percent, of the $225 million appeal to address the Kenyan food crisis. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculated a $144 million shortfall in the appeal launched for Somalia, while in Ethiopia a more positive picture emerged, with a shortfall in the current food appeal of $38 million.


"Although some funding is starting to come through, the response so far is dwarfed by the immediate need," said Paul Smith-Lomas, head of Oxfam in East Africa. "Donors need to frontload their efforts so that action can be taken now. Money given in three months will be too late for many."

Neighbours helping each other

At a food aid distribution centre in Hungai township, a growing cluster of thatched huts 40 miles north of Wajir, the effects of handing out too little food are clear. Scores of nomads, many of whom have lost nearly all of their livestock, arrive each day, joining the 4,000 who have already settled here.

When the food truck comes, as it does once a month, only 35 percent of the village's long-term residents are considered eligible for the 10.35 kg of maize, 600 g of oil and 1.8 kg of pulses handed out to each person to last the next 30 days. For the newcomers, there is nothing. They missed the roll call when officials visited in October to assess the situation.

However, even during the harshest of times, these communities do not turn their backs on their neighbours.

"I arrived here yesterday. I walked for four days with my grandchildren because we heard there was food here," said Sarifu Unshur, 60. She herded her family's last 11 cows to Hungai and said she would share her food with them. "Now we are told we are not on the list, so we have to survive on what the others can give us."

Within minutes of being handed her carefully calculated per-person food ration, Nuria Bule, 34, splits it four ways and scoops a portion to each of three friends, newcomers who didn't make the list and hover nearby, surrounded by their children. "I cannot take this food and leave them with nothing.  But because I help them, I am left with only so little from what I am supposed to get," she said. "When will the government and other people come here to help everyone, not just some of us?"

Aggravating factors

A significant factor aggravating the crisis is the frequency of drought conditions in the region. While pastoralists are historically resilient in the face of occasional drought, the deadly dry spells now occur more and more often. The interval between dry spells, which used to be about five years, is now between one and two years, said Daniele Donati, emergency coordinator for Africa for FAO.

"These are people who have developed the most sophisticated mechanisms for survival, but even they cannot cope with repeated droughts coming ever more often, making them progressively more vulnerable," he said.

A number of factors have converged to create this situation. Global warming conditions have influenced the change in climatic patterns, resulting in consecutive years of poor and erratic rainfall. In addition, disaster control policies and sustainable environmental management plans are often inadequate or absent, hampering the ability of local and national authorities to react decisively and quickly.

The political dynamics in the region have also directly or indirectly impacted food security, as seen with ongoing tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, inter-clan fighting in Somalia and continued rebel activity in Burundi and Uganda. In areas affected by conflict, farmers cannot access their land or their markets, exacerbating the cyclical relationship between conflict and the lack of resources. Inter-communal clashes as a result of heightened competition over scarce pasture and water resources have become increasingly frequent in some areas, especially along Kenya's porous
northern borders with Somalia and Ethiopia, where ethnic communities have access to thousands of illegal automatic weapons.

"It's not just the food crisis that is claiming lives. The knock-on impact of the crisis risks sparking conflict on a scale that Kenya hasn't seen for almost a decade," cautioned Gezahegn Kebede, head of Oxfam in Kenya. "Unless aid to the affected area is stepped up this month, March could see many more killed."

Other natural disasters such as pest infestations and periodic flooding have also destroyed crops and infrastructure.  What is needed, said analysts and pastoralist elders, are greater investment in infrastructure and innovative agricultural techniques so that communities are better placed to cope with more frequent drought.

"These people are used to this harsh lifestyle, but what is lacking is government initiative and policy which will support us," said Mohamed Abdi Elmi., a board member of Wajir's District Pastoralist Association. "If we had slaughterhouses and freezing plants here, and good roads all the way to Nairobi or wherever we have markets, then we would earn good money from our animals, which we can use to make us stronger. But we have none of that, and if the situation continues like this then most of us will be forced to abandon pastoralism and settle in places where there is permanent water."

Elmi and his colleagues have tried to advise their members to keep fewer animals, to leave some pasture untouched during good seasons so it can be used during periods of drought, and to sell their stock as soon as drought is forecast.

"People have argued that nomadic pastoralism is untenable in the modern world, but if these people sit still it can easily spell the end," said Christie Peacock, chief executive officer of Farm Africa, a British humanitarian organisation. "They are often the worst educated, the most marginalised and the least ready to survive a sedentary lifestyle. What they need is better access to local, regional and international markets so they begin to earn more from their animals than just milk to see them through to the next day."

Managing the current crisis

The immediate focus of relief operations is keeping as many animals - and thus people - alive through the current crisis.

Rains are not expected in Somalia until the end of the long jilaal dry season, running until April, while Kenya's long rains, expected between March and May, are forecast to be average or less than average this year. Ethiopia enjoyed good belg seasonal  rains, between March and May, in 2005, but the deyr rains, from October to December, failed in the southern Somali and Oromiya regions. Forecasters predict erratic rainfall for the coming months. If rich donor countries do not step up pledges immediately, the bulk of the food needed within the next three months may not materialise.

"We need six, seven, eight times as much help as we have already had for the next 12 months," said James Morris of WFP. Current food stocks are likely to run out by the end of April, unless action was taken and commitments actioned by mid-March. "If there's a break in the pipeline, the shock and the lack of water for those millions of people who are now seriously at risk will mean we will start to see large numbers of casualties very, very quickly."

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Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains. Christopher A. Conte. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004. 215 pp.


Highland Sanctuary situates the Usambara Mountains of northeastern Tanzania within the environmental history of the highlands which stretch through eastern Kenya and Tanzania. Conte uses contrasts between the eastern and western massifs of Usambara to reveal some of the under-appreciated diversity in environmental change, which may be found throughout the “Eastern Arc” mountains. For despite their very long geological history, rich diversity of flora, and importance as sites of early cultural, agronomic and metallurgical development, these highlands remain inadequately studied.  With stylistic economy, Conte’s two opening chapters provide a vivid introduction to the environment of Usambara, and to its natural and human history before the twentieth century. They also introduce the Wambugu, a pastoralist Cushitic minority who lived alongside Usambara’s more numerous Bantu-speaking Washambaa farmers and exploited its high forests for grazing.

The heart of this book lies, however, in the following five chapters, where Conte examines environmental change during the colonial period and, in one chapter, since national independence in 1961. These chapters focus primarily upon highland forests.  Conte shows that European colonialists and the indigenous inhabitants of Usambara valued forests very differently. A point which emerges prominently from his discussion of European – and particularly German - perceptions of Usambara is that they were shaped by a fundamentally aesthetic and culture-bound appreciation of mountain landscapes. Yet, while Europeans gradually moved towards a more conservationist valuation of mountain forests, believes Conte, demographic pressure and incorporation into a market economy increasingly led the indigenous peoples of Usambara in the opposite direction. Mounting pressures to obtain money led villagers and pastoralists to clear and exploit their forests for commercial timbering and market farming.

It is this finding which leads Conte away from the perspective advanced by the other book which must be read alongside Highland Sanctuary for a full appreciation of colonial Usambara – Steven Feierman’s Peasant Intellectuals. Where Feierman emphasizes the enduring salience of an old political culture, Conte sees the old culture crumbling under the weight of destructive colonial pressures. Feierman suggests that desire for the revival of the sort of political authority which had been capable in precolonial society of “healing the land” --a desire which might be read as evidence of indigenous commitment to conservation--underlay nationalism in Usambara. By contrast, Conte sees the colonial economy causing expansion of market production, aggressive clearing of fragile mountain land, and soil erosion. As a result, he believes that the increasing scarcity of arable land and declining security of land tenure forced many of the poor either to leave Usambara or to join the nationalists. It was the “tensions of hunger,” he argues, “[which stoked] the fires of resistance, [as] the ancient ties that bound the mountain peoples with their environment strained under the pressure of agrarian change” (145).

Conte’s argument helps to show why environmental historians should be careful of throwing around the concept of “healing the land” without Feierman’s care and nuance. It is far too simplistic to see “healing the land” as an ethic uniting of agrarian communities. This ethic also legitimizes power, which could be deployed coercively and divisively. In demanding the revival of such power in the 1950s, Washambaa villagers surely were not simply critiquing colonial power, but were seeking to rein in members of their own communities who exploited their neighbors’ labor, land and forest as market opportunities widened dramatically. The fault lines of division ran not only between the colonial state and local communities, but also through the interior of mountain communities. Another fault line ran between local residents and the outsiders who came to the mountains from Kenya and elsewhere in Tanganyika for market farming and timber harvesting. The post-independence TANU government sought to resolve this particular division by allowing national interests to override local and tribal claims to resources. Unfortunately, the primacy given national interests left the mountain communities, which had the most to lose from the rapacious exploitation of their forests with little ability to control intruders. Here Highland Sanctuary reveals, I think, the cost of allowing nationalism – indispensable as it was in the late-colonial, Cold War moment --to supplant older, more localized political cultures. As Conte shows, precolonial political authority in Usambara found ways of controlling pastoralist newcomers while permitting them access to certain ecological niches. Nearly half a century after independence, the national state of Tanzania is still struggling to find equally successful ways of regulating similar competition for land and natural resources.

James Giblin
University of Iowa