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.
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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 Tanzanias 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, Contes 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 Usambaras 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
Feiermans 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).
Contes argument helps to show why
environmental historians should be careful of throwing
around the concept of healing the land
without Feiermans 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
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