By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Jan 13 2016 (IPS)

On a very dry November 2013, Jamaica’s Meteorological Service made its first official drought forecast when the newly developed Climate Predictability Tool (CPT) was used to predict a high probability of below average rainfall in the coming three months.

By February, the agency had officially declared a drought in the eastern and central parishes of the island based on the forecasts. July’s predictions indicated that drought conditions would continue until at least September.

Said to be the island’s worst in 30 years, the 2014 drought saw Jamaica’s eastern parishes averaging rainfall of between 2 and 12 per cent, well below normal levels. Agricultural data for the period shows that production fell by more than 30 per cent over 2013 and estimates are that losses due to crop failures and wild fires amounted to one billion dollars.

Jamaica’s agricultural sector accounts for roughly seven per cent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs about 20 per cent of its workforce.

The Met Service’s, Glenroy Brown told IPS, “The CPT was the main tool used by our Minister (of Water, Land, Environment & Climate Change) Robert Pickersgill throughout 2015 to advise the nation on the status of drought across the island .”

It was also used but the National Water Commission (NWC) to guide its implementation of island-wide water restrictions.

A technician with Jamaica’s Met Service, Brown designed and implemented the tool in collaboration with Simon Mason, a climate scientist from Columbia University’s International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The tool provides a Windows package for constructing a seasonal climate drought forecast model, producing forecasts with updated rainfall and sea surface temperature data,” he explained.

The innovation was one of the first steps in building resilience under Jamaica’s national climate policy. It provides drought-monitoring forecasts that allows farmers to plan their planting around dry periods and has been “tailored for producing seasonal climate forecasts from a general circulation model (GCM), or for producing forecasts using fields of sea-surface temperatures,” Brown said.

The tool combines a number of applications including Google Earth and localised GIS maps, to generate one to five day forecasts that are country and location specific. The information is broken down and further simplified by way of colour-coded information and text messages for the not so tech-savvy user.

The tool designed by Brown and Mason also incorporated IRI’s own CPT (designed by Mason) that was already being used by Caribbean countries with small meteorological services and limited resources, to produce their own up-to-date seasonal climate forecasts. The new tool combined data on recent rainfall and rainfall predictions to provide a forecast that focused specifically on drought.

“It was important for us to design a system that addressed Jamaica’s needs upfront, but that would also be suitable for the rest of the region,” Mason noted.

The scientists explained, “Because impact of a drought is based on the duration of the rainfall” and not only the amount of rainfall, looking forward is not enough to predict droughts because of factors related to accumulation and intensification.

“What we’re doing is essentially putting a standard three-month rainfall forecast in context with recent rainfall measurements,” Mason, told USAID’s publication Frontlines last May. He noted that if below-normal rainfall activity was recorded during an unusually dry period, indications were there was a “fairly serious drought” ahead.

Sheldon Scott from Jamaica’s Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) told IPS that farmers who used the SMS information were able to avoid the worse effects of the drought.

“The impacts were visible in relation to farmers who used the information and others who didn’t, because those who did were able to manage the mitigating factors more effectively,” he said.

During the period, more than 500 farmers received text alerts and about 700,000 bulletins were sent to agricultural extension officers.

Among the farmers who signed up for text messaging service, Melonie Risden told Frontlines, “The information we received from the Met office gave us drought forecasts in terms of probabilities. We still decided to plant because we were fortunate to have access to the river and could fill up water drums ahead of time in anticipation of the drought.”

Risden lost the corn she planted on the 13-acre property in Crooked River, Clarendon, one of the parishes hardest hit by the drought with only two per cent of normal rainfall, but was able to save much of the peas, beans and hot peppers.

Six months after Jamaica’s Met Service made its ground-breaking forecast, the CIMH presented the first region-wide drought outlook at the Caribbean Regional Climate Outlook Forum in Kingston. Now 23 other Caribbean and Central American countries are using the tool to encourage climate change resilience and inform decision-making.

“Regionally the tool is now a standard fixture across several countries within the region, including the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Haiti. This regional effort is coordinated by the CIMH,” Brown said.

Back in Jamaica, the tool is being hailed “a game-changer” in the climate fight by Jeffery Spooner head of the Met Service, who described the CPT as “an extremely important tool in Climate Change forecasting and specifically for the agricultural – including fisheries- and water sectors for rainfall projection .”

The CPT is now also used to provide regular monthly bulletins that are published by the Meteorological Service on their web site www.jamaicaclimate.net. RADA has also continued to use the CPT in its extension service, to enhance the ability of farmers’ and other agricultural interests to improve water harvesting, planting and other activities.

Since most of the island’s small farms depend on rainfall, more farmers – including those with large holdings – are using the information to better manage water use and guide their activities, Scott said.

Local and intentional scientists have linked the extreme atmospheric conditions related to the droughts affecting Jamaica and the region to the persistent high-pressure systems that has prevented the formation of tropical cyclones to global warming and climate change.

Across the agricultural sector, Jamaica continues to feel the impacts of drought and the challenges are expected to increase with the climate change. In a 2013 agricultural sector support analysis, the Inter-American Development Bank estimated, low impact on extreme climate events on Jamaica’s agriculture sector by 2025 could reach 3.4 per cent of “baseline GDP” annually.

In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Synthesis Report (AR5) pointed to tools like the CPT to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Its importance to Jamaica’s and the region’s food security and water sector cannot be overlooked.

In addition to adaptation for the water sector, the CPT is being modified to provide early warning indicators for wind speeds and coral bleaching among among other applications, said the report.

And as showers of blessings cooled the land and brought much relief in the closing months of the year, CPT shows the drought could well be over.

(End)

Carcases of dead sheep and goats stretch across the landscape following drought in Somaliland in 2011, one of the climate impacts that experts say should be actively tackled by African countries themselves without passively relying on international assistance. Photo credit: Oxfam East Africa/CC by 2.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
PARIS, Jul 23 2015 (IPS)

African countries would do well to take their own lead in finding ways to better adapt to and mitigate the changes that climate may impose on future  generations instead of relying only on foreign aid.

This was one of the messages that rang out during the international scientific conference on ‘Our Common Future under Climate Change’ held earlier this month in Paris, six months before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), also to be held in Paris, that is supposed to pave the way for a global agreement to keep the rise in the Earth’s temperature under 2°C.African countries would do well to take their own lead in finding ways to better adapt to and mitigate the changes that climate may impose on future generations instead of relying only on foreign aid

Africa is already feeling climate change effects on a daily basis, according to Penny Urquhart from South Africa, an independent specialist and one of the lead authors of the 5^th Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Projections suggest that temperature rise on the continent will likely exceed 2°C by 2100 with land temperatures rising faster than the global land average. Scientific assessments agree that Africa will also face more climate changes in the future, with extreme weather events increasing in terms of frequency, intensity and duration.

“Most sub-Saharan countries have high levels of climate vulnerability,” Urquhart told IPS. “Over the years, people became good at adapting to those changes but what we are seeing is increasing risks associated with climate change as this becomes more and more pressing.”

Although data monitoring systems are still poor and sparse over the region, “we do know there is an increase in temperature,” she added, warning that if the global average temperature increases by 2°C by the end of the century, this will be experienced as if it had increased by 4°C in Southern Africa, stated Urquhart.

According to the South African expert, vulnerability to climate variation is very context-specific and depends on people’s exposure to the impacts, so it is hard to estimate the number of people affected by global warming on the continent.

However, IPCC says that of the estimated 800 million people who live in Africa, more than 300 million survive in conditions of water scarcity, and the numbers of people at risk of increased water stress on the continent is projected to be 350-600 million by 2050.

In some areas, noted Urquhart, it is not easy to predict what is happening with the rainfall. “In the Horn of Africa region the observations seem to be showing decreasing rainfall but models are projecting increasing rainfall.”

There have been extreme weather events along the Western coast of the continent, while Mozambique has seen an increase in cyclones that lead to flooding. “Those are the sum of trends that we are seeing,” Urquhart, “drying mostly along the West and increase precipitations in the East of Africa”.

For Edith Ofwona, senior programme specialist of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), one of the sectors most vulnerable to climate variation in Africa is agriculture – the backbone of most African economies – and this could have direct negative impacts on food security.

“The biggest challenge,” she said, “is how to work with communities not only to cope with short-term impacts but actually to be able to adapt and be resilient over time. We should come up with practical solutions that are affordable and built on the knowledge that communities have.”

Experts agree that any measure to address climate change should be responsive to social needs, particularly where severe weather events risk uprooting communities from their homelands by leaving families with no option but to migrate in search of better opportunities.

This new phenomenon has created what it is starting to be called “climate migrants”, said Ofwona.

Climate change could also exacerbate social conflicts that are aggravated by other drivers such as competition over resources and land degradation. According to the IDRC expert, “you need to consider the multi-stress nature of poverty on people’s livelihoods … and while richer people may be able to adapt, poor people will struggle.”

Ofwona said that the key is to combine scientific evidence with what communities themselves know, and make it affordable and sustainable. “It is important to link science to society and make it practical to be able to change lives and deal with the challenges people face, especially in addressing food security requirements.”

Meanwhile, she added, consciousness in Africa of the impacts of climate change is “fairly high” – some countries have already defined their own climate policies and strategies, and others have green growth strategies with low carbon and sustainable development.

Stressing the critical role that African nations themselves play in terms of creating the right environmental policy, Ofwona said that they should be protagonists in dealing with climate impacts and not only passive in receiving international help.

African governments should provide some of the funding that will be needed to implement adaptation and mitigation projects and while “we can also source internationally, to some extent we need to contribute with our own money. While the consciousness is high, the extent of the commitment is not equally high.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist. Cyclone survivors in Myanmar shelter in the ruins of their destroyed home. Credit: UNHCR/Taw Naw Htoo

By Ido Liven
LONDON, Nov 10 2014 (IPS)

Climate change is projected by many scientists to bring with it a range of calamities – from widespread floods, to prolonged heatwaves and slowly but relentlessly rising seas – taking the heaviest toll on those already most vulnerable.

When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist.

While many could be uprooted in search of a safer place to live, either temporarily or permanently, some may become “climate hostages”, unable to escape.

“People around the world are more or less mobile, depending on a range of factors,” argues Prof Richard Black from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, “but they can become trapped in circumstances where they want or need [to move] but cannot.”When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist … they may become “climate hostages”, unable to escape

According to Black, “it is most likely to be because they cannot afford it, or because there is no [social] network for them to follow or job for them to do … or because there is some kind of policy barrier to movement such as a requirement for a visa that is unobtainable, in some countries even the requirement for an exit visa that is unobtainable.”

For the most vulnerable, climate change could mean double jeopardy – first, from worsening environmental conditions threatening their livelihood, and second, from the diminished financial, social and even physical assets required for moving away provoked by this situation.

A project on migration and global environmental change led by Black was one of the first to draw attention to the notion of “trapped populations”.

In its report, published in 2011 by the Foresight think tank at the U.K. Government Office for Science, the authors warned that “in the decades ahead, millions of people will be unable to move away from locations in which they are extremely vulnerable to environmental change.”

An example the Foresight report mentions is that of inhabitants of small island states living in flood-prone areas or near exposed coasts. People in these areas might not have the means to address these hazards and also lack the resources to migrate out of the islands.

The report warned that such situations could escalate to risky displacement and humanitarian emergencies.

In fact, past cases offer some evidence of groups of people who have become immobile as a result of either extreme weather events or even slow onset crises.

One such example, says Black, is the drought in the 1980s in Africa’s Sahel region, when there was a decrease in the numbers of adult men who chose to migrate – the same people who would otherwise leave the area.

“Under drought conditions they were less able to do so because that involves drawing on your assets – in the Sahel often assets would be livestock – and the drought kills livestock, which means you can’t convert livestock into cash, and then you can’t pay the smuggler or afford the cost of the journey that would take you out of that area.”

Nevertheless, Black argues that in many cases it would be especially difficult to distinguish people who remain because they can and wish to, from those who are really unable to leave. In addition, environmental change could also drive people to migrate towards areas where they are even more at risk than those they have left.

In the Mekong delta in southern Vietnam, researchers foresee climate change contributing to floods, loss of land and increased soil salinity. Facing these hazards, local residents in an already impoverished region could find themselves unable to cope, and also unable to move away.

“It would generally be income and assets that will determine whether people can stay where they are or need to relocate,” says Dr Christopher Smith from the University of Sussex, who is currently conducting a European Community-funded project assessing the risk of trapped populations in the Mekong delta.

“Within the short term, it would mostly be temporary movement, but in the future … there could be more permanent migration.”

According to Smith, “the Mekong, being such a long river that flows through so many different countries, will make [this case] quite unique in terms of changes to the water budget in the delta and, of course, factors like cultures and populations in the delta will play a part.”

Conclusions from the study are likely to be relevant to other cases around the world, and specifically to other low lying mega-deltas with similar characteristics, Smith adds.

In Guatemala, researchers found that relatively isolated mountain communities could also be facing the risk of becoming stranded by climate change.

According to a study published earlier this year, irregular rainfall could be posing a serious threat for the food security and sources of income of communities in the municipality of Cabricán who rely on subsistence rain-fed agriculture.

Yet, the risks associated with climate change are not confined to developing countries. Hurricane Katrina, which hit the south-east of the United States in 2005, offered a vivid example when the New Orleans’ Superdome housed more than 20,000 people over several days.

“That was to do with the fact that an evacuation plan had been designed with the idea that everybody would leave by car, but essentially there were sections of the population that didn’t have a car and were not going to leave by car, and also some people who didn’t believe the messages around evacuation,” says Black.

“And those people who were trapped in the eye of the storm were then more likely to be displaced later – so they were more likely to end up in one of the trailer parks, the temporary accommodation put on by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Scientists are wary of linking Hurricane Katrina, or any single extreme weather event, to climate change. Yet, studies show that a warmer world might not necessarily mean more hurricanes, but such storms could be fiercer than those that these areas are used to.

Beyond science, says Black, international organisations are aware of the issue. “I’ve had quite extensive discussions with UNHCR [the U.N. refugee agency], the International Organization for Migration, the European Commission and a number of other bodies on these matters. There is a degree of interest in this idea that people can be trapped.”

A paper on Populations ‘trapped’ at times of crisis written by Black with Michael Collyer of the University of Sussex and published in February, notes that while it might still be early to suggest specific policy measures to address this predicament, there are several steps decision makers can take, and not only on the national level.

“As long as we have limited information on trapped populations,” say the authors, “the policy goal should be to avoid situations in which people are unable to move when they want to, not to promote policy that encourages them to move when they may not want to, and up-to-date information allowing them to make an informed choice.”

Intergovernmental fora – and among them the loss and damage stream in international climate negotiations – are yet to address specifically the challenge of trapped populations, but Europe might already be showing the way.

A European Commission working paper on climate change, environmental degradation and migration that accompanies the European Union’s strategy on adaptation to climate change adopted in April 2013 mentions the risk of trapped populations, albeit implicitly only outside the region, and recommends steps to address the issue.

Reviewing existing research on the links between climate change, environmental degradation and migration, the authors note that relocation, while questionably effective, “may nevertheless become a necessity in certain scenarios” such as the case of trapped communities.

“The EU should therefore consider supporting countries severely exposed to environmental stressors to assess the path of degradation and design specific preventive internal, or where necessary, international relocation measures when adaptation strategies can no longer be implemented,” states the working paper.

Ultimately, the situation where individuals, families, and indeed entire communities, find themselves unable to move out of harm’s way is not unique to the effects of climate change – it can be other natural hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or human-induced crises like armed conflict.

The international community’s response to people moving in the face of such crises is most often based on giving them a status, such as “internally displaced persons”, “asylum seekers” or “refugees”.

But this would not be the appropriate response when people remain, argues Black.

For them, “the issue is not a lack of legal status – it’s a lack of options … Public policy needs to be geared around providing people with options, in my view, both ahead of disasters and in the immediate aftermath of disasters.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Tank trucks being filled with water in front of Osman Bin Affan Mosque in Beirut. Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

By Oriol Andrés Gallart
BEIRUT, Jul 28 2014 (IPS)

In front of Osman Bin Affan Mosque, in a central but narrow street of Beirut, several tank trucks are being filled with large amounts of water. The mosque has its own well, which allows it to pump water directly from the aquifers that cross the Lebanese underground. Once filled, the trucks will start going through the city to supply hundreds of homes and shops.

In a normal year, the water trucks do not appear until September, but this year they have started working even before summer because of the severe drought currently affecting Lebanon.

This comes on top of the increased pressure on the existing water supply due to the presence of more than one million Syrian refugees fleeing the war, exacerbating a situation which may lead to food insecurity and public health problems.“The more we deplete our groundwater reserves, the less we can rely on them in the coming season. If next year we have below average rainfalls, the water conditions will be much worse than today” – Nadim Farajalla of the Issam Fares Institute (IFI)

Rains were scarce last winter. While the annual average in recent decades was above 800 mm, this year it was around 400 mm, making it one of the worst rainfall seasons in the last sixty years.

The paradox is that Lebanon should not suffer from water scarcity. Annual precipitation is about 8,600 million cubic metres while normal water demand ranges between 1,473 and 1,530 million cubic metres per year, according to the Impact of Population Growth and Climate Change on Water Scarcity, Agricultural Output and Food Security report published  in April by the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) at the American University of Beirut.

However, as Nadim Farajalla, Research Director of IFI’s Climate Change and Environment in the Arab World Programme, explains, the country’s inability to store water efficiently, water pollution and its misuse both in agriculture and for domestic purposes, have put great pressure on the resource.

According to Bruno Minjauw, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative ad interim in the country as well as Resilience Officer, Lebanon “has always been a very wet country. Therefore, the production system has never looked so much at the problem of water.”

Referring to the figures for rainfall, Minjauw says that “what we are seeing is definitely an issue of climate change. Over the years, drought or seasons of scarcity have become more frequent”. In his opinion, the current drought must be taken as a warning: “It is time to manage water in a better way.”

However, he continues, “the good news is that this country is not exploiting its full potential in terms of sustainable water consumption, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.”

Meanwhile, water has become an issue, with scarcity hitting particularly hard the agricultural sector, which accounts for 60 percent of the water consumed despite the sector’s limited impact on the Lebanese economy (agriculture contributed to 5.9% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011).

“Some municipalities are limiting what farmers can plant,” explains Gabriel Bayram, an agricultural advisor with KDS, a local development consultancy.

Minjauw believes that there is a real danger “in terms of food insecurity because we have more people [like refugees] coming while production is diminishing.” Nevertheless, he points out that the current crisis has increased the interest of government and farmers in “increase the quantity of land using improved irrigation systems, such as the drip irrigation system, which consume much less water.” Drip irrigation saves water – and fertiliser – by allowing water to drip slowly through a network of  tubes that deliver water directly to the base of the plant.

FAO is also working to promote the newest technologies in agriculture within the framework of a 4-year plan to improve food security and stabilise rural livelihoods in Lebanon.

Sheik Osama Chehab, in charge of the Osman Bin Affan Mosque, explains that, 20 years ago, water could be found three metres under the ground surface. “Yesterday,” he told IPS, “we dug 120 metres and did not find a drop.”

Digging wells has long been the main alternative to insufficient public water supplies in Lebanon and, according to the National Water Sector Strategy, there are about 42,000 wells throughout the country, half of which are unlicensed.

However, notes Farajalla “this has led to a drop in the water table and along the coast most [aquifers] are experiencing sea water intrusion, thus contaminating these aquifers for generations to come. The more we deplete our groundwater reserves, the less we can rely on them in the coming season. If next year we have below average rainfalls, the water conditions will be much worse than today.”

Besides, he cautions, “most of these wells have not passed quality tests. Therefore there are also risks that water use could trigger diseases among the population.”

The drought is also exacerbating tensions between host communities and Syrian refugees.

The rural municipality of Barouk, for example, whose springs and river supply water to big areas in Lebanon, today can count on only 30 percent of the usual quantity of water available. However, consumption needs have risen by around 25 percent as a result of the presence of 2,000 refugees and Barouk’s deputy mayor Dr. Marwan Mahmoud explains that this has generated complaints against newcomers.

However, Minjauw believes that “within that worrisome context, there is the possibility to mitigate the conflict and turn it into a win-win situation, employing both host and refugee communities in building long-term solutions for water management and conservation as well as forest maintenance and management. This would be beneficial for Lebanese farmers in the long term while enhancing the livelihoods of suffering people.”

For Farajalla, part of the problem related to water is that “there is a general lack of awareness and knowledge among decision-makers” in Lebanon, and he argues that it is up to civil society to lead the process, pressuring the government for “more transparency and better governance and accountability” in water management.

He claims that “the government failed with this drought by not looking at it earlier.” So far, a cabinet in continuous political crisis has promoted few and ineffective measures to alleviate the drought. One of the most recent ideas was to import water from Turkey, with prohibitive costs.

“Soon, you will also hear about projects to desalinate sea water,” says Farajalla. “Both ideas are silly because in Lebanon we can improve a lot of things before resorting to these drastic measures.”

A declining economy and a severe drought have raised concerns in Lebanon over food security as the country faces one of its worst refugee crises, resulting from the nearby Syria war, and it is these refugees and impoverished Lebanese border populations that are most vulnerable to this new threat.

A severe drought has put the Lebanese agricultural sector at risk. According to the Meteorological Department at Rafik Hariri International Airport, average rainfall in 2014 is estimated at 470 mm, far below annual averages of 824 mm.

The drought has left farmers squabbling over water. “We could not plant this year and our orchards are drying up, we are only getting six hours of water per week,” says Georges Karam, the mayor of Zabougha, a town located in the Bekfaya area in Lebanon.“Any major domestic or regional security or political disruptions which undermine economic growth and job creation could lead to higher poverty levels and associated food insecurity” – Maurice Saade of the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa Department

The drought has resulted in a substantial decline in agricultural production throughout the country. “The most affected products are fruits and vegetables, the prices of which have increased, thus affecting economic access of the poor and vulnerable populations,”says Maurice Saade, Senior Agriculture Economist at the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Department.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs. Although most households in Lebanon are considered food secure, lower income households are vulnerable to inflationary trends in food items because they tend to spend a larger share of their disposable income on staples, explains Saade.

Lebanon’s poverty pockets are generally concentrated in the north (Akkar and Dinnyeh), Northern Bekaa (Baalbek and Hermel) and in the south, as well as the slums located south of Beirut. These areas currently host the largest number areas of refugee population, fleeing the nearby Syria war.

According to Clemens Breisinger, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Lebanon currently imports about 90 percent of its food needs. “This means meant that the drought’s impact should be limited in term of the food available on the market,” he says.

However, populations residing in Lebanon’s impoverished areas are still at risk, especially those who are not financially supported by relatives (as is the custom in Lebanon) or benefit from state aid or from local charities operating in border areas. Lebanese host populations are most likely the most vulnerable to food insecurity, explains Saade.

According to the UNHCR, there are just over one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon. While the food situation is still manageable thanks to efforts of international donors who maintain food supplies to the population, “these rations are nonetheless always threatened by the lack of donor funding,” Saade stresses. In addition, refugee populations are largely dependent on food aid, because they are essentially comprised of women and children, with little or no access to the job market.

Given that Lebanon depends to a large extent on food imports, mostly from international markets, maintaining food security also depends on the ability of lower income groups to preserve their purchasing power as well as the stability of these external markets.

“This means that any major domestic or regional security or political disruptions which undermine economic growth and job creation could lead to higher poverty levels and associated food insecurity,” says Saade.

In addition any spikes in international food prices, such as those witnessed in 2008, could lead to widespread hunger among vulnerable populations.

Breisinger believes that despite increased awareness of the international community, the factors leading to a new food crisis are still present.Increased demand for food generally, fuel prices, the drop in food reserves, certain government policies as well as the diversion of grain and oilseed crops for biofuel production are elements that put pressure on the food supply chain and can eventually contribute to hunger in certain vulnerable countries.

To avoid such a risk, some countries have implemented specific measures such as building grain reserves. “I am not sure how Lebanon has reacted so far,” says Breisinger.  With little government oversight and widespread corruption, Lebanon’s vulnerability to food insecurity has been compounded by unforgiving weather conditions, a refugee crisis and worsening economic conditions which, if left unattended, could spiral out of control.

Yamilé Venero strings tobacco leaves onto long poles for natural curing on the Valle farm, in the municipality of San Juan y Martínez, the centre of production of this preeminently Cuban crop. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
SAN JUAN Y MARTÍNEZ, Cuba, Mar 6 2014 (IPS)

Near the close of the harvest , local people in the Cuban municipality of San Juan y Martínez, which boasts the finest tobacco plantations in the world, are seeing their hopes of a plentiful season dashed by unexpected winter rains.

“It’s been a bad year, a rebellious one as we call it. There was a lot of rain, which rots the plants. Tobacco needs sun during the day and cold at night,” 67-year-old Dámaso Rodríguez, a worker on the Valle plantation in this municipality, 180 kilometres west of Havana, in the province of Pinar del Río, told IPS.

“We are late with the farm chores,” said Yamilé Venero, a young tobacco worker on the same plantation. “It’s not worth planting again,” added María Teresa Ventos, a 54-year-old woman who comes every season to string the tobacco leaves onto long poles for drying in this agricultural industry which is a source of temporary jobs for women.

Since November, when the season started, there has been too much rain in the province which was expected to supply 70 percent of the 26,400 tonnes of tobacco leaf forecast for the 2013-2014 harvest. San Juan y Martínez and the neighbouring municipality of San Luis were severely affected; between them they provide 86 percent of the tobacco for the prized and costly Havana cigars.

Local sources reported the loss of 813 hectares in Pinar del Río and partial damage in a further 1,000 hectares, out of the provincial plan for 15,000 hectares. Many farms had to uproot their tobacco plants and replant three times over.

Tobacco is Cuba’s third export, after nickel and medical products.

In 2013, the country earned 447 million dollars from tobacco, eight percent more than in 2012 when the Anglo-Cuban corporation Habanos S.A. made 416 million dollars. It is the sole vendor of Cuban cigars worldwide, trading in 160 countries, with most of its business in Europe, although cigars are doing well in Asia and the Middle East.

The storm clouds over Pinar del Río, in the west of the country, may hurt sales this year, along with other problems like tough anti-tobacco laws in Europe and the economic blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba because of the of conflict between Washington and Havana that has gone on for half a century.

To weather the damage done by the downpours, plantations in Pinar extended their planting season, which usually ends in January, by 45 days, and delayed other major tasks of the current tobacco harvest. They have also resorted to harvesting “capadura” (lower quality) leaf and plant regrowth, in order to maximise production.

On the Valle plantation, 12 skilled men continue to harvest tobacco leaves and take them to a high-roofed wooden barn at one side of the estate. Inside, 12 women string the leaves in bunches and arrange them on long poles which are then hung in tiers right up to the slanted roof for traditional curing (controlled drying) in air.

“After all, the tobacco is good quality, but not as good as before,” Rodríguez said. This veteran tobacco grower, the son and grandson of peasant farmers, is concerned that the strange weather in his birthplace “is no longer the same” as it was three decades ago.

The unique combination of temperature, soil and humidity in the Vuelta Abajo region, in the west of the province, is essential for the development of the best handmade premium cigars on the planet, a process that involves close to 190 different operations.

Only here can all the types of leaf be grown that are used in making cigars, the successors to the rolled leaves smoked by native people on the island of Cuba when Spanish colonists arrived in 1492.

Dayana Hernández and Aliet Achkienazi, researchers at the state Meteorology Institute, have forecast that this territory will become warmer every decade this century, unsettling the conditions that give Cuban cigars their exclusive taste, aroma and texture and have earned them their protected designation of origin (PDO).

The PDO protects agricultural products that have a quality and characteristics fundamentally or exclusively due to geographical factors in their place of origin. In this case it is reserved for cigars of over three grams, made in Cuba according to traditional methods from varieties of Cuban black tobacco.

The study “Impacto del cambio climático sobre el cultivo del tabaco en la zona de Pinar del Río, Cuba” (Impact of climate change on tobacco cultivation in the area of Pinar del Río, Cuba) analysed particularly productive districts in the province, including San Juan y Martínez and San Luis.

On the basis of future climate scenarios, the authors forecast that rising temperatures will not cause great harm in the next few decades, but later on, as warming increases, crop yields will decline. However, in the north of the area they studied, the climate will be more stable and it is less likely that temperatures will exceed 25 degrees Celsius.

The study found that “the impact of climate change can be mitigated in conditions compatible with the sustainable development” of the delicate tobacco leaf. It recommended “further research” into the effects of imbalances in the rainfall patterns on the plantations.

The experienced eye of Francisco José Prieto, the manager of the Valle plantation, who owns 4.5 hectares that have belonged to his family since his grandfather’s days, led him to take steps ahead of the inclement weather.

He planted early, and was already harvesting “when the rains intensified,” he told IPS. “I didn’t have to replant,” said this member and president of the Tomás Valdés Credit and Services Cooperative (CCS), which groups 50 farms in Vuelta Abajo.

The CCSs were created in the 1960s as voluntary associations of small farmers who retain ownership of their land, and gain collective access to technologies, financing and sales facilities for their products.

But in spite of his efforts, Prieto doubts whether this harvest will be as good as the last, when his farm produced 158 quintals (7,272 kilos), a record result.

Prieto uses soil conservation techniques on his land. He sprays the tobacco only once, and after the harvest, he plants crop varieties that improve the soil, like maize and jack beans. “They provide shade, conserve nutrients that otherwise would be washed away by the rains, and they are dug in as a green manure,” he said.

The 44,863 people living in San Juan y Martínez, on large estates dotted with simple houses with light roofs, depend on the success of each tobacco harvest. “We are paid fixed wages, with bonuses for productivity,” union leader Celeste Muñoz told IPS.

Constantly working dry tobacco wrapper leaf from the last harvest on her roller, Muñoz, employed for the last 17 years in a centre for tobacco collection, selection and processing, said that her team of 50 women is trying to “recover as much dry leaf as possible.”

She is not sure whether it is “because of the climate, the fertilisers or the variety planted,” but she claims that the yield “is less than before. We got as many as 1,000 quintals (46,039 kilos) of dry leaf in one season,” she said nostalgically.

Maryam Akhtar, a farmer in Kashmir, worries the taps will not yield enough water for her family's daily needs. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS

By Athar Parvaiz
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.

Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.

Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.

Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.

“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.

Most residents of this lush valley, nestled between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range, are unaccustomed to drought. For generations subsistence agriculturalists have relied on steady rainfall and glacial rivers to irrigate their farmland, but now this scenic alpine region is feeling the pinch of climate change.

The most recent State of the Environment Report (SOER), released by the Directorate of Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing in the capital, Srinagar, says that all its monitoring stations across Kashmir – except Jammu, which is located 290 km away from the capital – recorded a decreasing trend in total annual rainy days.

A number of other studies carried out in recent years corroborate these findings, adding that glaciers in the Kashmir Himalayas are receding, while snowfall and precipitation are both showing decreasing trends.

A study by Norwegian scientist Andreas Kaab and his French colleagues, which was published by Nature Magazine in August last year, found that increasing temperatures in the region posed no immediate threat to glaciers in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalayas (HKKH) except to those in the Kashmir Himalayas.

Kaab’s findings suggest that Kashmir’s glaciers may be receding by “as much as half a metre annually,” presenting an immediate threat to the rivers that feed the Indus basin.

Jhelum, the largest river in the region, originates in South Kashmir and is fed by glaciers in the upper reaches of the town of Pahalgam. One of the river Jhelum’s primary tributaries, the Lidder, is fed by the Kolhai glacier, which is receding fast.

Quoting a study conducted by Kashmir University’s geography department, Department Head Mohammad Sultan Bhat informed IPS that, since 1975, precipitation in the lower parts of Kashmir has declined by 1.2 centimetres in lower altitudes and eight cm in higher altitudes.

These trends, say experts, bode badly for the future of Kashmir’s agricultural industry: according to figures in the most recent Kashmir Economic Survey, only 42 percent of agricultural land in Kashmir is covered by irrigation facilities like canals and lift stations, while the remaining 58 percent is entirely dependent on rainfall.

Following the enforcement of the Big Landed Estates Abolition Act in 1959, over 9,000 landowners were stripped of over 100,000 hectares of land, which was transferred to peasants, thereby creating an agrarian-based economy in Kashmir.

Over 80 percent of the population is now dependent on agriculture for a livelihood, cultivating such crops as rice, maize, pulses, saffron and potatoes.

Official statistics indicate that 75 percent of agricultural land – roughly 46,943 hectares – is under paddy cultivation in Kashmir, indicating that rice farmers comprise the bulk of agriculturalists here.

Early this year, scientists from the earth sciences department at the Kashmir University revealed that increases in temperature and a considerable reduction in precipitation would result in a sharp decrease in paddy yields across the region.

Earlier this year, renowned scientists Shakil A. Romshoo and M. Muslim presented a paper at the Indian Science Congress in New Delhi, predicting that rice production would decrease by 6.6 percent (over 4,000 kg per hectare) by 2040.

According to Romshoo, these projected declines are based on predictions that maximum and minimum temperature will increase by 5.39degrees Celsius and 5.08degrees Celsius respectively by 2090.  Precipitation levels are likely to decrease by about 16.67 percent by 2090.

Most farmers in Kashmir earn roughly 1,900 dollars a year and produce an annual average of 40 quintals (4,000 kgs) of paddy per hectare. Experts say these farmers will struggle to withstand the decrease in yields that will undoubtedly accompany the predicted weather changes.

Already countless families are feeling the pinch of decreasing water supplies. Nasreena Begum, a mother of three children living in the village of Surigam in the northern Kupwara district, spends several hours every morning walking over a kilometre to fetch water from a stagnant pond, since the stream that once bordered her village has completely dried up.

She told IPS she makes the trek several times a day in order to collect enough water to meet her family’s daily needs.

In addition to drinking and washing water, she must also ensure that the family cow is properly watered, since her children rely heavily on the cow’s milk for nourishment and she herself sells five litres a day to the local milkman in order to supplement her husband’s meagre earnings as a daily labourer.

As the rains become thinner, and the glacier-fed rivers slow to a trickle, she and many other farming families will be forced to hunker down to weather a hotter and drier Kashmir.

(END)

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by heavy flooding along the Niger River over the last few weeks. Niger, Mali and Benin have been particularly hard hit, with dozens of deaths, tens of thousands of houses destroyed and vast areas of farmland submerged by rising waters.

In Niger alone, more than half a million people have been affected by floods. As of Sep. 12, 75 people had been killed, 37,000 homes submerged and crops destroyed in 150 of the country’s 366 communes, according to prime ministerial spokesman Oumarou Keïta, who also sits on Niger’s Inter-ministerial Committee for Prevention and Monitoring of Floods.

Flooding has been especially severe in Dosso, in the southwest, Tillabéri, in the west, and the capital, Niamey.

The scale of devastation in Niamey is such that Nigerien authorities have had to shelter displaced people in schools while preparing better sites for temporary housing.

“Since our house collapsed on Aug. 21, I’ve been living in this school with my husband and five children in very close quarters. There are three families sharing this single classroom with us,” said Fatouma Alzouma, 47, a resident of Saga, one of the Niamey neighbourhoods worst affected by the floods.

“We have had some assistance, but the food and other support they have given us is insufficient because people who haven’t lost their homes have fraudulently got their names onto the lists,” said Alzouma.

Koné Soungalo, a hydraulic modelling expert at the Niamey-based Niger Basin Authority, said the city is vulnerable to flooding because of the flat terrain.

Heavy rainfall throughout the two million square kilometre river basin has swollen the volume of water, he told IPS. Accelerated build-up of sand on the bed of the river – caused by degradation of land by human activity elsewhere in the river system – has aggravated the problem.

“The siltation obstructs the river’s flow, and causes a sharp rise in the water level over its banks here, as we saw a few days ago.”

The volumes of water are unprecedented, said Soungalo. “The water level climbed to 618 centimetres on Aug. 21, a peak higher than anything recorded in our database, which goes back to 1929.”

The Nigerien minister for agriculture, Oua Seydou, said 3,000 hectares of irrigated crops had been submerged, doing an estimated 5.8 million dollars of damage.

Further downstream, floodwaters killed seven people at Karimama and Malanville in northern Benin. In Nigeria, the National Emergency Management Agency said that water levels in two large reservoirs along the Niger River were at the highest level seen in 29 years, and ordered evacuation from low-lying areas in five states. The Nigerian Red Cross reported that 137 people had already been killed by flooding in that country since July, with 35,000 more displaced.

The threat is not limited to the 4,000 kilometre long Niger River. Heavy rains across West Africa are also causing other rivers to burst their banks.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that more than 400,000 people had been affected by floods In Chad, 255,000 hectares of crops were submerged and more than 73,000 houses destroyed. That country is preparing to spend two million dollars on emergency assistance and has asked for help from donors and humanitarian agencies amid fears of food insecurity.

An emergency release of water from a dam in Cameroon caused the Benue River to overflow, killing 30 people downstream in Nigeria.

In Senegal, 13 people have been reported killed by floods, with a lack of proper sanitation and drainage blamed.

Issoufou Maïgari, a hydrologist at the Agrhymet Regional Centre based in Niamey, said such rapid flows in the Bafing, a tributary of the Senegal River, have not been measured since 1961.

This year’s flooding in the Niger River basin only adds to the many challenges faced by governments in the region. The floods ironically follow several seasons of drought that have devastated farmers and herders in the Sahel.

Also worrying are various reports dating back to June and July that early rainfall in southern Algeria and northern parts of Niger, Mali and Chad created conditions for unusually large swarms of locusts that could threaten crops later this year.

Effective control of these pests, assistance to farmers, delivery of humanitarian aid – even a proper assessment of the various threats to agriculture and food security – are all complicated by armed rebellion in northern Mali and lower but worrisome levels of insecurity in Algeria, Libya, Niger and Chad.

The situation underscores the interdependence of people across borders. Averting a full-scale humanitarian crisis in the Sahel this year may require coordinated efforts throughout the region, experts say.

A successful women’s farming project in Ethiopia is a model for training other urban farmer groups all over Africa on how to adapt to climate change. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
ADDIS ABABA, Aug 24 2012 (IPS)

Eight years ago Kenbesh Mengesha earned an uncertain income collecting firewood from local government forests and selling them to her fellow slum-dwellers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She would earn on average about 50 cents a day, if she was lucky.

But now she is part of a successful women’s farming project that is a model for training other urban farmer groups all over Africa on how to adapt to climate change.

According to the World Bank, Ethiopia is extremely vulnerable to drought and other natural disasters such as floods, heavy rains, frost and heat waves. Global warming has worsened this, as global circulation models predict a 1.7 to 2.1 degree centigrade rise in the country’s mean temperature by 2050.

This is expected to have a significant impact on food security. As recently as 2011 the country and the entire Horn of Africa were hit by the worst drought in 60 years. It resulted in a severe food crisis, with the United Nations declaring famine in the region.

The World Bank estimates that food insecurity will cost Ethiopia 75 to 100 billion dollars each year to adapt to climate change from 2010 until 2050.  

So when Mengesha and 29 other women who also used to earn a living collecting firewood formed a local community organisation, it became the start of a safer and more sustainable way of life.

“Collecting firewood was and still is a risky job. I know of several women who have been raped by men who take advantage of them while in the bush collecting the firewood,” she says.

But today life is less uncertain for Mengesha. And she is no longer cutting down the country’s natural resources in order to get by.

Known as the Gurara Women’s Association, which now has a membership of 200, the group farms almost two hectares of free government-leased land near Gurara slum in Addis Ababa by practicing what it calls an integrated bioeconomy system.

Community self-help groups here are allowed to apply for government land through the local government and the sub-city administration – if the project is to be implemented within city environs. The women’s group has a five-year renewable lease.

This group of women has discovered innovative ways of handling the ever-changing climatic conditions and combating food insecurity.

They were trained by the non-governmental organisation Bioeconomy Africa, which runs the Africa Bioeconomy Capacity Development or ABCD Institute. The women underwent two weeks of training on different integrated techniques in small-scale agriculture.

And it has proved successful as it has earned the members of this association enough money to feed their families, pay school fees for their children and even create employment opportunities for others.

This in itself is a significant feat in this East African nation, which has a population of 82 million people and is the second-poorest country in the world. According to the Multidimensional Poverty Index, developed by Oxford University, 90 percent of Ethiopians live in utter poverty, with 39 percent surviving on 1.25 dollars a day.

“We learned how to utilise the least space whether fertile or not, for maximum agricultural production,” said Fantanesh Atnafic, one of the founding members of the organisation.

“In the recent past, we have seen environmental conditions change – drastically. Rainfall is no longer reliable as it was some 20 years ago. Yet when the dry spell comes, it is usually more prolonged than normal, which has a negative effect on agriculture in general,” she said.

But a changing climate does mean defeat for smallholder farmers, according to Dr. Getachew Tikubet, the director of operations at Bioeconomy Africa.

“It is true that the climatic conditions are changing, which is a huge setback for many African farmers. But the truth is that all problems have solutions. And that is what we are trying to address with African smallholder farmers,” he said.

The women’s association uses different methods of intensive farming that create an ideal environment for their crops.

“We usually blend indigenous knowledge of farming, such as use of manure, with scientific techniques learned from different organisations and individuals, which include extraction of biogas and methane gas from the cow dung before using the residue as manure,” said Atnafic, a mother of six whose husband was killed in the military 20 years ago.

The gases are used as fuel to replace the use of firewood.

“We have learned many things. For example, during hotter climatic conditions like what we are experiencing at the moment, we construct structures that are roofed using black nets in order to keep moisture in the soils,” explained Ihite Wolde Mariam, the association’s chairperson.

Black net roofing has been shown to reduce the amount of heat on the ground.

“Naturally, the black colour absorbs heat. And when we make a greenhouse with a black net, or make ordinary farm roofing using the black net above the crops, we actually reduce the heat underneath by 40 percent. This eventually reduces the evaporation rate, hence saving the soil moisture for the crops,” explained Tikubet.

The women’s group has managed to purchase 10 Friesian dairy cows for milk production.

The members currently grow various types of vegetables such as spinach, kale, tomatoes and carrots, as well as crops for commercial purposes. The fresh produce is used in the kitchen of the on-site restaurant they opened to the public.

“We also use cow dung to produce biogas that is used in the restaurant for cooking. After that, the dung is then converted into organic manure to be used for horticulture,” explained Mariam.

For further income generation, the group has started a poultry project, with 500 laying hens. It also has 12 beehives for honey production and four commercial bathrooms where slum-dwellers shower for a fee.

“This is one of the most successful urban farmer projects that has benefited from our training programme. They have become a model for training other farmer groups from all over Africa,” said Tikubet.

“They have clearly demonstrated that small-scale farming is the way to go, in order to achieve the much desired green revolution in Africa,” he said. “Unfortunately, modernisation neglects smallholder farmers.”

And each member of the group earns between 300 and 350 Birr (16 to 19 dollars) in dividends every month, in addition to the three dollars a day that they are paid for working on the farming project.

“The dividend is already good enough. It has enabled me to see my last-born son through secondary school, and it allows me to afford basic necessities and provide for my grandchildren as well,” said Mengesha, a mother of five.

*This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

“The palm tree is a means of survival,” said Tahya Mint Mohamed, a 44-year-old Mauritanian farmer and mother of three children. “We eat its dates; we make mats, beds and chairs from palms; the leaves are also used to make baskets and to feed our livestock.”

Mint Mohamed is the regional president of the associations for participatory management of oases in the Two Hodhs region of southwestern Mauritania (hodh means “basin” in Arabic) – an unusual position for a woman to hold in a traditionally male-dominated activity.

She was delighted to take IPS on a tour of her palm plantation, which is alive with activity during the date harvesting period between June and August.

“The plantation is my most precious investment. I maintain it carefully and water it with the help of my shadoof (a traditional irrigation system using a bucket and counterweight to draw water from a well),” she told IPS.

Her output depends heavily on rainfall and successfully fighting off the attentions of locusts, birds and animals, but she estimates her harvest this year will come in somewhere between 500 and 1,000 kilos of dates.

Mauritania has over 10,000 productive hectares of date palms, taking into account mature, productive palms as well as young trees that have not yet begun to bear fruit, and male palms – essential for pollination – according to Mohamed Ould Ahmed Banane, who oversees monitoring and evaluation for the Oases Sustainable Development Programme (PDDO).

Banane said nearly 20,000 people across the country depend on dates for their livelihood in five oasis regions: Adrar in the north, Tagant in the Centre, and Assaba and the two Hodhs in the southeast.

He estimates Mauritania’s annual production of dates at 60,000 tonnes, to which is added a small amount of imports – 1,000 tonnes from Algeria and 500 tonnes from Tunisia. Around 60 percent of dates are eaten between June and August, during the Guetna (the Arabic name for the season when dates are harvested). The rest is dried for consumption throughout the year.

Nutritionist Mohamed Baro said dates are rich in micronutrients like iron and calcium and are an excellent source of energy.

Hademine Ould Saleck, the imam of Nouakchott’s main mosque, said that there is a baraka (a blessing in Arabic) in dates, explaining that it is often the first thing eaten to break the fast during Ramadan, especially in date-producing countries.

But Mauritania’s oases have been badly affected by drought, suffering from siltation, a lack of water and declining soil fertility, said Banane.

“In Adrar, date production was clearly lower this year because of climatic threats, such as poor rainfall, dust and wind, which held back the harvest,” said Sid’Ahmed Ould Hmoymed, the mayor of Atar, the principal town of the Adrar region.

Mohamed Ould Haj, an experienced farmer, provided a gloomy summary of the situation in the region. “This year, we had nothing at all: no dates, no wheat, no barley, no vegetables and no watermelons because of the drought.”

But Cheikh Ould Moustapha, regional coordinator for PDDO in Adrar, told IPS that while it has been a challenging year, Ould Haj’s income from all sources will come to between 2,500 and 3,000 dollars.

Besides the drought, tourist activity in all of the country’s oases zones has been frozen since the 2007 murder of six French tourists in the country by the Islamist group Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

The government established PDDO in 2002 to preserve the fragile but valuable oasis ecosystems and stem a rural exodus that had begun gathering pace. The International Fund for Agricultural Development contributed around 37 million dollars, according to Alioun Demba, head of international cooperation at the Ministry for Rural Development.

“The programme has focused on organising farmers around the oases to support the emergence of a civil society that can sustain oasis participatory management associations (AGPOs) and make collective investments,” Banane told IPS.

The project calls for AGPOs to manage projects financed by PDDO and a contribution from the farmers themselves. Local smallholders elect association officials, set their own priorities, and control any income. Several AGPOs have already received grants from PDDO for amounts ranging from 46,000 to 92,000 dollars.

To demonstrate sustainable land management techniques, PDDO has also created small field schools (measuring just 10 by 10 metres) and a plantation with fruit trees and vegetables interspersed with the date palms.

“This creates three levels of protection against soil erosion and allows good conservation, efficient irrigation, and a diversification of sources of income for the farmers,” said Banane.

In the Adrar region, where nearly half of the country’s palm plantations are found, smallholders have proved reluctant to apply modern techniques, said Cheikh Ould Moustapha, regional coordinator for PDDO.

The recommendations call for well-spaced plantations, pollination, drip or tube irrigation and the use of organic fertiliser. In Adrar, the wealthier farmers use solar-powered pumps to draw water for both these systems of irrigation.

In terms of marketing, PDDO has helped to set up a group in Adrar to work together to make transporting dates to the capital, Nouakchott, more profitable, Moustapha told IPS.

The date palm and the camel – the two pillars of their economy – are well adapted to the climate of the Sahara and the Sahel and remain important assets, Moustapha stressed.

Malawi’s Lake Chilwa could dry up completely by next year if the low rainfall in the area continued. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

By Claire Ngozo
LAKE CHILWA, Malawi, Aug 17 2012 (IPS)

Fisherfolk and farmers living near Malawi’s second-largest water body, Lake Chilwa, are relocating en masse and scrambling for space around its shores as the lake has dried to dangerously low levels.

Professor Sosten Chiotha, an expert with the Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Programme (LCBCCAP), said that it could dry up completely by next year if the low rainfall in the area continued.

The lake dried up completely in 1995 following a drought, which saw a resultant rainfall of 775 mm and 748 mm over two consecutive years.

According to the Malawi Meteorological Services, for the past two years Lake Chilwa’s catchment area has recorded less than 1,000 millimetres of rain. In 2011 and 2012 the total annual rainfall was 1,048 mm and 655 mm respectively, said Chiotha.

And this is not sufficient to sustain the lake.

“In March it appeared as if the situation was not too bad, but gradually the water levels started falling rapidly, particularly by the Mposa and Namanja Beaches. In July, we were able to drive 10 kilometres into the lake from Namanja Beach to an area that had water in March, and we still did not reach open waters,” Chiotha told IPS.

People living on these main beaches have already started relocating to the Swangoma, Chisi and Kachulu beaches in search of new fishing grounds and good farmland, Chiotha told IPS. However, he was unable to estimate how many people have relocated to date.

Chiotha, who is also the regional director of the Leadership of Environment and Development in Southern and Eastern Africa, a global environmental and developmental think tank, cautioned that things could get worse if the lake continued to dry up.

“The movement is also causing congestion and potential conflict,” said Chiotha.

Up to 1.5 million inhabitants from southern Malawi’s Machinga, Phalombe and Zomba districts benefit directly from the 60 by 40 km lake through agriculture and natural resource goods and services, which generate an estimated 21 million dollars per year.

Of that, 18.7 million dollars is generated from fishing, with the remainder coming from farming, bird hunting, and the use of grasslands, vegetation and clay for producing building materials, stated a LCBCCAP brief released in August.

About 17,000 tonnes of fish, or 20 percent of all the fish caught in this southern African nation, comes from the lake.

Godwin Mussa, 41, who was born on Namanja Beach and lived there his entire life, was forced to move to Chisi Beach in July in search of fishing grounds.

“Fishing has been getting harder and harder as the water moved further away from my beach. I just had to move to Chisi so that I can take care of my wife and six children,” Mussa told IPS.

He said that his catch had dwindled to an average of 100 fish per week compared to 600 a week last year.

“Fishing is my only livelihood and that’s why I just had to relocate. I just hope we will get good rain this year so that I can go back home. The fishermen here are getting wary of those of us who are moving into their territory. We are scrambling for fishing grounds,” said Mussa.

Farmers around the lake are also struggling.

Debra Chalichi from Phalombe District has been practising irrigation farming within the lake basin since 2007. But this year she had to wait for the rains in order to irrigate her crop.

“Since last year, the lake has been moving away from where my garden is. I cannot direct the water channels for irrigating into my garden from the lake anymore because it keeps withdrawing,” Chalichi told IPS.

She said that she used to grow rice twice a year, but only managed to grow it once this year as she had to wait for the rainy season.

“Rice farming has been my livelihood and I am getting poorer now. I used to make up to 2,000 dollars in sales. But I have only been able to produce rice worth 800 dollars this year,” said Chalichi.

Rice is one of Malawi’s staple crops, and is second only to maize. Fifty percent of the estimated 100,000 tonnes of rice harvested in Malawi comes from the Lake Chilwa wetlands, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture. There are no estimates available on this year’s rice production.

Chiotha told IPS that the low rainfall was negatively affecting the livelihoods and nutrition of those living around the lake.

The situation could force some to leave the area.

John Kabango, 51, from Zomba District, has been fishing on Lake Chilwa since 1981.

He said that in 2005, the last time the water level in the lake started receding, he relocated to the country’s commercial capital, Blantyre. He worked there as a night guard at a factory until conditions around the lake improved and he returned home.

“I never liked the job in Blantyre. I grew up as a fisherman and that is the type of livelihood I am used to. I never managed to make as much money working as a guard anyway and I don’t want to go back to that life,” Kabango told IPS.

He said that he earned up to 800 dollars a week from fishing, but was only paid 100 dollars a week to work as a guard. “It was very difficult to take care of my family when I worked as a guard,” said Kabango, who has a wife and six children.

But his catch has been dwindling drastically since 2011 when the lake first began drying up.

“I used to catch up to 500 fish a night, but I am lucky if I catch 150 now. I am not making as much money and I don’t know if I will manage to take care of my family if the lake dries up,” Kabango told IPS.

So he is doing all he can to ensure that he does not have to leave the area. Kabango has joined a LCBCCAP community initiative that is implementing adaptation measures to help locals cope with the low rainfall and the drying lake.

“We are digging pools around the lake to allow fish to seek shelter and breed in there as the lake dries up,” said Kabango.

He said that farmers were adopting modern methods of irrigation and started using treadle pumps to source water from the lake. While it will not prevent the lake from drying up, it will conserve some of the much-needed water.

“My wife farms and she is now involved in a rainwater harvesting project so that the water collected is used for irrigation when it is the dry season and the lake has receded further,” said Kabango.

Farmer Adams Seidu has been struggling with his harvest in recent years. Courtesy: Albert Oppong-Ansah

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
TAMALE, Ghana, Aug 15 2012 (IPS)

In order to ensure that he and his family survive this year’s failed harvest, Adams Seidu, like farmers in other rural communities in Ghana’s Northern Region, has implemented a strategy for survival. They are using what Seidu calls the “one-zero-one strategy” for children, and the “zero-zero-one strategy” for adults.

The equation represents the three meals of a day. One represents a meal, while a zero represents no meal. So Seidu’s four children are able to have breakfast in the morning, nothing at midday, and then a meal in the evening, while he and his wife eat only one meal a day, in the evening – as do many other families in this West African nation.

Food shortages are becoming a concern in the region. A survey on nutrition conducted in March by the Ghana Health Service showed that 32.2 percent of the 208,742 children under five in the Northern Region were malnourished and suffered from stunted growth.

Seidu’s family is surviving, but just barely.

This is because Seidu, who lives at Fuo, a suburb in the Northern Region’s capital, Tamale, has been struggling with his harvest in recent years.

Ghana’s Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions used to be the country’s breadbasket for production of cereals and tubers. But changing weather patterns in these regions, which constitute Ghana’s Savannah zone, have resulted in poor rainfall, small harvests and subsequent food insecurity.

“Last farming season was one of the most devastating periods and saw many farmers lose a great deal due to low rains, which caused the crop to wither before they could mature,” Seidu, who has a small maize, rice and yam farm, told IPS.

During the 2000 rainy season, the Nanumba North district in Northern Region recorded an average rainfall of 1,495 millimetres. But in 2010 over the same period the area recorded only 433 mm.

The reduced rainfall has had a dramatic effect on this region. According to the 2010 National Housing Population Census, the Northern Region is the third-most populated region in Ghana, with about 80 percent of the people engaged in farming. Now, half of the region’s farmers are struggling to survive as their crops continue to fail, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.

Of the two acres of land Seidu cultivated this year, he only harvested three 84-kilogramme bags. “Two years ago I harvested seven bags on the same land. Some of the plants did not flower, let alone bear fruit this year,” said the farmer, who has only one arm.

Statistics from the Northern Regional Office of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture indicate that maize production in the region fell from 164,200 metric tonnes in 1991 to less than half that, 78,800 metric tonnes, in 2000. There are no more recent figures available.

Regional principal meteorological officer at the Ghana Meteorological Agency, Kafui Quashiga, told IPS that rainfall has reduced drastically due to climate change over the past 10 years. Statistics compiled by the agency indicate that there has been a decline below the long-term mean of 6,550 mm, which was the normal rainfall pattern at the beginning of the 2000s.

“When you compare the rainfall data from 1991 to 2010 for Wa in the Upper West, Tamale in the north, Navorongo in the Upper East and Krachie in the Volta Region, there is a sharp decline and it is likely that the trend will continue,” he said.

Poverty, illiteracy, disease and malnutrition have now become common features in these regions.

Seidu admitted that because of his low harvest he could no longer afford to pay the school fees for two of his children. “As a result of the poor yields that we have witnessed in recent years, I am able to send only two of my four children to school.”

Another farmer, 60-year-old Nindoo Salisu, told IPS that only three of his 10 children are able to go to school. “We were able to get enough from the land until the weather decided to fail us and made us poor.”

“The situation is very scary, and the earlier something is done about it the better, because it has negative repercussions on our existence as human beings,” Quashiga said.

And while there are some adaptation projects in the region, they have not proved completely successful.

Abubakar Sadique Haruna, a farmer in Ghana’s Northern Region, loans out his tractor as a ploughing service to local peasant farmers.

With the help of the Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement Programme (ADVANCE), Haruna provides his service to about 400 farmers.

ADVANCE, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, began to operate last year. Through it about 1,000 farmers have been supported with ploughing services, and educated in the use of improved seed, new technology and best farming practices.

Haruna explained that for every acre of land ploughed, the farmers either paid him four dollars – the equivalent of 4.5 litres of fuel – or in kind with an 84-kilogramme bag of maize at the end of the farming season.

Aside from his ploughing services, Haruna supplies farmers with improved quality seeds, agro chemicals and fertilisers. He also educates them on best farming practices to help increase their yields.

“The unfortunate thing is that some farmers, after paying for ploughing, are not able to afford these agro-chemicals (because of the bad harvests),” he told IPS.

Haruna said that 2011 was not a successful year for farmers, as about 200 of his clients could not afford to plough their fields.

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture’s monitoring and evaluation officer, Festus Aaron Langkuu, told IPS that new methods of harvesting water were being tested in some areas.

He said that the Golinga and Bontanga dams in the country’s Northern Region, which were rehabilitated under the Millennium Development Authority Project in 2010, were supplying some farmers with water for their crops.

“Although the government is supporting some farmers with fertilisers, the bottom line is that if there are no rains, these farmers cannot grow their crops, and this will derail (progress towards) the objective of reducing poverty,” Langkuu said.

Critical dependence on water makes Sri Lanka vulnerable to changing rainfall and temperature patterns. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Jul 22 2012 (IPS)

For many Sri Lankans, the effects of climate change can be summed up in one word: rainfall.

“The biggest impact (of climate change) is rainfall or the lack of it,” W L Sumathipala, one of Sri Lanka’s foremost experts in changing climate patterns, told IPS on a scorching hot and humid day in Colombo.

“The availability of water can effect multiple things in Sri Lanka from crops to power generation to the currency,” Sumathipala, who formerly headed the climate change unit at the Ministry of Environment, added.

The last six months, with their merciless combination of scarce rainfall and blazing temperatures, have proved his statement to be true. The failure of the seasonal monsoon to deliver adequate amounts of rain have had a serious impact on lives, livelihoods and the economy.

In the north central districts, a vital region for the country’s staple rice harvest, smaller irrigation reservoirs have run dry, while their larger cousins, fed by rivers, have stopped issuing water to farmers because their water levels are too low.

The Parakrama Samudraya, a 20 square-kilometre tank in the Polonnaruwa District, was only eight percent full by the first week of July due to lack of rain.

“This is probably the worst (drought) we have had in recent years,” irrigation engineer R M Karunarathna told IPS.

The drought will almost certainly have a serious effect on the rice harvest. Farmers who depend on the Parakrama Samudraya and connected reservoirs have held public protests warning that as many as 40,000 acres of paddy fields may have been lost.

Further north, in areas that have recently emerged from three decades of civil unrest, the lack of water is threatening to undo some of the gains made since the war ended in May 2009, according to the latest United Nations updates for the country.

“The delay of the north west monsoon rains has caused severe drought condition in the country affecting the country’s agricultural sector (and) threatening to destroy the majority of expected yields from paddy, vegetables and other food crops. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, nearly 150,000 acres of cultivation lands are in danger of getting destroyed,” the updated warned.

The lack of water has also left the country’s power generation capacity almost entirely dependent on thermal power.

In an average year, around 42 percent of the country’s power supply can be met through hydropower, Thilak Siyambalapitiya, an energy consultant and a former engineer with the Sri Lanka Electricity Board, told IPS.

During years where the rains have been exceptionally high, between late 2010 and early 2011 for instance, the contribution of hydropower has been as high as 50 percent.

In fact in 2011 the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) recorded a rare profitable year, largely due to the high hydro generation component, Siyambalapitiya said.

“This year if CEB can meet something like 25 percent (of power needs) from hydro, we will be lucky,” he predicted. But even that may be optimistic: by early July less than 15 percent of the required power was met through hydro generation.

It costs about 13 rupees (about one U.S. cent) to generate a unit of electricity using hydropower, while thermal costs increase the unit production price to seven cents for coal, 11 cents for furnace fuel and 18 cents for diesel. “The cost differences are exorbitant,” Siyambalapitiya said.

To add to the woes, the Sri Lankan rupee has fallen steadily against the dollar since late last year.

In mid November 2011, the Central Bank stopped intervening to strengthen the currency and in the ensuing eight months, the rupee has weakened by about 17 percent.

“When the rains stay away and the hot weather patterns evaporate surface water, this is what we get,” Sumathipala said.

The phenomenon will likely continue; experts predict that water scarcity will play a crucial role in the coming years.

The latest Central Bank annual report said that temperatures have recorded an increase of around 0.45 degrees Celsius in the last two decades. A 0.5-degree rise can reduce the rice harvest yield by about 5.9 percent.

The Bank added this would be disastrous for the country’s 1.8 million people – close to 10 percent of the country’s population – who depend on agriculture for survival.

“Sri Lanka is vulnerable to the impact of climate change largely due to its critical dependence on water resources for biodiversity, food security, livelihood and power generation,” the report said.

The Second National Communication on Climate Change 2012, a report by the Ministry of Environment, also confirmed that the pattern of rising temperatures and falling rains would have a big impact on rice harvests and yields.

The same report revealed that while the dry zone will continue to get drier due to less rain and increasing temperatures, the wet zone is likely to get more rain than needed. It even suggested transporting excess water between the two zones.

The high concentration of rain in the wet zone increases the risk of flood-related damages as well as the spread of vector diseases like dengue.

In the last five years Sri Lanka has been logging an increased number of dengue victims during and after monsoon rains, especially in flat urban areas like the capital Colombo.

“The city of Colombo is vulnerable to (flash flooding) where the low-lying parts of the city go under water whenever there is high intense rain falling even for a few hours,” the report said.

Experts say that to meet the evolving nature of water availability, better coordination between public and private enterprises and experts is vital.

“Some the changes and patterns can be predicted, but we need better communication to be ready for them,” Malika Wimalasuriya, head of the Climate Change Unit at the Meteorological Department, told IPS.

(END)