Taking stock of drought
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By PHILIP NGUNJIRI The
drought sweeping across The
worst hit areas include northern Cattle,
goats, sheep and camels are dying of thirst, forcing area residents to employ
various distress strategies. To
save their breeding stock they are aborting animal foetuses or slaughtering the
calves at birth. “It has
never happened before in my lifetime. I used to hear about it only in folklore.
It doesn’t make sense. Why do we keep livestock?” said 44-year-old Ahmed
Khalif. Four
months ago, he left his two wives and 10 children in Habaswein,
Wajir South, and drove 200 cattle and goats to But
he has found only despair at the border Only
70 animals are left, the herd is succumbing to hunger, dehydration and disease.
“I could have come here, or I could have stayed, but it is all the same. Death is everywhere. If the rains don’t come soon, I will lose everything.â The
drought is the most severe in recent memory. Children
are malnourished, animals are weak and dying, and people are struggling to find
water. Everyone
is moving, crossing international boundaries in search of pasture and water. The
journey is taking several days and claiming sizeable numbers of livestock. Families
are selling their scanty assets — household
utensils, bicycles, spare clothing and water containers. Many
are even pulling their children out of school. Trees
struggling to survive the drought are being chopped down for firewood, and the
limited water available is shared between livestock and families. The
few boreholes across the vast arid lands region have given rise to conflict. Around
the boreholes, villages of thatched huts are growing by the day. Dozens
of families arrive, leading camel trains and herding the few bony cattle they
have left, pushed by drought to the vast frontier bordering Boreholes
run 24 hours a day, with livestock watering intervals of six to 10 days and an
average trekking distance of 50km between grazing areas and water points. Across
the vast region, the story is the same — despair,
hunger and death. Dead
livestock and wildlife dot the area. Desperate
scenes of herdsmen coaxing weak and ailing animals back to their feet are
common. Over
the generations, the only way these people have survived such devastation has
been by being mobile; moving from watering hole to river, from one pasture to
the next, living off the milk and the meat of their livestock. But
today, there is no pasture. Two
years without rain have erased the watering holes and turned rivers to sand,
killing thousands of animals. Now
the people are being forced to settle near the only permanent sources of water,
where the precious resource is drawn from deep wells by diesel-driven engines. More
and more people are struggling to share the dwindling supply. “We cannot
live here for long, there are too many of us,” said
Fatma Abdi, a widow. She
left her village, Hadado in Wajir
West, 200km away, three months ago. The
drought has lasted three years. Six
rainy seasons have passed with less than 30mm of rainfall, according to the
Meteorological Department. “This is the
worst period of the drought. Our animals might not live to see the rains,â said Fatma. The
pastoralists are running out of ideas. They
have exhausted every known coping mechanism. Now
they are moving to feeding centres and water distribution points for handouts,
made possible by donor agencies and the government. The
current situation gives urgency to the question of whether nomadic pastoralism is viable in an overpopulated environment and
with worsening climate change. Just
three months to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, and with nearly
four million Kenyans in urgent need of aid, Oxfam International organised
public hearings for pastoralist communities. Many
narrated their plight and what needs to be done in response. Many
communities said the local climate is changing, with the rains failing more
frequently and drought becoming more common. The
most critical danger they face now is lack of water. Some
people walk several kilometres to find water for their families and animals. They
said the drought has left them surviving on less than five litres of water a
day — far below the international standard of 15
litres a day. “Over time,
the droughts have become more and more frequent. Now I have to wake up at 4am
to walk for four hours to the nearest borehole, where lorries bring our only
supply of water,” said 63-year-old Habiba Osman at a hearing in Wajir South. “Even when I
get there, I have to queue for hours to collect water because there are so many
other people waiting.” In
some areas, communities reported that livestock have started dying because of
the long treks for water — 185 animal carcasses
were found recently around one dried-up water source. Most
communities in Wajir are pastoralists and livestock are
the most vital source of income. With
lack of clean water, there are growing fears of disease outbreaks. Many
local people said they had noticed the climate changing, but did not know why. Some
said the government had exacerbated the problem by creating too many
residential locations and putting too much pressure on the land. Others said it
was because the gods were angry. “I have
never seen the situation this bad. There is no water at all. Cattle are our
livelihood; and when they are gone we have nothing left. Our children cannot go
to school because they spend the whole day looking for water. We desperately
need another borehole and more water here,”
said Omar Haji during a hearing at Hadado. Philippa Crosland-Taylor,
head of Oxfam GB in Emergency
aid is needed urgently. In the long-term, we need to rethink policies to
mitigate the risks of droughts before they occur, rather than rushing in food
aid when it’s too late. Improving
development in the most vulnerable areas is key, especially in the light of
increasing climate variability.” The
communities asked the government, international donors and humanitarian
organisations to provide more long-term development in the region, not just
emergency aid. Pastoralist
communities in districts such as Wajir are already
among the poorest and most vulnerable in People
suffering from the drought said health centres, water boreholes, and medicine
for cattle, which have been weakened by the drought, are needed. The
Kenyan government should take a more active role in international climate
change policy negotiations, said Oxfam. With
a major UN Climate Change Conference to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in
December, the coming months are vital for ensuring the world’s
poor get a fair deal. “Climate change
is a global problem. We are seeing its impact in places like Wajir. Currently,
Oxfam is responding to the crisis in Wajir, and in
similarly-affected Turkana district. It
is transporting clean water to grazing areas, drilling new boreholes, and
carrying out de-stocking projects — buying up sheep
and goats from herders that would otherwise risk dying and then distributing
the meat to hungry families. This
ensures herders get a fair market price for their animals, and provides much
needed food. The
public hearings in Wajir are the latest in a series
of climate hearings held by Oxfam and other global partners. They
aim to give a voice to the unheard majority affected by climate change, and
bring that voice to decision-makers ahead of the Copenhagen Conference. Climate
hearings have also been held in Source:
The
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