A major UN report warns that Africa faces the greatest immediate dangers of climate change. Tens of millions of poor rural Africans are experiencing the grim realities of global warming first hand.
Ochieng' Ogodo
Ochieng' Ogodo
Journalist-Kenya
[NAIROBI] With equal measures of hope and
despair, over 70 years old Syombua Munyao stoops wearily to sprinkle a handful
of seeds into the dry, hardened earth, almost certain they will never grow into
food.
“We are only trying. It is not like
the old days when you would be sure of a harvest after the rains,” she sighs,
shuffling back to one of a clutch of rounded huts of mud and thatched leaves
where she lives in the poor Kiongwe region of eastern Kenya.
For decades, life has been a struggle
in this harsh environment, but Munyao says things were never as bad as they are
now.
“There are no good rains anymore,”
she complains. “The sun was always hot, but these days it feels like it’s moved
closer. We are being baked,” she exclaims, wiping sweat from her brow under a
sun still uncomfortably hot in October.
Although Munyao lives in Kenya, hers
is a familiar story throughout Africa, which experts around the world agree is
hardest hit by climate change.
The continent faces ominous
environmental perils if current global warming trends continue, warned a new
report released at the UN Climate Change Conference, underway in the Kenyan
capital of Nairobi from 6 to 17 November.
In less than a generation, 40 per
cent of Africa’s wildlife habitat could be lost, and cereal crops in the hungry
continent of 900 million people could decline by five per cent, the
authoritative UN report said.
It warned that a third of Africa’s
coastal settlements could be wiped out this century by rising sea levels, and
floods threaten as many as 70 million people, together with major cities such
as Lagos in Nigeria and Cape Town in South Africa.
Munyao, who lives only about 200
kilometres from Nairobi, knows nothing about the report or its dire
predictions. But tens of millions of poor rural Africans like her are already
suffering under the grim impact of climate change on their lives.
A decade of drought
Ten years ago, dry spells and drought
forced Munyao to move from the nearby lowlands to the higher grounds of
Kiongwe, where there was more water. They had more to eat for a while, but
without rainfall the earth dried up again.
She and many of the 3,000 people
living in Kiongwe and around began cutting down trees on the higher ranges,
clearing forested land to cultivate food and burning the wood for fuel.
Thick forests where elders once
retreated for worship, or to gather vital medicinal plants to heal wounds and
cure typhoid, diarrhoea, coughs and other ailments, have now become dry rocky
ranges.
“When this place was forested it was
an oasis, with water for our cattle, goats and sheep; there were wild animals
like leopards and antelope,” Munyao recalls. “Now all we see are a few monkeys
now and then,” she says.
The rainy seasons, once predictable,
have become erratic and scarce. The Kiongwe River, which would flow strongly
after rains in May and retain water for much of the year, is now nearly dry
year round, people living there say.
“There are no rains anymore,” Munyao
complains. “We no longer cultivate anything but maize and beans, because these
ripen more quickly,” she says.
Sometimes, the people of Kiongwe say,
they manage to stay alive only because of meagre food supplies from the UN’s
World Food Programme.
Foods like cowpea, millet, sorghum
and yam have become only memories from her younger days, Munyao says.
Deforestation, drought, loss of
wildlife habitat and declining or disappearing crops are not future threats in
the lives of most rural Africans. They are scourges of their daily lives.
Climate change, of the kind occurring
in the Kitui district where Kiongwe is located, is associated with global
warming, says Dr Buruhani Nyenzi, head of the UN’s World Climate Programme.
He says that the impact of climate
change in Kitui was seen in long dry spells without rainfall, a rise in child
mortality, and more cases of diseases like malaria.
The new UN climate change report
noted that Africa had warmed 0.7 degrees centigrade in the previous century,
and that 1995 and 1998 were the warmest years.
A changing
landscape
In the Endau Hills area, about 300
kilometres east of Nairobi, Godfrey Wambua remembers the hot years of about a
decade ago, noting that was when the weather became unpredictable and began to
grow warmer.
“We had two seasons, the long rains
from March to May and short ones running from October to November, but that is
not the case anymore,” says Wambua, who is in his late 30s and is a council
leader for his community of 30,000 people.
Only two decades ago a thick forest,
home to birds, monkeys, gazelle and buffalo, covered the entire hilly area of
Endau Hills, which spans 6,700 hectares. But the foothills have turned bare,
with only the hilly peaks still green with trees. Most of the animals, the
residents say, have disappeared.
Like in Kiongwe to the west, people
in Endau have gradually moved up the highlands, cutting down trees to expand
land for cultivation and grazing. But without trees to slow them down, winds
sometimes blow so hard that they rip the thatched-leaf roofs from the huts.
Desertification is another scourge.
Water, which was once plentiful from shallow springs, has become so scarce that
women and girls sometimes walk more than 15 kilometres a day to fetch it,
people in Endau say.
Scarcity throughout the region has
led to tensions with herders in the next district, who have begun to bring
their cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys in the hundreds of thousands to Endau
for grazing and water.
Sometimes fights erupt over water,
and animals are killed in revenge, says Wambua, who owns cattle and sheep, and
grows maize when seasons are good.
“Over the years the situation has
gone from bad to worse,” Wambua says, squatting under a thin leafless tree with
his chin rested in his palm.
Musyoka Kaleli, who has lived in
Endau Hills and makes a living from cattle and subsistence farming, remembers a
time when there was more than enough food and milk to go around.
“Thirty-six years ago there was rich
grazing land, fertile soil and good harvests,” he recalls wistfully. “We had
plenty of milk, and those who did not have could get generous rations from
neighbours at no cost.”
“But life has changed; there is hunger all year
long,” says Kaleli, 68. His greatest worry is for the future. “When you look at
us today you see poverty. This is sad, because it is getting worse, and those
who come after us will have the bare earth to scratch for food.”
This story was originally produced by Panos London on 11/09/2006. Link: http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/features/scratching-the-bare-earth-for-food/
