Publication Date
September 10, 2012
NAIROBI, KENYA – Jatane Dadea has lost 10 cattle during the recent drought in northeastern Kenya. Her daughter, Galgalo Soti, has been out of school for almost three months because the family is forced to migrate in search of water and food.
Dadea, who raises livestock for a living, says that the distance from home to the market is long and lately her cattle have grown weak from lack of food and water. Often these days, her cattle die en route to the market either from thirst or from wild animals that attack the weakened cattle.
Dadea says climate change has made weather patterns here extreme. As a result, people like her who raise livestock for a living have less time to prepare for droughts. She says it takes months for villages in the drylands to conserve water.
She says that the pastoralist industry here receives little government support during good times, but during these severe droughts, the support has felt like even less. Last month, the national government apologized for its slow response to provide aid to people here.
“Inadequate investments and even basic needs like water are daily challenge[s],” Dadea says.
But the pastoralists, she says, can be flexible and aren’t giving up.
“The fear of drought has not deterred the women from working,” she says. “We are now using our skills to save water and keep on trading.”
She says they collect the dry grass and build houses. She says they also use mobile phones to coordinate cattle sales instead of traveling long distances to the market. Young people have also started making beaded earrings to sell. Dadea says the pastoralist communities have also turned to charcoal burning, which is illegal, to make a living.
“We walk kilometers to find a big tree, cut it into pieces and make charcoal,” Dadea says.
With a drought plaguing Kenya’s arid and semiarid lands, ASALs, a group of nongovernmental organizations have criticized the government’s late response. Government officials have acknowledged their delayed response and have partnered with international organizations to prepare immediate and long-term relief options. Meanwhile, families and livestock suffer from lack of food and water, and scarce resources have begun to lead to conflict.
Kenya has a history of droughts, and many in the ASALs had still not recovered from the 2009 drought before the most recent one set in late last year. Because of La Niña, a phenomenon that reduces moisture in the atmosphere when the surface of the Pacific Ocean cools, October, November and December were unusually dry in Kenya. Rain is not expected until mid-April.
At least 5 million people are facing hardships thanks to the drought in Kenya’s ASALs, which is likely to worsen in the coming months, according to a recent report by the Regional Learning and Advocacy Program, REGLAP, a group of NGOs led by Oxfam Great Britain, a member of the international aid and development charity. The REGLAP report says that the drought is severely affecting pastoralists and the health of their families.
Water and pasture are in short supply here. As livestock get weaker and are unable to produce milk, their market value decreases and pastoralists have less income to buy food. Malnutrition is also rising among people, as families skip meals, take on debts to buy food and withdraw children from school because they are forced to migrate with their cattle in order to find water.
The NGOs say the Kenyan government has poor policies on emergency drought relief. The slow implementation of new policies and undermining of strategies by local municipalities have multiplied the negative impact of the drought.
NGOs here have urged the government to increase its investment in the livestock sector, which contributes 12 percent of the country’s GDP and supports 15 percent of Kenyans, yet receives only 1 percent of the national budget. They also blamed the drylands’ vulnerability on the lack of development and basic services, such as water, health care, education and electricity, which are way below the national average.
Mohamed Elmi, minister of state for development of northern Kenya and other arid lands, acknowledged at a February briefing in Nairobi that the government’s late and uncoordinated response to the drought was unacceptable. He attributed the failure to structural problems, not to ill will, and thanked the NGOs for their persistence.
Elmi said that Kenya had a well-developed and well-respected drought management system, with early warning systems and regular contingency plans in 23 arid and semiarid counties, which are coordinated by national-level structures. But he said the system suffered from two problems: it lacks coordination and financial flexibility.
In response to the first problem, Elmi said his ministry was proposing the creation of a National Drought Management Authority that would focus on droughts to permit long-term planning; ensure continuity despite changes in personnel; coordinate responses across government and with development partners; and disburse resources.
In response to the second problem, Elmi said his ministry was also proposing the creation of a National Drought Contingency Fund that would accumulate money for drought responses during good years and quickly disburse it during times of need.
The minister said that the groundwork for the two institutions had been laid, thanks to the support of development partners such as the European Community and World Bank.
“Once they are fully functioning, and in all but the most exceptional cases, drought emergencies should become a thing of the past,” he said of the proposed institutions.
The minister said the government was also partnering with the World Food Program, WFP, a U.N. operation to fight hunger, to encourage starving Kenyans in ASALs to be self-sufficient. Burkard Oberle, WFP country director, said at the briefing that because drought was an almost permanent feature of Kenyan life, the WFP was shifting from short-term relief to more sustainable interventions.
One of these sustainable interventions is Food for Assets, FFA, which promotes protection, preparedness and recovery. Elmi said that FFA had donated 33 million shillings, or about $400,000 USD, so far to improve the food security and resilience of affected communities by assisting them with projects that improve access to water for human and livestock consumption.
Oberle called on the communities to take ownership of the FFA projects and to replicate them as much as possible to ensure that they would be prepared for the future.
“WFP is committed to working with the government, the communities and partners to ease the effects of climate change in the areas that are most vulnerable,” Oberle said.
Muhamud Ali, special programs assistant minister, said at the briefing that the government was providing food assistance to 1 million people, while the WFP was distributing food to another 1.6 million people. He said his ministry had allocated an additional 1.55 billion shillings, or nearly $19 million USD, for food for the other 2.4 million Kenyans affected. He said the government had also allocated 1.1 billion shillings, or more than $13 million USD, to an off-take program to buy drought-stricken cattle from them.
Ali said the Ministry of Water and Irrigation had also set aside 300 million shillings, $3.6 million USD, to deal with the drought. For long-term relief, the government is planning to build pans and dams to provide water for people and livestock.
The Kenya Red Cross Society, KRCS, and the International Federation of the Red Cross Societies have also launched the Kenya Drought Response Initiative 2011, which aims to raise $19 million USD to aid more than 1.8 million Kenyans for six months to get them through the drought. Abbas Gullet, secretary general of the KRCS, said in a press release earlier this year that the aid was crucial because livestock deaths, food shortages and increased migration by pastoralist communities in search of pastures and water had already led to significant school dropouts and would likely lead to conflict over scarce resources.
Meanwhile, conflict over water has already broken out in multiple areas, said Francis Chachu Ganya, a member of Parliament. Because of the long distances traveled to find new pastures, milk productivity in cattle has also declined significantly while livestock diseases have been increasing, according to a joint report by the government, WFP, the Famine Early Warnings System Network and USAID, a U.S. agency that provides economic and humanitarian assistance. The percentage of children at risk for acute malnutrition has risen by 5 percent to 20 percent in various regions affected by the drought.
According to the report, the long rains should improve food security from April through June, but recovery will take a significant amount of time after that.
