Coping mechanisms: Villagers at a watering hole. Photo/PHILIP NGUNJIRI
The worst hit areas include northern Kenya, which is plagued by erratic rain.
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 Somalia in search of water and pasture.
But he has found only despair at the border village of Khorogharar, Wajir Bor.
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.”
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 Somalia, where some pasture is found.
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,” 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 Kenya, said: “Droughts are happening more frequently. The government and donors need to be aware of the changing climate and to shape their policies accordingly.
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 Kenya, due to decades of neglect and under-development by successive governments.
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. Africa is responsible for less than four per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, but it is the hardest hit by its effects. Most people in Wajir have not heard of the Copenhagen Conference, but it could have a dramatic impact on their lives,” says Crosland-Taylor.
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 Uganda, Bangladesh, Malawi and the Philippines.
Source: The East Africa, Oct 11, 2009