It’s a real threat whether you believe in global warming or not. Climates are changing, which is being fuelled by heavy industrialisation, a lot which is taking place in Africa. Both stories below highlight the detrimental impact development is having on the surrounding environment. According to experts Kenya’s Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake, may soon disappear. This has far-reaching consequences as the lake feeds into projects in neighbouring Ethiopia. This would ravage fish stocks, impact hydropower capacity and disrupt agricultural projects on the banks of river tributaries. Ethiopia itself is under pressure as the current drought is devastating livestock, while 77 percent of the population earns an income from agriculture. – Stuart Lowman
By Edith Honan
NAIROBI, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Industrial projects along Ethiopia’s Omo River could dry up Kenya’s Lake Turkana and create a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe exacerbated by climate change, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake, lies in Kenya’s northwest corner, on the border with Ethiopia, and gets 90 percent of its water from the Omo River.
Ethiopia is one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies and has the potential to generate 45,000 megawatts of hydropower by tapping the rivers that cascade through its highlands. It is pushing to become a top energy exporter and manufacturing hub.
Large-scale industrialisation of the Omo, including the Gibe 3 hydroelectric dam, which began power production this month, and a planned 2,000-square-km irrigated sugar plantation downstream, could siphon off water from Turkana and wipe out fish stocks.
“Lake Turkana is in danger of disappearing, and the health and livelihood of the indigenous peoples of the region along with it,” Joseph Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement before releasing a report in Nairobi.
Read also: Climate change hitting Africa hardest, killer storms, drought the New Normal
Addis Ababa rejects the claims, saying its own studies show the dam will regulate the river’s flow and stabilise water levels in the flood-prone region.
Human Rights Watch called on Kenya to initiate talks with Ethiopia and pass a climate change law that would address the persistent drought and disappearing grazing lands in Turkana.
Its report comes as world leaders prepare to gather in Paris in December to devise a global strategy on climate change.
Read also: Water shortages loom for SA: worst drought in two decades
“The struggles of the Turkana people are an important reminder for governments around the world that human rights should be a central element of the future Paris climate change agreement,” Amon said.
Average temperatures around Lake Turkana, which is home to about 300,000 people, have risen by 2-3 degrees Celsius since 1967 and rainfall has been uneven.
Semi-arid Turkana is one of Kenya’s poorest regions. Most of the population are pastoralists, and Human Rights Watch said reports of livestock deaths and increased fighting over the region’s scarce resources had increased.
From Bloomberg
By William Davison
(Bloomberg) — Saado Osman straps two bulging sacks of United Nations wheat to her donkey, one of the few animals the 70-year-old eastern Ethiopian herder has left since the rains stopped.
Like millions of others in the Horn of Africa nation she depended on that precipitation to provide fodder and water for her livestock. Now drought has killed 20 of her cattle and goats, leaving her family of 10 with just four animals.
“There is hunger here,” Saado said as she stood among a crowd receiving food relief in Afdem town in Ethiopia’s Somali region on Oct. 8. “For one year it has not rained.”
Rain failure from February to May this year in Ethiopia, one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, was compounded by a short and erratic primary wet season from June to September. That’s left 8.2 million people in need of emergency support, with the crisis set to worsen through September next year, according to the UN.
The effect may spread to Ethiopia’s economy: agriculture accounts for 40 percent of output, employs almost 77 percent of the country’s 97 million people and receives significant government support, according to the World Bank.
Read also: African narrative oversold? Over-reliance on China, Power shortages – opportunities persist
Exacerbating the drought is El Nino, the periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean in the area around the Equator. Ethiopia’s economy, which has averaged about 10 percent growth over the past decade, contracted by more than 3 percent in 2003, the last time El Nino occurred.
Ethiopia will spend 4 billion birr ($191 million) combating the drought this year and needs donor support, said Mitiku Kassa, who heads the government’s disaster response committee. There are plans to import 627,000 metric tons of wheat and 20,000 tons of edible oil, he said in an interview in Addis Ababa, the capital. In total, 15 million people may need food aid in 2015, and an extra $340 million is required for relief efforts this year, the UN said.
The number of children needing emergency treatment for malnutrition reached 43,000 in August, more than during any month in the last major Ethiopian humanitarian crisis in 2011, according to the UN.
“I think we have properly managed the disaster,” Mitiku said. “It’s not out of the control of the government and development partners.”
The area where Ayube Uso’s family lives in the east of Oromia region, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Afdem, at first appears untroubled. Their village abuts fields of sorghum and corn and a tarmac road. In between juts a near-complete Chinese-built railway to a port in neighboring Djibouti, a sign of economic progress.
Yet they’re struggling. Their crops are sparse, stunted and hold a few kernels, or nothing at all. Most years they grow enough to live on — this year, the harvest failed. Ayube, 65, can only recall two times it was this bad: during 2002’s El Nino and in the 1984 famine that prompted the Live Aid appeal. To help them get by, his wife gathers firewood to sell in a town three hours’ walk away.
The family also gets aid from a donor-funded government initiative that provides relief as payment for work on irrigation channels or hillside terracing. The 10-year-old project, which runs from January to June, will support 7.9 million Ethiopians next year.
‘Unprecedented’ Drought
Government measures to encourage agriculture include distributing seeds and fertilizer to smallholders and promoting commercial farms. One focus area is the Awash River basin, which supports three state-run sugar projects, cotton plantations and the country’s largest fruit farm.
In the Amibara district of Afar region, 200 farmers in Sa’adin Omar’s community have benefited from government help to irrigate 146 hectares of corn from the river, which is Ethiopia’s longest. Because of drought, only half the plot may produce crops, and the river level is so low that the hose from their water pump can’t reach it, the 45-year-old said in an interview.
On the village outskirts, among sandy soil and thorn-trees, the carcasses of dozens of cows lay scattered around. The price for the animals has crashed from 7,000 birr to as low as 1,500 birr as desperate herders saturate the market, Sa’adin said.
“There has never been a drought like this,” he said.
