More than 20 million people in Mauritania, Ethiopia, and Southern Africa are facing starvation. They need your help!

A generation is considered wise and prudent not when it thinks about itself only but when it leaves behind a nation that is developed, or at least on the road to development, and whose security politically, economically and socially is put on solid basis for the generations to come. That’s how its success is measured. If the present generation is not to fail in its historical responsibility, then we should make drought and famine the top priority of the country so that not even a single person, dies of hunger and forever disassociate our name from this curse.

Failed rains between June and September have left Ethiopia in the grip of a brutal drought. At the moment six million people are in need of food but by March next year this could increase to 14 million. This means that more people could be affected than 1984.

Once we begin to see beyond the rather seductive and ironic depictions of the famine encounter, we will be in a position to recapture a glimpse of the real causes of famine and cautiously avoid the conflation of natural calamities with ‘man-made’ famines. It is from this standpoint that I like to argue that the Ethiopian famine is largely caused by human forces and not by nature, and to be sure far from starving, Ethiopians should have enjoyed the fruits of a breadbasket from “Garden of Eden.”

There is no doubt that the Ethiopian landscape suffers from ecological imbalance and environmental stress (due to decades of massive deforestation ), but poor rains alone cannot cause continuous poor harvest. Apart from climate, the human dimension and the politics of famine must be considered seriously, and in this respect, although one may pose and say the phenomenon of famine is not wholly attributable to the world institutions, there is some truth to it.

Dear Ethiopians and Friends of Ethiopia, Regions in Ethiopia are currently undergoing severe drought made acute by both natural and man made factors. While more or less all administrative regions are affected, the most severely impacted this time (last time it was Gode) appears to be the Afar region.

Scientists in Australia and Canada say that pollution from western countries may have caused the droughts which ravaged Africa's Sahel region in the 1970s and 1980s. Millions died in the droughts, which hit Ethiopia hardest in 1984.

Who Should Own the Land?

We head over to the two-room schoolhouse, the only concrete building in the village. The director, a gracious middle-aged man named Sultan Osman, says that half of the 462 kids who enrolled in September have dropped out because of the drought.

Just as in 1984, the ribs are starting to show and the cupboards are on their last cup of grain, not just in Ethiopia but in much of southern Africa. But this is not merely a replay of the last famine. This time there is a cooperative government in Ethiopia, and everywhere else the aid workers have arrived in time. What is still needed is critical but manageable: Western governments and other donors must ensure that over the next few months the food pipeline stays open and runs smoothly.

I grew up in Wonji, and my two children were born and raised in Wonji until the age of 6 & 7. At that time in Wonji the drinking water had excess fluoride, the air was polluted from the smoke and dust which was coming out of the factory, and most of the houses were built from asbestos. As we know human health is closely tied to environmental conditions, the quality of air, water, in Wonji, Wonji/Shoa, and Metehara had risked the health of many families including myself and my family.

The agricultural practices that served them so well are now well and truly exhausted. All over the Ethiopian highlands farms have been divided and subdivided so often they are little more than scraps of land.

The Faculty of Natural Science, Addis Ababa University has called for the return of the country's plant species taken by foreign researchers since the middle of the 19th century.

US Congressman Frank Wolf has warned of a looming crisis in Ethiopia and Eritrea, stressing that both countries are desperately in need of help.

A new Water Poverty Index developed to highlight the differences between water-rich and water-poor nations will be the cornerstone of the Third Water Forum in the Japanese city of Kyoto next March.

Although harvests in Ethiopia are only down 8-15% on last year, this is enough to provoke a major crisis. "It now only takes a small drop in harvests and suddenly millions of people need help," says Peter Kerby, food security officer for the Department for International Development in Addis Ababa. "There are now many more very vulnerable people, living right on the edge and just about holding their heads above water. But the slightest ripple and you can have eight, 10 or 12 million people going under."

The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, has made an urgent appeal for 1.4 million metric tons of food aid, as his country faces a famine potentially as severe as the 1984 crisis.

The Ethiopian government must do more to tackle the effects of recurrent drought that plunge the Horn of Africa nation into a food crisis every few years, the head of the U.N. children's fund said Friday.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi launched an international appeal on Saturday to help avert a looming famine threatening millions in the country. He spoke out as his government revealed that more than eleven million people would need food aid in the Horn of Africa country for next year.

Ethiopia's drought may worsen and match the 1984 crisis in which up to one million died unless help arrives urgently, but the country is not yet suffering a famine, a U.N. agency said on Friday.

...[T]here is no guarantee for development and the defeat of famine by simply carrying out land reform and abandoning the Ethiopian farmers in limbo, i.e. without giving them the necessary tools and guidance as well as appropriate technology in such a way to enjoy food self-reliance [...] The defeat of famine could come only by a sound economic policy initiated by a visionary and patriotic leadership that is ready to undertake a draconian overhaul of the national economy.

Almost one sixth of Ethiopia’s main harvest has been destroyed by drought, humanitarian organisations said on Monday.

study papers presented to the "Rural Development" workshop held last week at the Prime Minister's Office revealed that the value-added in agriculture in the early 1990s was less than one quarter that of Nigeria. That figure alone illustrates Ethiopia's poverty starkly. "Average incomes for those engaged in agriculture are only one-sixth as high as for those in non-farm employment."

Whether the worst case scenario materialises depends upon many factors including, the degree of failure of this season's harvest, the international community's response in terms of food and other aid, the Ethiopian people's ability to cope with decline in their own food production, and the Ethiopian Government's capacity to respond effectively to this potential disaster.

In 1973 the dergue and all of us blamed the famine on the Emperor and the emperor’s men blamed it on the weather. In 1984 I have heard the guys in power now speak full mouth blaming the dergue for the famine, the dergue blamed it on the weather. Now the Meles and his people blame it on the weather. The critics blame it on its policies. How ironic that the more things change the more they remain the same. The same television set the same pictures only new beggars. This is a sickening game and it more than stinks.

In FY 2003 to date, USAID/FFP has committed more than 173,300 metric tons (MTs) of P.L. 480 Title II emergency food assistance, valued at more than $75 million.

Inadequate and erratic rains over short and long rainy seasons have resulted in widespread crop failure and created a grim humanitarian outlook in Eritrea and across large areas of eastern and southwestern Ethiopia. A process of impoverishment over recent years, exacerbated by only a partial recovery from the most recent 1999/2000 food security crisis, has increased many communities' vulnerability to current shocks.

"My reading is that the food situation in Ethiopia is very precarious," Tony Hall, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations food agencies, told Reuters. "I doubt very much it will be as bad as in 1984," added Hall, who personally witnessed the famine that killed nearly one million Ethiopians.

Due to remarkable, losses of livestock products in pastoral areas, the absence of root crops, vegetables, early and green harvests in hardest hit areas, the death of large number of livestock and poor physical conditions and low price of coffee, the immediate food needs increased significantly at the last quarter of 2002.

Ethiopia wants to become the first country out of the 40 targeted in the IAEA's plan to eradicate the tsetse fly using sterile insects. Construction began this summer on the continent's largest insect-rearing center, south of Addis Ababa. Ten million captive females flies here will soon be producing two million flies a week. The plan is to sterilize their male offspring by irradiation, and then spray the males from aircraft across the bush. Weekly flights across Ethiopia's Rift Valley, a hotbed of the disease, could begin as early as this winter and continue for at least two years.

The reason that crisis turns so swiftly to catastrophe is that the legacy of those previous years is carried by the people into the next one. Few of the hundreds of thousands of cattle that died in the 2000 famine have been replaced. Children have been without milk, which makes them particularly vulnerable. The ability to cope with yet another disaster is reduced, year by year, to the narrowest of margins. For a people who live so perilously on the edge, very little is needed to push them over the precipice.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has warned that his country faces a famine worse than that of 1984 which killed nearly one million people and sparked a big international relief effort.

None work, few eat, whole families just stare out waiting for help that may never come.

Clearly, the early warning signs of a large-scale humanitarian crisis are already visible. We visited rural Ethiopia yesterday to observe the real situation on the ground. In villages of West Hararghe (Orimya Region) - one of the areas hardest-hit by erratic rains this year, and traditionally one of the best coffee producing and food surplus areas - it is obvious to anyone that there has been a massive crop failure. Looking down from the sky, and from a distance, you get the impression that the situation is not that bad because the landscape is not the parched, brown land so familiar in drought situations. Rather, it is a pleasant, beautiful light green. However, it does not take long to understand that this is deceptive. It is a green drought.

While the world's attention focuses on the drought in Southern Africa, up to half a million in the north east of the country are facing their own food crisis.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that serious food shortages are affecting millions of farmers and pastoralists in eastern, northern and southern Ethiopia due to exceptionally dry weather resulting from the partial failure of the "Belg" rains (February to May) and a late start of the main "Meher" rains (June to September).

More than eight million people are in need of food aid after failed rains, Ethiopia's emergency relief agency has warned.

The Ethiopian government has warned that over eight million people are in nneed of food aid after failed rains in the country. According to the government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DPPC), a further 3.7 million were in need of assistance, over and above the 5.2 million people it had warned at the beginning of the year would need food aid.

Northern Ethiopia, which became the byword for famine a generation ago, is now exporting a food surplus and is confident that it could survive a year without rain.

The smokestacks of North American and European factories may have spawned the devastating droughts that killed millions of people in Ethiopia and other parts of the Sahel region of Africa.

The UN in Ethiopia has issued a “special alert” over the looming food crisis in parts of the Afar and Oromiya regions, warning of "serious problems" unless nomadic pastoralists receive help in the next few weeks.

Ethiopia's emergency relief agency says that food is on its way to over a quarter of a million people who are facing serious food shortages in the north-eastern region of Afar.

Organized by the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, to focus attention and action on meeting challenges of improving people's lives and conserving natural resources in a world with growing populations and increasing demands for food, water, shelter, sanitation, energy, health services and economic security.

Stuart Williams is a leading British conservationist spearheading the fight to save two of Ethiopia’s rarest animals, the Ethiopian Wolf and the Grevy Zebra, both of which face imminent extinction. Williams, who lives in the Bale Mountains, speaks of the importance of Ethiopia’s wildlife, the role of its national and protected parks, and how sustainable development within the country is intertwined with conservation efforts.

The World Food Summit in Rome has ended without achieving anything, delegates have said. Officials from poor countries say it was largely a waste of time anyway, as the governments of wealthy countries did not take it seriously.

In India alone, urban air pollution costs a billion dollars a year in disease and lost crops. Water pollution costs another $ 6 billion and soil erosion deprives the country of $ 2 billion in lost productivity...that it [India] is losing $2 billion annually in lost productivity due to erosion sounds too familiar to us, doesn't it? Only that Ethiopia loses not 2 billion dollars but 2 billion or thereabouts tons of soil every year.

The various environmental protection activities which Ethiopia has carried out so far in line with agreed international conventions has been encouraging, the Environmental Protection Authority said

Developing countries are telling the US and the EU that free trade is essential to enable their poor farmers to compete with the subsidised farmers of the rich industrialised world.

June 10-13, Rome, sponsored by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, will take stock of gains made toward ending hunger since the 1996 summit, when 185 nations and the European Community set the goal of cutting by half the number of hungry children, women and men by 2015.

This electronic discussion on two major themes of the upcoming World Food Summit – political will and resource mobilization – is being conducted through the Development Gateway Food Security topic page, and will run through June 7.

At least four mammals and two bird species are facing extinction, the Ethiopian-based wildlife institute said. According to experts the Walia ibex, Ethiopian wolf, mountain nyala and Grevy zebras as well as the white-winged fluff tail and Ankober Serin bird species are all threatened.

The Institute of Bio-Diversity Conservation and Research (IBDC) said the depletion of the forest genetic resources of the country has reached such a level that it would make life impossible.

Senior researcher of animal genetic resource at the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation and Research (ICBR) said four great mammals and two bird species which are endemic to Ethiopia are endangered and may soon face extinction unless urgent conservation action is taken.

Access to water is clearly the most basic of human needs. Improving water supply and sanitation service delivery is crucial in the quest to reduce poverty. Yet for many in the developing world, access to water is far from the given it is in developed countries. Roughly 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water. At the same time, 2.4 billion people live without improved sanitation and 4 billion without sound wastewater disposal. Deaths from water scarcity number 12 million each year. Of this total, 3 million are children who tragically die from waterborne diseases every year.

This electronic discussion will run until June 30, and focuses on ways to reduce poverty and sustain growth through sound and equitable environmental management. Themes are introduced every two weeks, then summarized following comments and discussion by members.

Malaria continues to be a major public health burden on Africa and other developing regions. More than 90% of the 300-500 million clinical cases of malaria globally occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria causes approximately 1 million deaths every year (2 deaths every minute). Almost all these deaths are in children less than 5 years of age.

The "economic therapy" imposed under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction is in large part responsible for triggering famine and social devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, wreaking the peasant economy and impoverishing millions of people. With the complicity of branches of the US government, it has also opened the door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces by US biotech corporations, which behind the scenes have been peddling the adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise of emergency aid and famine relief.

Almost all the forests in Ethiopia have been destroyed in the last 40 years, according to a study by the United Nations. Less than three percent of the entire country is now covered with trees - prompting fears of an impending environmental disaster - and the problem is only going to get worse. Wild fires, which in 2000 caused more than US $39 million of damage in the southern Bale and Borana regions alone, have destroyed many of the forested areas of the country...

"Among donors and governments, water received little or fragmented attention at least until the mid 1990s when the implication of water shortage and inadequate management of resources started to be felt"

Unless more aggressive measures are taken, progress against child malnutrition is likely to slow over the next two decades, according to a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The report, 2020 Global Food Outlook: Trends, Alternatives, and Choices, projects that child malnutrition will decline by only 20 percent over the next 20 years...

The report by the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington think tank, predicts rising hunger on the continent, which is notorious for periodic famines and struggles to feed itself even in normal times. ...

"Even the overcast days are hot and humid. The grass is turning brown and great clouds of dust are blowing up in the wind. The landscape is once again turning back into a desert." Despite the media's lack of interest in the drought affecting the Horn of Africa and East Africa, the situation remains desperate. Read two new reports on Oxfam's emergency work from Gode, Ethiopia:

Saving Lives

The work of the therapeutic feeding centre in Balgaharry, which treats severely malnourished children.

"People I meet tell me stories about how they survived the floods: the head teacher of a Chokwe primary school was stranded for 4 days in a tree, fending off snakes that tried to join him with a stick. As the waters flooded his house and school, he managed to fill his pockets with chalk so that when he got back to school he could teach again."

References

Climate, Water and Desertification