Drought disaster looms in East Africa

Rotting carcasses testify to the scale of the disaster looming in East Africa.

By Daniel Howden, from Marsabit, Kenya On the plains of Marsabit the heat is so intense the bush seems to shiver. The leafless scrub, bleached white by the sun, looks like a forest of fake Christmas trees. Carcasses of cattle and camels are strewn about the burnt red dirt in every direction. Siridwa Baseli walks out of the haze along a path of the dead and dying. He passes a skeletal cow that has given up and collapsed under a thorn tree. A nomad from the Rendille people, he is driving his herd in search of water. He marks time in seasons but knows that it has not rained for three years: “Since it is not raining there is no pasture,” he says. Only 40 of his herd of sheep and goats that once numbered 200 have survived. Those that remain are dying at a rate of 10 every day. Across East Africa an extraordinary drought is drying up rivers, and grasslands, scorching crops and threatening millions of people with starvation. In Kenya, the biggest and most robust economy in the region, the rivers that feed its great game reserves have run dry and since the country relies on hydropower, electricity is now rationed in the cities. … Leina Mpoke has been working to unravel the cycles of drought, local deforestation and global influences for the Kenya Climate Working Group. “The drastic changes we’re experiencing cannot be explained by local activities,” he says. “Across the southern Sahel we’re seeing a huge trend.” In the 1970s there was a major drought once in the decade. In the 1980s this quickened to once every seven years, in the 1990s, once every five years. At the beginning of this decade the rains failed every other season and what we now see is “perennial drought”. “What’s being seen,” says Mr Mpoke, who works with Concern, are “the consequences of global climate change”. … “The climate has forced people to the mountain. The number of poor people is increasing every day. They are cutting down the forest for firewood, the environment is totally degraded.” …

Drought Disaster looms in East Africa