Floods and droughts: How climate change is impacting Africa

By CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON / KALOTUM Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009 When one enters the northern Kenyan village of Kalotum, the overwhelming impression is one of things missing. There are a dozen conical thatched huts and a clutch of spindly thorn trees. But there are no crops, animals or water. A quick look around reveals no men, either. “They all left,” says villager Mary Atabo. She says just three of her family’s 100 goats have survived a decade-long drought. With no animals to look after, the men have migrated to cities to look for work or sell what remaining possessions they have. “The weather comes and goes now,” Atabo says. “We are left with nothing.” If the world’s leaders need more inspiration before heading to the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month, they need look no further than East Africa. Here climate change is no longer a future threat — it is displacing and killing people today. In 2006, the United Nations said it expected Africa to be the continent most affected by climate change, not because it produces a large amount of greenhouse gases — quite the opposite — but because, as the world’s poorest and most badly governed continent, it is the least equipped to cope with change. Around 90 million Africans were “at risk,” it said, and that’s not counting those impacted by wars and tribal conflicts, many of which are linked to extreme weather phenomena such as droughts and floods. The U.N.’s predictions are already coming true. This year, around 23 million people in seven East African countries are being fed by aid agencies after a decade of poor rains have decimated crops. One of the worst-affected areas is the Turkana region in northern Kenya where Kalotum is located. In some communities here, up to 35% of the population is suffering from malnutrition, more than double the World Food Program’s crisis threshold of 15%. … The locals have already noticed this happening. “The grass used to come up to my chest. There were wet and dry seasons. Now the weather has turned extreme and unpredictable,” says Peter Aceh, 27, a tourist guide in the Turkana capital of Lodwar. Aid agencies warn that tens of thousands of people in Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya could end up displaced by the floods of the last few weeks. There have also been outbreaks of cholera in several countries. Worse may be still to come. Eris Lothike, who works for the Oxfam relief agency in northern Kenya, says that if the rains swept away seedlings with the top soil and overstretched aid groups can’t feed everybody, outright famine “is a looming possibility.” …