On June 17, the world marks International Day Against Desertification and Drought.
This year, the theme is "Rising up from drought together", emphasizes the need of an early action to avoid disastrous consequences for humanity and the planetary ecosystems.
Drought is considered as one of the most far-reaching disasters, causing short and long-term economic and social losses to millions of people. Desertification is the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. It is caused primarily by human activities and climatic variations.
It does not refer to the expansion of existing deserts. It occurs because dryland ecosystems, which cover over one third of the world's land area, are extremely vulnerable to overexploitation and inappropriate land use. Poverty, political instability, deforestation, overgrazing and bad irrigation practices can all undermine the productivity of the land.
There are about 50 million people living in Kenya, of which about 17 million (43 per cent) do not have access to clean water. For decades, water scarcity has been a major issue in Kenya, caused mainly by years of recurrent droughts, poor management of water supply, contamination of the available water, and a sharp increase in water demand resulting from relatively high population growth.
The lack of rainfall affects also the ability to acquire food and has led to eruptions of violence in other parts of the country due to water stress and scarcity. In many areas, the shortage of water in Kenya has been amplified by the government’s lack of investment in water, especially in rural areas. Most of the urban poor Kenyans only have access to polluted water, which has caused cholera epidemics and multiple other diseases that affect health and livelihoods. Despite the critical shortage of clean water in Kenya’s urban slums, there also is a large rural to urban discrepancy in access to clean water in Kenya.
According to the World Bank, slightly less than half of the rural population has access to water, as opposed to the urban population where 85 percent have access to safe water. Due to continued population, it has been estimated that by 2025, Kenya’s per capita water availability will be 235 cubic meters per year, about two-thirds less than the current 650 cubic meters.
Over the past decade Kenya has experienced a severe drought. Global warming is one critical factor that has prolonged the drought and as a result, millions of Kenyans are unable to grow their crops and keep their livestock alive. Because most Kenyans rely directly or indirectly on agriculture, when severe droughts occur, many Kenyans are left to starve unless food aid prevents a famine.
Another main reason for why droughts have prolonged is deforestation. The largest forest in Kenya, Mau, distributes water to six lakes plus eight wildlife reserves, and some 10 million people depend on its rivers for a living. However, loggers and farmers have destroyed a quarter of Mau’s 400,000 hectares. The problem with deforestation is that it almost always leads to increased runoff, which has negative implications in both the rainy as well as the subsequent dry season.
Droughts are among the greatest threats to sustainable development, especially in developing countries, but increasingly so in developed nations too. In fact, forecasts estimate that by 2050 droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population. The number and duration of droughts has increased by 29 percent since 2000, as compared to the two previous decades.
When more than 2.3 billion people already face water stress, this is a huge problem. More and more of us will be living in areas with extreme water shortages, including an estimated one in four children by 2040, according to Unicef.
No country is immune to drought. Between 1900 and 2019, droughts impacted 2.7 billion people in the world, and caused 11.7 million deaths. Currently, forecasts estimate that by 2050 droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population.
According to the High-Level Panel on Water in 2018, about 40 percent of the world’s population is affected by water scarcity, with as many as 700 million people at risk of being displaced as a result by 2030. Drought is considered as one of the most far-reaching disasters, causing short and long-term economic and social losses to millions of people.
Over 15 per cent of natural disaster damages and losses are caused by drought. FAO estimates that droughts account for 85.8 per cent of livestock losses and drought is the most lethal natural hazard to livestock. That was in 2015.
With the anticipated pressures on water resources and with more intense and severe droughts predicted, a paradigm shift is needed. Poorly coordinated “crisis management” in the face of drought will no longer suffice. A well-planned approach that focuses on reducing the impacts of drought is needed.
The adoption of national drought policies that are focused on risk reduction and which are complemented by drought mitigation plans at various levels of government will have significant ripple effects across key sectors.
These policies support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” – by promoting integrated water resources management. The vulnerability to future drought episodes can be significantly reduced and the coping capacity of communities, even entire nations, can be improved. Drought monitoring and early warning systems should be encouraged as one of the mitigation measures to droughts. With more research and collaboration, early warning systems could reduce hunger and distressed migration as a result of drought.
An Early Warning System provides timely and effective information to facilitate action to avoid or reduce the risk of droughts and prepare for effective response. Numerous natural drought indicators must be monitored routinely to determine the onset and end of drought and its spatial characteristics.
Although all types of droughts originate from a precipitation deficiency, it is insufficient to rely solely on this climate element to assess severity of drought.
Effective drought early warning systems integrate precipitation and other climatic parameters with water information, such as stream flow, snow pack, groundwater levels, reservoir and lake levels, and soil moisture, as well as a comprehensive assessment of current and future drought and water supply conditions.
Secretary, National Environmental Complaints Committee [email protected]
