Ohio, East Africa convey tale of two climate disasters
In Ohio we’ve all seen way too much rain this year, which has caused devastating consequences for our farms. They need our support to get through a difficult summer with so many corn losses because of the weather.
As Sen. Sherrod Brown explained, “After one of the wettest springs on record, Ohio farmers are struggling this season. USDA should do everything in its power to ensure Ohio farmers have the flexibility they need to cope with damages to their crops and this administration needs to make sure the farm safety net works for our state.”
A world away, climate change is causing the exact opposite problem — drought.
Parts of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya have suffered lack of rainfall and the farmers can’t grow crops. It’s been one drought after another there. Farmers have lost whatever capacity they had to cope.
Food shortages are worsening by the day. People will starve to death unless the international community responds with timely humanitarian aid.
The UN World Food Program warned of the potential of a massive large scale disaster because of the repeated dry spells: “With dry conditions since October 2018 and rainfall deficits in April and May 2019, WFP estimates the number of food insecure people needing humanitarian assistance in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Djibouti could reach between 14 to 17 million through August.” That is more than the population of Ohio.
Relief agencies are appealing for funding but it’s been too slow to materialize. The world is not responding quickly enough to head off tragedy.
In Somalia the crisis is most serious. In the Puntland region of that country only 1 in 4 children has sufficient access to food, according to Save the Children. And it could get much worse.
Thomas Jepson-lay of Save the Children warns: “The threat could not be more real. An unaddressed funding gap of this size is as good as a death sentence to children in Somalia. With the right funds allocated now, we can protect livelihoods, scale up food, water and nutrition supplies, and avoid the worst in the 2019 drought. We can prevent children dying.”
The East Africa crisis is this large because of climate change and it should serve as a broader warning to the whole world. In addition to emergency aid and building resilience in drought-affected areas, we have to reverse the devastating impact of climate change.
Peter Smerdon of WFP says: “Cyclical droughts have become the ‘new normal’ in the Horn of Africa including in Somalia because of climate change.”
Erin Taylor of Save the Children explains: “Countries in these regions used to experience one year of drought in every 10 years. However, in the last decade, they have experienced more than three severe droughts, as well as extreme flooding.”
Relief agencies, working with governments, can help build the resilience of farmers to drought. Safety nets like school feeding can be implemented so children can be fed and stay in school. Nutrition programs can be operated at health clinics to treat potentially deadly malnutrition.
This takes funding but often humanitarian aid is threatened with budget cuts. The Trump administration, in its first three budgets, has proposed eliminating food aid programs. This is an absolute travesty.
We must do better than this. Humanitarian needs are extremely high right now because of the East Africa crisis and civil wars in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan and Central African Republic.
Humanitarian funding must increase to save lives and give nations a chance to build food security and stability.
For East Africa, the threat of climate change is not something off in the future, it’s here now. We must increase our funding for relief agencies so they can save lives and prevent a summer of starvation.