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Climate Change in Africa Hits Small Farmers, Adaptation and Preparation Needed, One Million People Face Famine in Madagascar

October 29, 2021 

Farmers draw water for their animals from a hand-dug shallow well in a dry riverbed in Zimbabwe's western Nkayi district, file, October 2021	A woman sows seeds while young men plough the fields

Africa: How Climate Change Will Hit Small Farmers - And How Adaptation Helps

#AfricaClimateCrisis

 29 OCTOBER 2021

allAfrica.com By John Allen

Cape Town — Rising temperatures and a decline in rainfall across eight Southern and East African countries are set to slash the production of important food crops in the region by 2050, says a new study. And even when climate change produces improved rainfall, it will be too unpredictable to enable proper planning to take advantage of it.

These are among the conclusions reached by scientists from the University of Cape Town who assessed how crops, particularly staple foods grown by subsistence farmers, will survive climate change.

The scientists' report – covering Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe – has been released by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the specialised United Nations agency which works to improve food security.

Governments which have signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change aim to keep the rise in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees centigrade – ideally 1.5 degrees – above pre-industrial levels.

The new report, issued by IFAD days before the next round in Glasgow of the 26th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the convention (COP26), is pessimistic about the prospects in the countries it covers.

"Temperature increases in the hottest months in all eight countries are predicted to be a full 2°C or more, and could reach as much as 2.6°C in some places," it says.

"At the same time, rainfall is forecast to decrease by well over 20 mm in the driest months, and by more than 100 mm per year in the worst hit nations."

If this happens, it will have "a devastating impact on yields of staple and cash crops grown by small-scale farmers" in parts of the eight nations, IFAD adds.

"This could have a catastrophic impact on poverty and food availability unless there is an urgent injection of funding to help vulnerable farmers adapt how and what they farm."

In what IFAD portrays as "a worst-case scenario", the annual maize crop in a household in the Namibe province in Angola could decrease by 77 percent by 2050.

The scientists focussed especially on staple foods such as beans, cassava, cowpea, groundnuts, maize, millet, peas, pigeon peas, sesame, sorghum, sweet potato and wheat.

"Compounding the hotter, drier conditions that are forecast, familiar seasonal patterns will be disrupted," the report says. "Temperature rises will also include more frequent and severe heat waves and unusually hot days.

"Rainfall will be scarcer but also more erratic, with flash floods threatening crops and soil stability. The combined effects of the hotter, drier conditions will exacerbate water and heat stress on crops, and reduce the growing seasons."

The changes could lead to "the disaster of total crop failure" and "will inevitably force fundamental changes to local crop choices and agricultural practices by the year 2050."

Although the study indicates that rainfall may increase during rainy seasons in some areas, especially in East Africa, it will vary from year to year, making it difficult for farmers to adapt to take advantage of the change.

Ahead of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, which begins on October 31, 2021, IFAD said a commitment by wealthier countries to mobilize U.S. $100 billion a year to help less developed countries by 2020 remained unfulfilled.

Money raised to fight climate change includes funds that are intended to mitigate global warming and that aim to help countries adapt in the face of climate change. IFAD said developing countries need about $70 billion to $100 billion a year to be able to adapt. But only $22 billion is being directed to that end at present.

"Annual adaptation costs in developing countries alone are expected to reach $140 to $300 billion per year by 2030. Currently climate finance flows are focused primarily on mitigating global warming. For every $18 dollars spent on mitigation, just $1 is spent on adaptation."

Dr. Jyotsna Puri, IFAD's associate vice-president in its Strategy and Knowledge Department, said in a news release accompanying the report: "While efforts in mitigation are essential, they will take two or three decades to bear fruit. We must urgently invest in adaptation now so that small-scale farmers, like the ones in this study, can continue to grow the crops they rely on for their incomes and to feed their nations."

Pleading the cause of smallholder farmers, IFAD said those in developing countries "are the most vulnerable and the least able to cope. They produce a third of the world's food and up to 80 percent in some areas of Africa and Asia, but receive less than two percent of the funds invested globally in climate finance."

The report, entitled "What can smallholder farmers grow in a warmer world?", says ways of adapting to climate change could include:

Planting alternative crops and crop diversification, for example reducing reliance on maize in favour of beans, other legumes, or grains; Planting different varieties, including locally adapted varieties; Using different planting techniques, with improved seeds and plant material; Strengthening storage and processing capacities and infrastructure, and climate proofing value chains; and Improving access to and management of irrigation.

Africa: How Climate Change Will Hit Small Farmers - And How Adaptation Helps #AfricaClimateCrisis - allAfrica.com

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African Farmers Prepare for Future Made Uncertain By Climate Change

28 OCTOBER 2021

Voice of America (Washington, DC)

By Brenda Mulinya

Nairobi — Lilian Vihenda prepares afternoon porridge for her young children. The flour she uses has just been delivered by the staff at Food Banking Kenya, a nonprofit organization that helps feed the needy in her Nairobi neighborhood.

In the current hard economic times in Kenya, Vihenda says, these care packages help keep her children in school. She says the money that she would have used to buy food will pay for her children's school fees, which is a great help.

But in addition to helping the poor by salvaging excess food from farms and markets, Food Banking Kenya is taking steps to blunt the harmful impact of climate change.

John Gathungu, who heads the nonprofit, says the recent acquisition of a cold storage facility allows the food bank to store more food while reducing greenhouse emissions from the farms.

"When food in the farms ends up in the landfills, you find that there is a lot of toxicity within the air, because what happens is that when they rot in the landfill, they produce methane, which is a worse product than carbon dioxide," Gathungu said. "And if we curb food wastage, we can be able to at least to reduce the amount of gas that is produced from at least 6 to 8 percent."

Implementing climate-sensitive advances will be key to helping Africa adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change, says adaptation strategies analyst Winnie Khaemba.

"Agricultural technologies that also ensure that you have reduced emissions, CO2 emissions, methane emissions, which are all greenhouse emissions, we really are in need of these technologies and also the capacity to be able to apply these technologies," Khaemba said.

But technology requires funding, and that remains a challenge.

Experts say the continent will need more than $300 billion over the next decade as it develops strategies that will help cushion it from the effects of climate change.

African Farmers Prepare for Future Made Uncertain by Climate Change (voanews.com)

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Climate crisis: One million people face famine in Madagascar, reports Amnesty International

 A man in a field affected by drought. in Andranosira, Madagascar, 2021. (Photo: Amnesty International / Pierrot Men)

By Julia Evans  Follow

The Daily Maverick, 28 Oct 2021  

Amnesty International, in a new report on southern Madagascar, has showcased how the effects of the climate crisis disproportionately affect less developed countries.

Just ahead of the UN climate change conference COP26, human rights organisation Amnesty International called for global leaders to urgently address the climate crisis and protect countries most vulnerable to its effects, demonstrating its urgency by reporting how southern Madagascar is experiencing the worst drought in more than 40 years, with over one million people on the brink of famine. 

Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, said: “Madagascar is on the frontline of the climate crisis. For one million people, it means a drought of catastrophic proportions, and violations of their rights to life, health, food and water. It could mean dying of starvation. This is happening now.”  

In its report released on Wednesday, “It will be too late to help us once we are dead”, Amnesty  documented the human rights impact of climate change and highlighted how those who are least responsible for climate change are disproportionately affected by its impacts.  

The south of Madagascar has experienced four consecutive droughts, the latest occurring from November 2020 to January 2021, and has experienced below-average rainfall for five years in a row. 

Researchers from Amnesty International visited the southern region of Madagascar in March 2021 to collect information from people affected by the drought and food insecurity, finding that the drought posed an imminent threat to their right to life, right to health, right to food and rights to water and sanitation. 

One woman interviewed in March, who had lost two children said, “They suffered from hunger… and they died. We hardly eat anything.” 

The United Nations World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization reported in May that more than one million people in Madagascar were facing high levels of acute food insecurity. 

For the first time since the methodology was introduced five years ago, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) for Madagascar reported that nearly 14,000 were in a state of “catastrophe” – the highest type of food insecurity under the five-step scale of the IPC.  

The reason that this drought caused so much hunger is because the majority of the people in the southern region rely on subsistence agriculture and rain-fed crops for their food.

A woman sows seeds while young men plough the fields. (Photo: Amnesty International / Pierrot Men)

Is it climate change, or just a drought? 

The Amnesty report acknowledges that droughts in the south of Madagascar are chronic, that the region has a history of famine and periods of hunger, and that there is no specific scientific attribution study that directly links the drought in Madagascar to climate change.

However, the report also notes that climate data and scientific evidence suggest a relationship between climate change and the drought, citing evidence that shows that global climate change has probably contributed to higher temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall in the country’s semi-arid Deep South.

In a World Bank analysis of Madagascar, it was reported that in the southern region of Madagascar, the average annual rainfall had declined over the past century, and average temperatures had increased in the past 15 years, due to global warming.  The Amnesty report explained how these are conditions which elevate the likelihood of droughts.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in a special report in 2019 that the “frequency and intensity of droughts has increased in some regions”, including in southern Africa since pre-industrial levels due to global warming, and that, “the frequency and intensity of droughts are projected to increase, particularly in the Mediterranean region and southern Africa”. 

The United Nations has said Madagascar is on the brink of experiencing the world’s first climate change famine.

Along with the scientific data, locals in the region confirmed the changes in the climate, with one telling Amnesty researchers: “I’ve noticed a lot of changes. Before, the rain would fall from September to December, and we would start cultivating in February. This year, the rain only fell in February. It’s been two years that there is nothing growing in our fields.” 

A family returning from the market in town, along a road ‘flooded’ by the recent exceptional rain in Maroalomainty, Madagascar, 2021. (Photo: Amnesty International / Pierrot Men)

Are poor people really disproportionately affected by the climate crisis? 

According to the 2020 Global Climate Risk Index, Madagascar is one of the top 10 countries considered most vulnerable to climate risks. 

While all parts of Madagascar experience poverty, the southern region of Madagascar, commonly referred to as “Le Grand Sud” (the Deep South) experiences significantly higher rates, with an estimated 91% of that region living below the poverty line.  

Amnesty reported that as the Deep South region is historically underfunded and under-resourced, the people there have limited capacity to cope with the negative impacts associated with extreme weather and climate events (such as this severe drought).

Along with being a developing country, low-lying small island states like Madagascar are more exposed to climate-related disasters.

Amnesty International found that the drought had exacerbated pre-existing inequalities and increased vulnerabilities. For example, those with less capacity to cope with the impacts of the drought are more likely to resort to limiting food intake, eating cheaper and less nutritious food or relying on debt.  

The Amnesty field researchers spoke to a 30-year-old mother, Soamomeie, who was forced to migrate with her eight children because of the drought. Soamomeie said the drought had plunged her further into the cycle of poverty. 

“I used to own land, but we sold most of it because of the drought, and all our possessions: our pots and spoons, we sold most of them. I left everything behind and everything I had at home I sold, so I could buy food and medicine for the children. All I have left now is this, a kapoaka [small tin can] to cook with, and only one spoon,” she said.  

An elderly woman carries her farming tools in Ambazoa, Madagascar, 2021. (Photo: Amnesty International / Pierrot Men)

Amnesty calls for wealthy global countries to take responsibility 

“Ahead of the UN climate negotiations at COP26, this is a wake-up call for world leaders to stop dragging their feet on the climate crisis,” said Callamard. 

World leaders must rapidly cut emissions to avert further climate-driven humanitarian crises and wealthy countries must provide substantially increased climate finance to developing countries, including compensation to affected communities. 

Amnesty International is calling on all countries to commit to emission reduction targets that will keep us under a global 1.5°C temperature rise and commit to rapidly phasing out fossil fuels, to collectively cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and to reach zero before or by 2050. 

Additionally, Amnesty wants wealthier countries to take responsibility by substantially increasing their financial contribution for emission reduction, and to increase climate adaptation measures to help support those in less developed countries.  

Callamard said, “The international community must immediately provide the people in Madagascar affected by the drought with increased humanitarian relief and additional funding for the losses and damages suffered.  

“Going forward, countries that have contributed the most to climate change and those with the most available resources must also provide additional financial and technical support to help people in Madagascar to better adapt to the impacts of climate change, such as increasingly severe and prolonged droughts. 

“We can no longer accept that the poorest, most marginalised groups in society are the ones paying the highest price for the actions and the failures of the world’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.” DM/OBP

Climate crisis: One million people face famine in Madag... (dailymaverick.co.za)

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