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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 22 July 2011
Famine in Somalia has killed tens of thousands of people in recent months and could grow even worse unless urgent action is taken, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned on Wednesday. FAO has appealed for $120 million for response to the drought in the Horn of Africa to provide agricultural emergency assistance.
 Around 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are currently in need of emergency assistance Hundreds of people are dying every day and if we do not act now many more will perish,” said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.
“We must avert a human tragedy of vast proportions. And much as food assistance is needed now, we also have to scale up investments in sustainable immediate and medium-term interventions that help farmers and their families to protect their assets and continue to produce food.
Special report
In a special report published today [20 July 2011] the FAO-managed Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network officially declared a state of famine in two regions of southern Somalia, Bakool and Lower Shabelle.
The report warns that in the next one or two months famine will become widespread throughout southern Somalia.
Together with ongoing crises in the rest of the country, the number of Somalis in need of humanitarian assistance has increased from 2.4 million to 3.7 million in the last 6 months. Altogether, around 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are currently in need of emergency assistance. Continue reading Famine claims hundreds every day in Somalia
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 15 July 2011
In the Horn of Africa, increasingly frequent drought episodes punctuated by ever shorter recovery periods have exhausted the coping capacity of communities in a region where resources and services are already scarce. The resulting depletion of household resources is having a serious impact on the general health and nutritional status of the population.
The vicious cycle of hunger- ill-health- poverty means that fewer resources are dedicated to health care just as health needs increase as a result of poor diet. Lack of water and population displacements, which result in precarious sanitation, further increase the risk of communicable diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections and measles. Outbreaks of acute watery diarrhoea and measles have already been reported in Djibouti and Ethiopia. The effects of the drought are also aggravated by weak health care systems, with limited human resources and medical supplies and low immunization coverage.
The areas most severely affected are also those suffering from some of the highest disease burdens in the region. For example, in Somalia, child health is among the worst in the world. Infant mortality is estimated at 88 per 1000 live births and under-five mortality at 142 per 1000. In the first half of 2011, at least three Somali children died of malnutrition every day. In parts of Southern Somalia, one in three children is malnourished. Continue reading Droughts seriously impact on health
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 11 June 2011
An FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] pilot project that has proved a great success in combating desertification is to be rolled out more widely in an attempt to turn African drylands back into fertile land.
 The Acacia offers many benefits. With two thirds of the African continent now classified as desert or drylands and desertification affecting a quarter of the world’s population, the breakthrough has the potential to transform the lives of vulnerable populations. In operation since 2004, the Acacia project has involved the planting and managing of Acacia forests in arid lands helping combat desertification while providing socio-economic benefits to local communities.
Fatou Seye, her husband and their six children live in the village of Thiékene Ndiaye in Senegal’s drylands. Now 50 years old, Fatou remembers how different the land looked during her own childhood. “When I was young, the land was so much greener with a much greater diversity of plant species,” she recalls.
Here, as in much of the Sahel – the 5000-kilometre belt of land that divides the Sahara desert from the rest of Africa – vegetation has been disappearing. Continue reading Acacia project to turn the tide on desertification
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 09 June 2011
Climate change will have major impacts on the availability of water for growing food and on crop productivity in the decades to come, warns a new FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] report.
 Loss of glaciers will eventually impact the amount of surface water available for agriculture ‘Climate Change, Water, and Food Security’ is a comprehensive survey of existing scientific knowledge on the anticipated consequences of climate change for water use in agriculture.
These include reductions in river runoff and aquifer recharges in the Mediterranean and the semi-arid areas of the Americas, Australia and southern Africa — regions that are already water-stressed. In Asia, large areas of irrigated land that rely on snowmelt and mountain glaciers for water will also be affected, while heavily populated river deltas are at risk from a combination of reduced water flows, increased salinity, and rising sea levels.
Additional impacts described in the report:
An acceleration of the world’s hydrological cycle is anticipated as rising temperatures increase the rate of evaporation from land and sea. Rainfall will increase in the tropics and higher latitudes, but decrease in already dry semi-arid to mid-arid latitudes and in the interior of large continents. A greater frequency in droughts and floods will need to be planned for but already, water scarce areas of the world are expected to become drier and hotter.
Even though estimates of groundwater recharge under climate change cannot be made with any certainty, the increasing frequency of drought can be expected to encourage further development of available groundwater to buffer the production risk for farmers. Continue reading Water warning for agriculture
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 04 June 2011
China warned several central and southern provinces hit by a months-long dry spell on Saturday to prepare for heavy rain and even floods, which would help to ease a drought which has damaged crops [...]
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