Kenyan Drought: Competing solutions to climate change
by Tanya
Kerssen and Shoshana Perrey
At the recent UN Summit on Climate Change-held in the run-up to the December climate talks in Copenhagen-Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai identified climate change as a key culprit in the drought that is currently devastating Kenya. One of only two female voices represented at the summit, Maathai blamed climate change for putting over 10 million Kenyans at risk of starvation saying, "their crops are failing, their children are hungry, their fields are parched and their cattle are dying." News reports display harrowing images of arid landscapes strewn with cow
carcasses, a grim symbol of the plight of pastoral communities who depend on these cattle for survival. Conflict has intensified among rival groups of
pastoralists and settled farmers over scarce water resources.
This is the most severe drought to hit the country in decades, raising important questions about what can and must be done to protect the most vulnerable. Understanding hunger and scarcity as human-caused phenomena, as Maathai indicates, as opposed to ‘natural' catastrophes, is certainly the first step. Kenya's depleted grain reserves have been unable to compensate for lost production, resulting in 100-130 percent inflation in maize prices this month, according to the World Food Program. Kenyans have been increasingly vulnerable to such price fluctuations since the 1990s, when the World Bank forced the country to dismantle its National Cereal and Produce Board (NCPB), the agency responsible for purchasing surplus grain in times of plenty and stabilizing prices. Other World Bank policy prescriptions-designed to facilitate loan repayment-included increased trade liberalization and a shift towards export-oriented agriculture.
The promotion of agro-exports necessarily called for investments in large-scale irrigation schemes. River basin development was first taken up by international development agencies in the 1960s as a way to increase commercial crop production. These irrigation schemes conflicted with and threatened indigenous water management practices based on selecting crops of known water requirements and tolerances, and adapting cropping patterns and strategies to suit environmental conditions. The Turkana people of Kenya, for instance, cultivated sorghum in the floodplains of the Kerio and Turkwel Rivers until the practice was largely displaced by formal irrigation and rainwater harvesting schemes promoted by aid and relief agencies (see Adams and Anderson. 1988. "Irrigation Before Development" in African Affairs). These forms of imposed ‘development' led to increased hunger by threatening the traditional knowledge and survival strategies of local people.
Rather than addressing these root causes of Kenya's
vulnerability to climate change, some are calling for technological fixes based in a "new green revolution" that merely perpetuates the same failed development model. A newly released report by the African Center for Biosafety
shows that the seed and chemical industry is poised to capitalize on global
climate change by "rhetorically positioning itself, even if implausibly, as having the solution to widespread climate concerns." In fact, so-called "climate-ready seeds" are part and parcel of an energy- and water-intensive, industrial farming model that 1) is one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, and 2) is the most vulnerable to drought, floods and other stresses because of its genetic homogeneity. Patent regimes will actually take control away from African farmers by restricting farmers' ability to exchange seeds and adapt to constantly changing environmental conditions. The expansion of irrigation infrastructure, a key component of the new (and old) Green Revolution, will continue to undermine traditional management practices for coping with droughts and floods.
There are numerous examples throughout the continent of African organizations and peasant groups designing innovative, low-tech strategies for adapting to climate change. For example, a project in Benin established in late 2007 called Strengthening the Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change in Rural Benin (PARBCC) aims to "create a three-way conversation between farmers, meteorologists and the government, and help farmers make informed choices about when to sow and harvest crops." In addition to implementing an early warning system to alert farmers about droughts, storms and other hazards; the project is developing, testing and implementing locally-appropriate farming strategies such as mulching, planting pits, integrated crop management and organic fertilizers.
As the Copenhagen Climate Summit approaches (7-18 December 2009), it will be critical to
recognize the competing and conflicting sets of solutions and discern who is truly benefiting from them-and who is bearing the cost.
