Saturday, November 25, 2006

Afghanistan's Neglected Drought

Afghanistan's Neglected Drought

Afghanistan's neglected drought

Increasing violence in Afghanistan has overshadowed hardship caused by drought. Christian Aid's Anjali Kwatra writes about the problem in the western province of Herat.

In pictures: Afghan drought

In a graveyard on a hill overlooking the village of Sya Kamarak in western Afghanistan, villagers gathered last week for the funerals of three young children who died of hunger.

They died on the same day from malnutrition caused by a devastating drought that has hit western, northern and southern Afghanistan.

There were no doctors' reports to confirm the cause of death - the parents were too poor to take them to the clinic which is one day's walk away.

Jan Bibi, 40, said she had been feeding her three-month-old daughter Nazia with just boiled water and sugar because she had nothing else.

"My baby died because of inadequate food. I wanted to breastfeed her but I was not producing enough milk."

Jan Bibi's surviving twin daughter Merzia is the size of a newborn rather than a three-month old and cries continually for food.

Dry spell

"I am worried about my baby," said Jan Bibi. "The future is dark because we don't have food or water or fuel for heating. We have to walk for four hours to get to the nearest fresh water - we don't know how we will survive."

Failed crops turn to stocks for burning (Photos: Christian Aid)

The villagers say 50 children have died so far this year - a far higher number than usual - because of the drought.

Almost all the 300 families in remote Sya Kamarak, which is a day's drive along bumpy tracks from the capital of the province, Herat city, live off the land.. Most lost all their wheat harvest when the rains failed in April and May.

A Christian Aid assessment of the drought in five northern and western provinces showed that farmers lost 80-100% of their crops in the worst affected areas and water sources in many villages had dried up.

More at the link above.
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In pictures: Afghan Drought

Afghanistan's Drought

War has ravaged this country for almost thrity years, and now lack of rainfall is also killing its children. Where is the U.S? Since we too are still in their country after almost five years, what is our responsibility regarding this crisis? Are we going to stand and just watch their children die?

According to the most recent estimates I could find, approximately 12% of the land is arable, but now with drought and extreme soil evaporation that may be less. Permanent pastures average about 46% of the land with about 4% as forests and woodlands which may now also be much less due to deforestation because of remaining forests being cut down to use them for fuel and building materials. Desertification due to dry conditions is also a current environmental issue for Afghanistan as it is for the entire region.



Photo courtesy of NASA.











Dust Storm/Afghanistan/Pakistan

Also see:



















Water Management In Central Asia

Would the people of Afghanistan stand up to fight for water? Wouldn't you? I am sure to many Americans and others in this world, the suffering these people in Afghanistan and in this area of the world in general are going through regarding lack of water is incomprehensible.

That needs to change because if we don't change our ways, within the next 45 years more of this world will be a desert, and the water that is left will be the property of those who can afford it and have the power to make it theirs alone.

Australia, China, Afghanistan, Africa...and that is only the beginning. How much of our world will we turn into a wasteland before we realize what we have lost? And if you think the constant dropping of bombs on the land has no effect on the atmosphere nor the conditions in Afghanistan, think again. It isn't only our behavior regarding what we put up in the atmosphere that needs to change, it is also what we rain down.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Would You Drink This Water?

This Thanksgiving, be thankful for POTABLE WATER.













A Resident Collects Water from a Water Storage Tank on the Outskirts of Suining
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CHINA: November 24, 2006
A resident collects water from a water storage tank on the outskirts of Suining, southwest China's Sichuan province, November 19, 2006.

Officials with southwest China's Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality made pledges at an ongoing conference about drought relief that they will strengthen the water conservancy construction "at all costs" to avoid the recurrence of the droughts affecting the two places this summer, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Photo by STRINGER
REUTERS NEWS PICTURE SERVICE

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Outback Spirit Dries Up In Face Of Record Drought


The Darling River in Australia as it looks today.

Unbelievable.






Outback Spirit Dries Up In Face Of Record Drought

By Nick Squires in Bourke
Last Updated: 3:54am GMT 20/11/2006

One of the most celebrated Outback towns has been pushed to the brink of social and economic collapse as a result of the worst drought in Australia's history.

Bourke, in the parched west of New South Wales, was enshrined in frontier mythology by 19th-century bush poets such as Henry Lawson, who declared: "If you know Bourke, you know Australia."

The expression "back o'Bourke" is understood by all Australians to mean in the middle of nowhere.

But the town's resilience has been pushed to breaking point by six years of drought, the worst "big dry" since the British settled in Australia in 1788.

Unless the drought breaks soon, Bourke will become "an economic and social disaster" according to a recent report by economists at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales.

The drought is taking its toll on towns across the Outback, but its effect on Bourke, 485 miles north west of Sydney, is particularly acute.

Unlike other towns in the bush, Bourke has no mining to fall back on. Its reliance on irrigation for vast cotton fields and citrus plantations also makes it vulnerable to the lack of rain.

The town's lifeblood, the Darling River, is dwindling by the day beneath a blazing blue sky, its sluggish waters an unhealthy pea green.

"This used to be a good fishing spot, but look at it now," said publican Lachlan Ford, surveying a section of the river, reduced to a patchwork of sandbanks, gravel shoals and fetid black pools. "We're coming into summer, when the temperature won't dip much below 40C for three months," he added.

There has been no cotton crop for three years because of the lack of water and the orange orchards are dying.

Kangaroos lie panting on a lawn in front of an office building on the outskirts of town and a pair of emus barely manage to break into a run when startled by the side of the road.

Without sufficient grazing, farmers have had to either sell all their sheep and cattle or buy in fodder at great expense. Sixty pastoral stations in the Shire of Bourke – an area about the size of Denmark – have no animals left at all.

Desperate graziers have taken to rounding up the flocks of feral goats that inhabit the scrub. Until recently dismissed as pests, they are now the only thing left to sell.

"Our dams [reservoirs] are depleted and we're running out of water," said Graham Brown, 58, who owns a 430,000-acre farm 190 miles west of Bourke.

"We're holding on by the skin of our teeth, but if we don't get any rain this summer, we'll be hitting the panic button."

Bourke's population has dropped in the last three years from 3,500 to less than 3,000. Shops on the main street are boarded up and houses are for sale.

"This is the worst drought white men have seen in this country," said mayor Wayne O'Mally. "It's really testing people's resources."

The drought has prompted an intense debate in Australia about the effects of global warming and whether some areas are becoming too dry for farming.

The government, which refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol, insists there is no proven connection between climate change and the present drought. Scientists disagree. While the debate rages, the people of the Outback can only look to the skies and pray for a change in the hot, dry weather.
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And while this goes on, PM Howard meets with the coal industry to secure his campaign coffers. Disgraceful.

The Darling River which is the longest river in Australia and has six other rivers as tributaries is at dangerously low levels due to overuse of its waters, pollution from toxic runoff, and the most severe and prolonged drought in over a hundred years due in part to anthropogenic climate change.

Right now what Australia needs is not political posturing, but definitive action to mitigate this crisis and bring hope and sustinence back to the people of Bourke and other areas affected by it. And people NEED TO CHANGE THEIR WAYS as well, because as the Darling River crisis shows, mismanagement and misuse of water resources especially in light of the scientific consensus regarding climate change is not only irresponsible, but deadly.

In the words of Henry Lawson:

The skies are brass and the plains are bare,
Death and ruin are everywhere;
And all that is left of the last year's flood
Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;
The salt-springs bubble and the quagmires quiver,
And this is the dirge of the Darling River.

Is that really the legacy PM Howard wants to be remembered for?

Also see:

Darling Dry As A Bone

Threatened Species Of The Darling River

Another World Water Day Gone

We see another World Water Day pass us by. The theme, Water For All, signifies that though some progress has been made we are woefully behin...