East Africa: ‘The Horn of Africa Is Paying the Price for the World’s Selfishness’ #AfricaClimateCrisis

Sharm el-Sheikh — The fallout of a changing climate is indisputable as it is already disrupting the livelihoods of millions of people in Africa, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.

It’s very, very clear now that the fallout of a changing climate is hitting people on the front lines, marginalised people the hardest, according Megan Rowling, a journalist with Thomson Reuters Foundation. “And despite efforts to adapt, which are clearly not enough, climate emergencies are going to increase in number. And their impact will grow in severity.”

Speakers from various governments, UN agencies, and their partners gathered at the COP27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt to discuss the severity of this situation in the region.

“The impacts of climate change in the Horn of Africa are devastating as the region contributes the least to the global climate crisis, accounting for an estimated 0.59% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet they’re bearing the brunt of global warming. This crisis is being driven by the longest and the most severe drought in recent history that is expected to continue well into 2023. We have just seen the fifth failed rainy season that has tipped 21 million people into a high level of food insecurity and there is famine looming in Somalia”, Rowling said.

“The last famine in 2011, killed 260,000 people. And it is absolutely imperative that something is done to prevent a similar situation from occurring again 11 years later, says Rowling. She went on to highlight that the “bad news on top of that, is that Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia drought response plans are only 50% funded, despite the needs, and that is limiting aid agencies’ capacities to respond and clearly more funds are needed immediately to save lives.”

Heli Uusikyla, Deputy Director of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Operations and Advocacy Division, in her opening remarks, said that “this COP is an African COP. At this very moment on this very continent, children are dying every day because of the devastating drought in parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. Despite being responsible for less than 0.1% of global emissions. People in the Horn of Africa are paying the price for the world’s selfishness. The Horn of Africa is now in the middle of its fifth consecutive, failed rainy season. In a few months, there may be a sixth failed season, the likes of which we have never seen.”

For children, the effect of hunger on their physical and mental development can last a lifetime. The number children and youth at risk of dropping out of school in Kenya and Somalia has tripled just in three months, leaving a large number of teenage girls at increased risk of gender-based violence and being forced into early marriage.

UNICEF is working to expand life-saving child protection and gender-based violence services, to respond to the growing protection needs among vulnerable women and children across the Horn of Africa. This includes running community-based programmes to reduce the risks of violence, exploitation, abuse and child marriage, and providing services to help women and children recover after violence.

Most of the region’s population depends on subsistence farming and herding to survive, minor setbacks can push villages headlong into hunger and malnutrition. “As the science is clear, as the climate crisis escalates, people in the Horn of Africa will face more frequent and extreme weather events, with little time to recover from the crisis. As people across the region confront one of the most catastrophic events of their generation, we are doing our best to ease the sufferings,” Uusikyla added.

Food prices are spiking due to a combination of macroeconomic influences, below-average harvests and meager pastures, and rising global commodity prices. Families are taking desperate measures to survive, with more than 1.4 million fleeing their homes. Some areas, like central Kenya, which for a long time enjoyed surplus food production and high yields, have seen crops drying up, harvests dwindling and hunger growing.

“Providing those people with climate money would help make them more resilient and give them more options to deal with future shocks. Uusikyla argued that “they deserve not our sympathy but our solidarity, as they endure a crisis, not of their making. They urgently need climate financing to be unlocked to enable them to adapt to the changing climate and build their resilience for the difficult road ahead. Together, we must find more effective ways that these funds can be channeled to the communities that need them most, like those in the Horn of Africa.”

AbdulHakim Elwaer, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa, underlined the need for the humanitarian community to change its approach. “With more failed rains looming, the situation in the Horn must be treated as a “livelihoods crisis,” he said. It requires a multipronged resilience-building approach that includes providing cash, fodder, and other support for pastoral communities, supporting sustainable agriculture, resolving conflicts, and helping people diversify their source of income.”

Lt. Colonel Hared Hassan, the Chief Executive Officer of Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority, echoed this saying that for an effective response, they need resources including early warning systems and efforts to address the triggers of conflicts. He warned that if the situation is not addressed urgently, it will only “continue to worsen.” United Nations Children’s Fund’s Gautam Narasimhan said humanitarian and adaptation funding should be integrated, and that it would lead to more efficient use of money to make communities more resilient.

Also speaking at the event, Kos Musa, Project Manager for Candlelight, a Somali NGO that works in hard-to-reach areas, said that she is seeing the grip of the climate crisis deepen in areas where they work. Musa said local NGOs provide cash transfers and livelihood support, and they even work on resilience-building projects, among other things. But more needs to be done to help people become more resilient. Musa appreciated that the OCHA-managed pooled fund for Somalia had directed 25% of its funding directly to local NGOs, which has helped grassroots organisations reach the most vulnerable people in the most effective way.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has invested U.S.$1.2 billion in its 20-year Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Programme in the Horn of Africa, said Solufusin Olufunso, AfDB’s climate policy expert. He added that the AfDB is also investing an average of U.S.$2 billion every year to ensure resilience to climate change is built into every aspect of their development projects in the region. However, in the face of shocks such as the five consecutive failed rains, Olufunso said there is a realisation that “we need to do big things in a short period of time [that people have to recover].” There is a growing realisation of the need to complement and coordinate development projects with humanitarian action, he added.

Acting together will lead to solutions

According to the UNFCCC, “it is imperative that the world focuses on saving lives now. Urgent funding is needed to mount an integrated (WASH, Health, Food, and Nutrition) response in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. If this does not happen, we are faced with catastrophic consequences. In parallel to the immediate efforts to save lives, it is necessary to acknowledge that the increased duration, severity, and frequency of droughts in the Horn of Africa means that people do not have time to recover from the shocks. Experience shows that it takes at least five years for a pastoralist family to rebuild their herd after a drought, and yet, many families across the region will not have this time. It is therefore likely that the number of people displaced by this crisis will grow in the months ahead, while more people will be in urgent need of assistance, as they face the terrifying prospect of the complete loss of their historical livelihoods.”

“Developed countries must make good on their promise to provide Africa with the U.S.$100 billion a year required for climate adaptation. Africa is reeling from the pain of a crisis it did not cause.”

This story was produced as part of the 2022 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.

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