120,000 livestock farmers threatened by drought

Environmental degradation resulting from a prolonged drought in northern and northeastern Somalia is threatening to destroy the livelihoods of an estimated 120,000 livestock rearers, a United Nations official said on Monday. "The livelihoods of 120,000 people are threatened and they have to find other means of livelihood," Robert Hauser, World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director for Somalia, told IRIN. He said that goats and sheep belonging to livestock herders in the region had eaten up all vegetation and even consumed roots and that the people had engaged in charcoal burning for survival, leaving the area a virtual desert. Those in the devastated areas would have no alternative in the near future but move to towns in search of work, Hauser said. The area, he added, would take years to recover from the effects of the drought because the top layer of the ground, which had been stripped bare of all vegetation, had lost the capacity to retain water even in times of sufficient rainfall. The four-year drought has also affected an estimated 480,000 other people in central and southern Somalia who are in need of food aid, Hauser said, adding that an extra 7,000 mt of food was needed to feed the most vulnerable people in the drought-affected areas until the end of this year. WFP, he added, was "just managing to prevent starvation among the weakest in the population, especially women and children". He urged aid donors to expedite delivery of their pledged donations. "We will have distributed the last spoonful when the next spoonful arrives," he said, adding that last food stocks for WFP's Somalia operation had been transported to Somalia last week from warehouses in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa. The World Food Programme (WFP) recently appealed for US $14 million to run its food distribution operation in Somalia. The most affected areas in the north and northeast include Sanag, Sool, and Bari regions, Mudug, Galgaduud and Bakool in the south-central area, and Gedo and Juba regions in the south. Last month, aid agencies working in Somalia expressed concern over the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa country, saying that drought was spreading from the northern region to the central areas and that up to a million people needed help. "Preliminary estimates are that up to a million vulnerable Somalis in both agricultural and pastoral areas will require some form of humanitarian assistance to avert high malnutrition, potential death, and collapsed livelihoods that will have long-term effects," the Somalia Aid Coordination Body (SACB), comprising donors, UN agencies and international NGOs, said 29 July. The crisis had been triggered by the cumulative result of successive poor rains and civil conflict in some areas, it added in a statement.