Drought causes massive loss of livelihoods

“If it does not rain soon, the remaining cattle will die,” explained Tarayia Ntaro, a Maasai herdsman from Kajiado, a drought-hit area in Southern Kenya. Watching all but 20 of his 400 cattle die off is rather like watching his future disappear, as it could take up to 10 years for Ntaro to rebuild his herd, according to humanitarian workers. “We are saving lives but not livelihoods,” said Robin Wheeler of the World Food Programme (WFP). Four million Kenyans are receiving food aid, and WFP plans to expand its emergency-feeding programme into next year. But pastoralists like Ntaro can take little comfort from the handouts. Livestock owners are among the hardest hit by Kenya’s three-year drought, which this year turned into a major food crisis. Recent rains across the country have been patchy and are unlikely to make any impact at all, weathermen added. By the time humanitarian agencies were able to launch non-food aid programmes, livestock had died in the worst affected areas, or were too emaciated to sell. Pastoralists were forced to move their dying animals to search for what little green remained, even on the verges and roundabouts of the capital Nairobi. Or they had to sell, if only for the price of the skin, some 200-400 Kenyan Shillings, equivalent to $3-5. In Ntaro’s home area, people are trekking up to 20 km to reach a watering point. The distance between pasture and water is critical in the pastoral food production system, and - since the drought hit hard - averages 50 km in the worst affected districts. Livestock have to wait for more than two days after reaching the watering point because of the pressure on the wells. Over 40 percent of Kenya’s cattle and 10-20 percent of its sheep and goats were lost during the current drought, according to the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP) at the Office of the President, Daniel arap Moi. The immediate risk concerns children, according to UNICEF, as with so many cattle dying, there will be no milk left for them. The most severely affected area covers 2/3 of Kenya’s land mass and includes 22 districts. Of these, the 12 pastoralist districts are the most affected. The worst hit districts are Turkana, Marsabit, Mandera and Samburu in the north, in addition to the Wajir and Isiolo districts in the north-central region. In these areas, between 30 and 40 percent of the population is malnourished, virtually triple the average malnutrition rate of these regions. WFP distributes 40,000 tonnes of food every month to the 19 districts included in its Emergency Operation (EMOP). From January 2001, the districts of Narok, Koibateck and Ijara will be added to the EMOP. WFP aid staves off acute malnutrition but fails to render the affected populations “food secure”. “Food insecurity” describes the situation of people for whom acquiring food amounts to jeopardising the basis of their future livelihood, as was the case for some pastoralists in Kenya who started selling off emaciated cattle in order to buy feed for their remaining animals. The long and short term answer to the problem is a combination of food and non-food aid in the form of funds for water, sanitation, pastoralist programmes such as de-stocking and re-stocking of cattle, and education. While the EMOP is close to fully funded, with $81 million now pledged, the non-food sector is only 35 percent funded. The number of people affected would not be so great if the non-food sector had been taken care of earlier, according toWFP. Nick Alipui, UNICEF representative for Kenya, told IRIN it was not only starvation that killed children during a drought, but also disease and lack of water. At this crucial juncture following three years of drought, attention was focused on food aid. But it was essential that relief should also be geared towards the non-food sector, such as water, sanitation, healthcare and education, Alipui said. The majority of the funds that Britain’s Department For International Development (DFID) allocated to drought response in Kenya were for food aid. DFID’s Graham Carrington told IRIN that it would rather engage in a more mixed response but that it was difficult to fund non-food relief on a big scale. He called for “a more developed instrument that can be put into place quickly and effectively” for the distribution of non-food relief. Kenyan officials, however, say an effective system is already in place. The issue of aid distribution systems looms large in the response to the Kenyan drought. In late 1999, as it became clear that the drought would have catastrophic effects, the Kenyan government, UN agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) brought in a new integrated system for the distribution of food aid. For the first time, the government was involved alongside WFP, and distribution on the ground was taken over by the communities themselves. DFID described this change as a “tremendous improvement”. The benefits of this system lie in the speed and scale of the response and in its appeal to donors, who become fully included in the relief operation. Though the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) coordinates part of the non-food response, there is no truly integrated system in that domain. Problems remain even with food aid. Donor response to WFP’s second Emergency Operation, launched at the height of the crisis in July 2000, was slow, according to WFP. This led to pastoralists selling off their livestock and, with the slashing of food rations, to more serious malnutrition. Part of the problem lay in logistical impediments as WFP struggled to balance donations in cash and kind. Food donated in kind by USAID takes a minimum of two months to reach Kenya, whilst cash can be transferred almost instantaneously. “DFID would rather give funds in cash, so that economic decisions can then be made at a country level,” Carrington told IRIN. Global competition for aid also played a substantial role in the slower response to the Kenyan drought during the summer. The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the floods in Mozambique, and the ongoing situation in the Balkans diverted donor attention. Kenya, as a country at peace, did not represent a priority, despite bearing the consequences of a three-year drought. An integrated system for non-food relief would present substantial problems. Humanitarian workers doubt the efficiency of a large-scale non-food programme, particularly as concerns pastoralist projects, which have proved most effective when conducted at a local level. The “de-stocking” of cattle, whereby cattle are bought from local herdsmen and subsequently given away as fresh meat or dried in small strips, is a case in point. The process provides pastoralists both with food and the means to buy feed for their remaining animals, but is extremely difficult to apply on a large scale. During the 1984 drought, the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) played an important role in the response by orchestrating a managed buy-up of stock, and subsequently selling the meat products as canned goods. As the facilities still exist, the Kenyan government was hoping to negotiate funds from development partners to revive the KMC temporarily as part of additional drought emergency funds, the Kenyan Ministry of Finance told IRIN. The KMC however did not receive the requested support. Cattle de-stocking did take place, on a smaller scale, coordinated by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), but was hampered by late donor response. The projects are implemented by local NGOs on the ground, under the aegis of FAO, the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) and the Office of the President. FAO considers the project fairly successful since $1.7 million has been allocated for small-scale projects, half the target set by the UN organisation. The slow start of the process was detrimental to pastoralists, according to World Concern, an NGO engaged in de-stocking cattle in the southern Narok district. By the time the funds were received, health authorities judged 70 percent of the cattle bought from local pastoralists too emaciated for consumption. The issue of re-stocking lost cattle looms as the short rains season, from October to December nears its end. But it involves the same cost and logistics problems as cattle off-take. The Kenyan government is considering a proposal for the re-stocking of herds, according to the ALRMP, but the nature of the project, long-term and small-scale, tends to discourage potential funding. Livestock, however, is widely available on Kenyan markets following the first reported outbreak of Rift Valley Fever outside Africa, in Saudi Arabia. This led Gulf States to impose a ban in September on imports of livestock from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya, and Djibouti. As a result, affected countries, Somalia in particular, are exporting to Kenya. The loss of livelihoods for pastoralists is particularly devastating as it occurs for the most part in Kenya’s northeastern, least developed districts. These districts, distant from the centres of power and culturally and economically linked to Somalia, were only recently restored to democratic rule after being under martial law for nearly 30 years, from independence in 1963 to 1991. The pastoralist populations of these districts benefit from little or no health infrastructures. Aidan Keinan, MP for the Wajir district from the opposition party SAFINA, was critical of provisions for health care in the region. “Without the support of the international community much of the population would have perished,” Keinan told IRIN. He spoke of an “impending disaster”. If there is no rain between now and the start of the long rains season in April, the entire livestock population of Wajir will be lost, destroying the sole means of subsistence of most of the people who live there. They will then be entirely dependent on relief aid. In part, pastoralists are victims of the Kenyan financial and economic crisis. The Kenyan annual growth rate is expected to reach a record low of 0.4 percent for the year 2000, according to a recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The government has been unable to sustain its investment in the health sector in the past 10 years, according to UNICEF’s Nick Alipui. “In addition to the drought facing the country for the past three years this is a lethal combination,” Alipui told IRIN. Despite food handouts, the disruption in pastoralists’ lives is evident. As is the case for many of Kenya’s pastoralists, Ntaro in the Southern Kajiado district can no longer afford the school fees to send his children to the local school. Only 50 children remain at the local school which initially had 155 students. WFP initiated a school-feeding programme that plays an important part in retaining pupils in schools where they receive what is often their only daily meal. The project affects 1 million out of 6 million children of school-going age in Kenya. But it only targets primary schools, and out of those, only the 40 percent of Kenyan children who go to school. The problem of school fees remains, however, as families who cannot afford the fees hesitate to send their children to school, and schools face the risk of closing down for want of fees and pupils. The government has urged teachers in these areas to let children attend school without paying, however the lack of a clear government directive concerning the non-payment of school levies in the worst-hit areas leads families to keep their children home to work, Alipui told IRIN. “It is critical to strengthen the school environment,” he said. A focus on education would help avert the worst consequence of the drought, yet donors do not consider education as drought response, the UNICEF representative said. Much of the population targeted today by WFP will remain dependent on food aid well into 2001. But, even when the pastures are green, the disaster is likely to linger on in the pastoralist communities for years to come.