http://www.irinnews.org/irin-fp.aspxUpdated everydayen-gbFri, 12 Mar 2010 20:14:03 GMTJOHANNESBURG Friday, March 12, 2010 (IRIN) - As the level of carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, we will probably see fewer but more intense storms, a group of the world's top experts on tropical cyclones and climate change have concluded. JOHANNESBURG Friday, March 12, 2010 (IRIN) - As the level of carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, we will probably see fewer but more intense storms, a group of the world's top experts on tropical cyclones and climate change have concluded.

The update of the possible impact of climate change on tropical cyclones has been published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Nature Geoscience.

The Expert Team on Climate Change Impacts on Tropical Cyclones at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) projects that these storms will intensify from 2 to 11 percent by 2100.

The study also projects decreases in the global average frequency of tropical cyclones by between 6 to 34 percent over the same period.

The wide range in the percentages reflects the large uncertainty that looms over predicting tropical cyclone activity in a changing climate, explained Thomas Knutson, the co-chair of the expert team and the lead author of the study.

Hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are tropical cyclones with a maximum sustained wind speed of more than 119km per hour near their centres.

The Expert Team noted in their last assessment, in 2006, that there was "substantial disagreement" between global and regional projections on the impact of climate change on tropical cyclone intensity.

Knutson said that while fewer tropical cyclones overall will be expected in the future, there was more that a 50 percent chance that the frequency of the most intense tropical cyclones, like the category four and five cyclones with a maximum sustained wind speed of more than 212 km per hour, will increase.

Cyclone Nargis, one the world's deadliest storms, which killed more than 140,000 people and ruined countless lives and livelihoods in Myanmar in 2008 was a category four cyclone.

The development of better climate models that can predict changes in cyclone activity under projected climate scenarios has helped raise the confidence levels of the expert team.

"About 15 percent of the world's tropical cyclones occur in the northern Indian Ocean, but because of high population densities along low-lying coastlines, the storms have caused nearly 80 percent of cyclone-related deaths around the world," according to the US government's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

After Cyclone Nargis struck, a NASA team used three-dimensional satellite imagery and atmospheric profiles from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite to see into the heart of the cyclone and plot its course, according to a news feature on their website.

NASA hopes the improved modelling made possible by the AIRS instrument will help forecast the path of cyclones and provide enough warning for people to be evacuated.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88415JOHANNESBURG Thursday, March 11, 2010 (IRIN) - Rivers throughout central and northern Mozambique are swollen above flood alert level and thousands of people have been relocated to higher ground, but national disaster management authorities and aid agencies in Mozambique say "the situation is under control".JOHANNESBURG Thursday, March 11, 2010 (IRIN) - Rivers throughout central and northern Mozambique are swollen above flood alert level and thousands of people have been relocated to higher ground, but national disaster management authorities and aid agencies in Mozambique say "the situation is under control".

After weeks of torrential rain in Mozambique and its regional southern African neighbours, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the National Institute for Disaster Management (INGC) indicated that 130,000 people were living in risk zones and could be forced to move if water levels kept rising.

A Red Alert was declared on 9 March for the basins of the Zambezi, Pungue, Buzi and Licungo rivers, but the Representative of the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF), Leila Pakkala, who is responsible for coordination in the Humanitarian Country Team, said the government and aid partners had started moving people pre-emptively.

"Thirteen thousand people have already been moved to secure areas," she told IRIN. Although the rain was expected to diminish, they were still "closely monitoring the situation in affected areas to ensure needs are identified and immediately addressed".

The cholera season in central Mozambique is at its peak; given the large populations moving through cholera-affected areas to get to places of safety, Mozambique's Provincial Health Directorate has warned of possible outbreaks in the new accommodation centres.

Pakkala said cholera prevention and response activities - like the rehabilitation of water systems, water chlorination, and informing people that they should adopt hygienic habits - were already ongoing. "Supplies have been dispatched from the pre-positioned locations by the Red Cross and UN partners," she said.

Watching regional water management

The latest National Hydrological Bulletin, released on 10 March by the National Water Directorate, said water levels in the Zambezi, Africa's fourth largest river, would remain above alert level and keep rising, "possibly aggravating localized flooding".

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, water levels in the Kariba Dam – one of the largest on the Zambezi – have been rising and the Zambezi River Authority had to open one of its flood gates on 9 March.

Downstream in Mozambique, the Cahora Bassa Dam has also increased its outflow to 4,700 cubic meters per second, and will maintain this volume until 15 March.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned in its 10 March Southern Africa Floods Regional Update: "While the opening of one Kariba Dam floodgate is not a significant event in itself, any additional flow from the dam may force another increase in discharge from the Cahora Bassa [downstream], increasing the possibility of flooding in Mozambique."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88399JOHANNESBURG Thursday, March 11, 2010 (IRIN) - Most food crop cultivation in Africa is rain-fed, but climate change is affecting vital rainfall patterns and pushing up temperatures, diminishing yields that could halve in some countries by 2020. This warning has been widely quoted since it first appeared in a synthesis report for policy-makers in 2007 by the authoritative UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). JOHANNESBURG Thursday, March 11, 2010 (IRIN) - Most food crop cultivation in Africa is rain-fed, but climate change is affecting vital rainfall patterns and pushing up temperatures, diminishing yields that could halve in some countries by 2020. This warning has been widely quoted since it first appeared in a synthesis report for policy-makers in 2007 by the authoritative UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Clouds of doubt gathered over the statement after it emerged that the IPCC report had based the projection on a non-peer reviewed research paper -otherwise known as "grey literature".

The claim was published in Sunday Times newspaper in the UK on 7 February, in a report headlined "Africagate: top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility".

A flood of allegations from all quarters then began to question the credibility of the 2007 assessment report. Governments and policy-makers use the IPCC assessment reports to formulate plans and strategies for coping with climate change.

So, is the projection incorrect? We asked the IPCC and other scientists, but we will have to wait until the end of August 2010 to find out.

On 10 March the UN announced that a Netherlands-based group of 15 national academies of science would review how the IPCC does its work. The Panel publishes periodic assessments by the three committees that deal with the causes of climate change, its impact, and mitigation options. The review committee will also consider whether the IPCC should use non-peer reviewed papers.

What other scientists say

The projection that crop yields could be reduced by 50 percent in some African countries, contained in the synthesis report, was based on a paper cited in the Panel's report on impacts.

Written by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan climate expert, the paper "is a summary of technical studies and research conducted" in three countries - Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia - submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, "and is a perfectly legitimate IPCC reference", wrote a group of scientists involved in the panel's reports on the popular blog RealClimate, run by them on 14 February.

"The IPCC cites 18,000 references in the AR4 [Fourth assessment report]; the vast majority of these are peer-reviewed scientific journal papers ... it is indispensable to use gray sources, since many valuable data are published in them," the scientists said in defence of grey literature.

"Reports by government statistics offices, the International Energy Agency, World bank ... This is particularly true when it comes to regional impacts in the least developed countries, where knowledgeable local experts exist who have little chance, or impetus, to publish in international science journals," the scientists commented.

Yet it is not the use of grey literature that seems to be the issue. David Lobell, of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment, who has worked extensively on projecting the impact of climate change on crop yields in Africa, called the IPCC statement in the synthesis report "ill-advised".

"The original syntax was technically correct (i.e., worst years are 50 percent yields drops, and these could become more common), but it was easily misinterpreted as a statement about average yields," he said.

IPCC officials often quoted the statement to illustrate the possible impact of climate change on food production in Africa, when the document on which it was based only referred to three North African countries.

"Part of the problem was that the scientific literature on some of these issues was quite lacking at the time [when the report was being compiled – the report takes three years to be written]," Lobell acknowledged.

"One risk now is that people could interpret the IPCC statement as being wrong, saying that Africa doesn't really face a threat, or that other IPCC statements are also in doubt. In fact, we think Africa faces some of the toughest impacts on agriculture in the world, just not as extreme as the IPCC statement suggested."

The scandal

The Sunday Times report in the UK was among several that followed a controversy dubbed "Climategate", which broke in November 2009, ahead of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December. The row started when hacked emails by the Climatic Research Unit at the University in East Anglia, one of the centres that supplied data to the IPCC, were published on a website for climate change sceptics.

Since then, newspapers across the world have published allegations by climate change sceptics, organizations, government officials, and other publications that the IPCC manipulated climate change data or used non-peer reviewed papers as the basis for some of its projections.

The UN panel defended its work until it was forced to admit in January that it had erroneously projected that 80 percent of the Himalayan glacier area would very likely be gone by 2035.

The panel had sourced the projection from a document produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which had used an interview by a scientist with the magazine, New Scientist, in 1999 as the source of the projection, and not a scientific publication.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88400BUKALASI Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - Rose Nakhayetse is lucky to be alive, but her ordeal is far from over. Having narrowly escaped last week’s deadly landslides in eastern Uganda, she and thousands of others are facing fresh dangers. BUKALASI Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - Rose Nakhayetse is lucky to be alive, but her ordeal is far from over. Having narrowly escaped last week’s deadly landslides in eastern Uganda, she and thousands of others are facing fresh dangers.

The 24-year-old and her nine-month-old baby were saved from a muddy avalanche by the wall of her house. “I heard cracks and sounds of explosion but when it persisted, I went outside, only to discover that the earth was moving towards us,” she told IRIN.

“Things were happening so fast, so I decided to run with my baby. That is how I survived. Thank God the moving mud stopped just behind our house, but my two other boys were in the neighbourhood and I have not seen them since. Maybe they are among those who died, but we have not found their bodies,” she said.

Ninety-two bodies have been recovered from the scene of the disaster, and some 367 people are still missing, according to Ugandan officials.

Nakhayetse is one of more than 1,000 people camping in the grounds and four classrooms of a primary school in the village of Bukalasi, where relief efforts have yet to meet the many needs of the displaced. There is a single pit latrine for all of them.

“The numbers here are too big and we do not have enough toilets, so that is making this place dirty,” she said.

Sanitary crisis

“A sanitary epidemic is in the offing [in Bukalasi],” warned David Mulele, a medical worker in the local health centre.

“We have recorded up to 100 cases of diarrhoea and vomiting among children and some adults. The health centre had drug stocks, but now all essential drugs for such ailments, like oral rehydration salts, Flagyl and other such drugs have all run out and we are just improvising to keep these people going,” Mulele told IRIN.

“We have the skills, but we lack the tools.”

Among the immediate humanitarian needs are “safe drinking water, water storage containers, water purification/chlorination tablets, latrines and soap”, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“Other urgent needs include: trucking of water to the affected populations; drilling of boreholes and rehabilitation of water springs; completion and extension of a gravity water flow scheme in Bulucheke; water quality surveillance; and provision of mobile and Ecosan toilets,” OCHA said in a report.

Also required is specific assistance for some of the children who came to the camp without their parents, who are among the missing or dead.

“We have no arrangements yet for these unaccompanied minors,” said Kevin Nabutuwa of the Uganda Red Cross Society.

Patrick Tibet, a community development worker in Bukalasi, said the displaced were in dire need of shelter and clothing as many had run away from their homes with only the clothes they had on.

Nabutuwa said tents had been secured from the government and would be distributed.

Rain risk continues

Heavy rainfall is set to continue in parts of Uganda for several weeks, prompting the government to consider permanently relocating up to half a million people living in mountainous regions.

"A total population of about 500,000 is at risk of landslides and floods. We plan to resettle this population from these very high-risk locations both in the east and west of the country, once emergency operations for the current situation end," Junior Minister for Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru told IRIN by phone.

The rains have flooded many villages near Bukalasi. According to OCHA, many crops and infrastructure, such as roads and schools, in the low-lying Butaleja district are under water.

“In the sub-counties of Budumba, Busaba, Nawanju, Busolwe, Busabi and Busolwe Town Council, thousands of acres of paddy rice fields, cassava, sweet potatoes, maize, sorghum, millet and vegetables – the major source of livelihood – have been affected by water, translating into an-as-yet undetermined loss of crop yield,” according to the OCHA report.

“In total, as many as 20,000 households may have been affected by the disaster with 1,000 households (6,000 people) of immediate concern,” it said.

OCHA warned that some 15,000 households risked waterborne diseases because of submerged pit latrines. “Additionally, Doho Health Centre II in Mazimasa sub-county and Namulo Health Centre II in Himutu sub-county are surrounded by water and have been rendered inaccessible,” the report said.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88374ISIOLO-NAIROBI Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - At least 10,000 people in Kenya have been displaced by flooding, mainly in the north, which has prompted fears of an outbreak of waterborne diseases. Hundreds of heads of livestock have drowned or gone missing and dozens of houses and business stalls are submerged.ISIOLO-NAIROBI Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - At least 10,000 people in Kenya have been displaced by flooding, mainly in the north, which has prompted fears of an outbreak of waterborne diseases. Hundreds of heads of livestock have drowned or gone missing and dozens of houses and business stalls are submerged.

Of the displaced, 2,100 are in Mandera in the northeast and 3,600 in Lokori region in Turkana in the northwest, the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) communications manager, Titus Mung’ou, told IRIN on 9 March. “In Mandera, flooding from the River Daua is ongoing. The entire clean water system is now un-operational,” said Mung’ou.

According to Mandera residents, heavy rains almost blocked off the main road there. Ibrahim Ahmed Elmi, a resident of Mandera’s Arabiya village, said: “Water smashed school toilets and buildings, and a mosque.”

About 500 head of livestock drowned in the sudden rains while out for pasture, Da’ad Abdi Madey of the Mandera Town Council added.

In the central northern region of Samburu, the local water engineer, Hussein Quresh, told IRIN that a water pump serving thousands of residents in the Archers Post area had been destroyed, forcing reliance on inadequate water trucks. Water chlorination products are being provided to prevent an outbreak of waterborne diseases, he added.

An officer with the Arid Lands Resource Management Project in neighbouring Isiolo, Lordman Lekalkalai, said disaster committees there and in Garbatulla had been mobilized in anticipation of a deteriorating situation, with relief food distribution being hastened before all roads are cut off.

Residents expressed concerns over a possible food shortage. "Traders are going to increase food prices because it is expensive to transport the items to areas far from the town," Adan Jirma, a resident of Merti, 250km from Isiolo Town, told IRIN.

Flood alerts

Meanwhile, flood alerts have been issued in the low-lying coastal areas of Tana Delta and western parts along River Nyando. The water level at Nyando was less than 2m below flooding level, Mung’ou told IRIN.

“People have been given whistles and loud speakers to rally others to move to higher ground,” he said, adding that evacuation centres had been identified.

The Tana Delta region could be adversely affected when the Kenya Electricity Generating Company opens flood gates once its hydroelectric dams are full to capacity, he warned.

Similar warnings have been issued in the mountainous western area of Mt Elgon after a bridge was washed away; the neighbouring region in eastern Uganda experienced a landslide that killed hundreds last week.

Major response challenges include difficulty accessing areas cut off by flooding, such as Lokori; water contamination in the northeast, and asking people to move to safer ground in Mount Elgon, said Mung’ou.

“While we have responded to the needs of some of the people… these are just the initial stages. If the Kenya Meteorological Department’s predictions that the torrential rains will continue for two months are right, then an internal and external appeal for assistance may be needed,” he said. The Kenya Meteorological Department recently forecast “enhanced” March to May long rains in most of the country.

So far, at least 17 people have died in flooding, lightning- and storm-related incidents, according to KRCS.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Tanzania, dozens of people were left homeless and transport disrupted following flooding in the northern region of Mwanza, officials said.

Mwanza Regional Commissioner, Abbas Kandoro, told IRIN by telephone that several bridges were swept away in the rains. The Tanzania Meteorological Agency last week warned that several parts of the country would experience above-normal March to May rains. Authorities have urged people to relocate from the lowlands in the meantime.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88384JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - Mozambique's National Disaster Management Institute (INGC) has raised the flood alert level to "red" and some 130,000 people living along three main rivers in central Mozambique are at risk of possible floods and need to be moved. JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - Mozambique's National Disaster Management Institute (INGC) has raised the flood alert level to "red" and some 130,000 people living along three main rivers in central Mozambique are at risk of possible floods and need to be moved urgently.

"Teams are already evacuating people," Casimo Sande, Acting UN Emergency Coordination Support Officer, told IRIN. Weeks of torrential rains have swollen the Zambezi, Pungue and Buzi rivers in the central provinces of Tete, Manica, Sofala and Zambezia.

Sande said government agencies, NGOs, the Mozambican Red Cross, UN agencies and the local Civil Protection Unit, UNAPROC, were assisting affected communities, and assessments of the damage were underway. The National Water Board (DNA) warned of floods in central Mozambique on 2 March.

Mozambique is flood-prone: in 2000 and 2001 over 800 people were killed and hundreds of thousands left homeless. Up to 300,000 people in river communities throughout central Mozambique were affected by flooding in early 2008, when 29 people died.

The government resettled entire communities when the recurring floods caused hundreds of deaths and the displacement of many thousands almost every year, particularly at the onset of the rainy season. This year a drought in the resettlement areas lured thousands back to the fertile flood plains and river banks.

More sluice gates on Mozambique's biggest dam, the Cahora Bassa, were opened to ease pressure on the structure, and rains in the region eased off during the past week. According to Sande, "In terms of water level trend, the situation has improved."

tdm/hehttp://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88386KYAKA II Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - A project using papyrus and waste paper to make sanitary pads has changed the life of Evelyne Banyamisa, who fled rebel violence in Bunia, north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2003 when she was only 13. KYAKA II Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - A project using papyrus and waste paper to make sanitary pads has changed the life of Evelyne Banyamisa, who fled rebel violence in Bunia, north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2003 when she was only 13.

After leaving the DRC, Bamanyisa ended up in south-western Uganda where she has been living as a refugee. She was separated from her parents as they fled Bunia, and Banyamisa, her elder brother, a younger sister and a niece, arrived in the Kyaka II refugee camp where they lived together as a family until 2008 when her brother disappeared.

“I don’t know where he went; I have reported his disappearance but I have not so far heard anything; right now I am taking care of my sister, my niece and an orphan who I decided to take in as she did not have anyone to help her,” Banyamisa, now aged 20, told IRIN on 7 March.

With the help of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Banyamisa managed to continue with her schooling while in Uganda, dropping out in the third year of secondary school.

"I was idle for about two years with nothing to do here in Kyaka,” she said. “Fortunately, I got employed in June 2009 by Makapad where I am now the quality controller,” Banyamisa said. “I get a monthly salary of 80,000 shillings [US$40] which I use to sustain my family; where would I have gotten such money without Makapads?”

Set up in 2008 by a Makerere University professor, UNHCR and its implementing partner GTZ, the Makapads project has not only transformed the livelihoods of its employees, it has also made available sanitary pads for tens of thousands of refugees – most of them Congolese – living in settlements in south-western Uganda.

Moses Kizza Musaazi, a senior lecturer at Makerere University, initiated the project to help disadvantaged girls access affordable sanitary pads. The project later received support from UNHCR and GTZ, leading to the establishment of two sites in Kyaka II refugee settlement where the pads are produced, purchased by UNHCR and distributed among refugees.

The Makapads are also produced in the capital, Kampala, at the faculty of technology at Makerere University.

Inside the 209 sqkm Kyaka II refugee settlement, the Makapads project is run on two sites, employing dozens of refugees, mostly women. The site where Banyamisa is employed has 29 workers, 24 of whom are women.

"The project has also attracted the interest of nationals living close to the refugee settlement. They want to be involved as they realize it is beneficial but right now we only have refugees working here,” Ibrahim Rumanyika, the project manager for the Makapads project in Kyaka II said.

Rumanyika is a Congolese refugee who arrived in Uganda six years ago.

Production process

The production process begins with the collection and delivery of papyrus reeds, Rumanyika said. “Once we have the papyrus, it is peeled, cut up into small pieces and ground into a powdery form,” he said. “Then we sieve it to remove the coarse particles. This is then taken to another container filled with water, where it is mixed with waste paper pulp; we get the paper from UNHCR in Kampala.

“From there, we place the mixture on drying racks; it takes a few hours to dry when the weather is OK, on rainy days we hardly dry anything,” Rumanyika said. “Thereafter we take the dried sheet into the production room where it is softened and smoothed, and cut into pad-sizes; then combined with a paper-only dried pulp [which is softer], packed in soft outer material, sealed and sterilized.”

With just two buildings and 50 drying racks lined up outside, the project runs on solar-powered electricity. “Even sterilization becomes a problem because we depend on solar power to do it; sometimes we do not produce as much as the day’s capacity because of this,” he added.

On average, the site makes at least 3,000 packages a day – each with 10 sanitary pads.

“UNHCR buys the pads from us for distribution among the refugees here in Kyaka and Nakivale settlements but we also make pads for sale in local retail outlets,” Rumanyika said.

Most of the equipment used is locally produced, Rumanyika said, with only the adhesive tape and soft outer cover imported.

He said a Makapad package retails at 1,000 Uganda shillings [US$0.50) whereas the prices for the other varieties on the market start at 2,000 shillings [$1].

Banyamisa said her life and that of other refugees using the pads has changed for the better. “Previously, many of us used cloth or toilet paper; the problem with the cloth was that one may not have soap with which to wash it, sometimes water is hard to come by, so you could end up with a bad smell as a result,” she said.

“Since the Makapads were introduced, the days of periods being depressing are gone; the only problem right now is the pads are too thin for those with heavy flows. I think we should make some pads specifically for such women.”

Expansion plans

According to UNHCR, the Kyaka II Makapads project has the potential to become self-sustaining. At the moment, the agency supplies it with the waste paper which is mixed with the papyrus to make the pads.

Needa Jehu-Hoyah, associate external relations officer for UNHCR Uganda, said: "The Makapads project is one of the most beautiful examples of refugees coming together to respond to the needs of women and children in a manner that sustains their dignity. We recently reached the 50 percent mark in the procurement of Makapads for female refugees of reproductive age in the refugee settlements.”

Maria Mangeni, UNHCR's Makapads expert, said due to increased interest in the project, UNHCR was considering plans to replicate the project in other refugee settlements in the country.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88359JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - Rice producing Asian countries had to contend with poor rains in 2009, and now another season of low rainfall has been forecast for some of them, which has prompted concern whether the price of the grain could go up later in 2010.JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - Rice producing Asian countries had to contend with poor rains in 2009, and now another season of low rainfall has been forecast for some of them, which has prompted concern whether the price of the grain could go up later in 2010.

This is the second of a four-part series on food security where IRIN asks, "Are we heading for another crisis?" In this report we look at the possible impact of the current El Niño on rice prices in Asia and we find it seems a bit unclear.

In 2009 the impact of El Niño - the periodic flow of warm sea water across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean - disrupted rainfall patterns across Asia.

"In the short-term rice stocks are comfortable but it will be hard to predict the impact on prices if there is another bad season", Concepcion Calpe, Senior Commodity Specialist on rice with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

There are good stocks in the world's largest exporter of rice, Thailand, and the second largest, Vietnam, said Calpe. Vietnam's main rice growing area, the Mekong River Delta, is facing a serious drought.

Andrew Aaronson, chairperson of Interagency Commodity Estimates Committee on rice at the US Department of Agriculture concurred, "Global rice stocks are for the most part `comfortable' at the present time assuming normal import demand... The global rice situation is okay now, but is worth watching very closely."

"Possible dry weather in coming months could negatively affect the secondary cropping seasons, mainly rice," said William Dar, director-general of the India-based International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

El Niño can lead to higher atmospheric temperatures and have a disruptive impact on seasonal rains. Experts believe the phenomenon will linger until the middle of 2010 in some parts, affecting crop yields.

Poor monsoons, linked by some experts to the El Niño in 2009, had affected rice yields in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

On March 4, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAG-ASA) said many parts of the Philippines had poor rainfall because of the current El Niño and dry spells would continue through to June 2010.

"We don't know yet if it [the lingering El Niño] will impact on the monsoons [in South Asia] again this year," said Calpe.

Aaronson said another poor monsoon in South Asia, particularly in India - a major consumer and producer - "could drastically change the current situation", but the El Niño has begun to turn moderate, which "may point to a more normal monsoon in 2010; however, that is just a guess at this time".

When food supply in Asia and the Pacific, home to two-thirds of the world's population, is inadequate, the effect ripples throughout the world and the impact on the global food supply can be partly responsible for a food crisis, as happened in 2008.

ICRISAT's Dar said PAG-ASA had forecast 40 percent to 60 percent less rainfall in the Philippines, and was expected to reduce rice yields significantly.

The Philippines is the world's biggest importer of rice. If the Philippines enters the market to buy it will have an impact on prices, experts believe. In its first Crop Prospects and Food Situation in 2010, FAO listed Philippines along with Bangladesh, China, Nepal and Iraq, as countries that were expected to import to compensate for crop losses because of poor rains.

FAO said rice stocks held by five major exporting countries - Thailand, Vietnam, India, Pakistan and the United States - would come under pressure.

Food prices have begun to rise within many Asian countries. "We might have entered a phase of high prices, food prices within countries remain high - the cost of production specially labour prices have gone up in Thailand and Vietnam," pointed out Calpe.

To deal with weather-related uncertainty in the long-term Dar called for a strategy to counter the impact of what he called "climaggedon", brought on by the combined effects of El Niño and climate change. He said governments should start phasing in hybrid seeds and crop varieties that were "climate change ready" to ensure food security, and consider water-saving irrigation technologies.

Here is a snapshot of the Asian and Middle Eastern countries that feature in the FAO list of the world's 33 most food insecure nations.

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Iraq

Type of food insecurity
Exceptional shortfall in food supplies.

Reason
Severe insecurity and poor harvests in the past.

Change since November 2009
The situation is unchanged. Insecurity persists in a country ravaged by conflict. Poor weather conditions in 2009 brought the smallest crop ever harvested.

The security situation in Iraq is visibly better than in 2006/07, but the high levels of violence contributed to some 1.55 million Iraqis being displaced within the country since 2006, according to the Iraq Humanitarian Action Plan 2010.

Nutritional status
A UNICEF-led survey in 2006 found 11 percent of children aged below five to be severely stunted.

CAP funding
Under the Humanitarian Action Plan 2010, agencies have asked for more than US$193.5 million.


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Afghanistan

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity

Reason
Ongoing conflict and several years of drought have prolonged people's precarious circumstances.

Change since November 2009
The situation has deteriorated despite a bumper wheat harvest in May/June 2009. Longstanding conflicts continue to erode incomes and assets, and displace people.

Nutritional status
The effects of the food, fuel and financial crises are putting an estimated 1.2 million children under five at high risk of household insecurity, malnutrition, infectious diseases and livelihood vulnerability, according to UNICEF's Humanitarian Action Report 2010.

CAP funding
Only 8.9 percent of the $870 million requested has been covered.


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Bangladesh

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity.

Reason
A series of cyclones have displaced people, affecting livelihoods and food production in some parts.

Change since November 2009
Improving as the impact of the cyclones dissipates. Food production was affected by the failed monsoons in 2009 and food prices have begun to rise.

Nutrition status
A Demographic and Health Survey in 2007 found 16 percent of children aged less than five years were severely stunted, an indicator of chronic malnutrition.

CAP funding
There is no current CAP for Bangladesh.


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Myanmar

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity.

Reason
Food insecurity persists in areas affected by Cyclone Nargis, which struck southern Myanmar in 2008. The cyclone destroyed livelihoods, agricultural infrastructure and assets.

Change since November 2009
Improving as the impact of the cyclone ameliorates. The price of rice, the staple food, is stable but still higher than pre-2007 levels.
Localized food supply and market access problems persist.

Nutritional status
In 2007 the World Health Organization reanalyzed the findings of a UNICEF-led survey conducted in 2003 and found that 16 percent of children aged less than five were severely stunted.

CAP funding
There is no current CAP for Myanmar.


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Nepal

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity.

Reason
Poor market access and past disasters. Some 2.7 million people have reportedly been affected by floods, a winter drought and high food prices. The loss of the 2008/09 winter crop was followed by the failure of the monsoon season in 2009, affecting the paddy crop.

Change since November 2009
Circumstances of people affected by natural disasters are improving.

Nutritional status
A Demographic and Health Survey in 2006 found 20 percent of children aged below five were severely stunted.

CAP funding
The Nepal Humanitarian Transition Appeal was issued in 2009, and later revised upwards to $145 million.


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Pakistan

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity.

Reason
Serious insecurity in the conflict-weary northwestern part of the country has led to the displacement of nearly two million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). High food prices have also affected affordability.

Change since November 2008
Prices have begun to rise again, reflecting concerns over the 2009/10 winter crop because of droughts in various parts.

Nutritional status
Malnutrition rates are typically around 10 percent among children under five, according to UNICEF Humanitarian Action Plan 2010. The agency intends to treat 211,000 children under five years old for acute malnutrition.

CAP funding
An appeal for more than $537.7 million in 2010 has been issued.


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Philippines

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity.

Reason
Past tropical storms and localized conflicts affect food insecurity. Tropical storm Ketsana affected two million people in the main rice producing area, the northern island of Luzon, in September 2009.

Change since November 2009
People are recovering from the impact of Ketsana, but food aid is still needed. Rice production in 2010 is also likely to be affected; drought is expected in some of the major rice producing areas.

Nutritional status
In 2007 WHO reanalyzed the findings of a 2003 national nutrition survey and found the incidence of severe stunting to be 11 percent among children younger than five.

CAP funding
A flash appeal was issued in November 2009 for $143.7 million for people affected by storms and floods.


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Sri Lanka

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity.

Reason
A 25-year civil war with separatist rebels mainly in the north and east ended in May 2009. Livelihoods and food security were affected in those areas, and many people fled the fighting. Farming has been disrupted.

Change since November 2009
The lingering effects of the war are dissipating. Food production and local markets are being resurrected in the affected areas.

Nutritional status
A Demographic and Health Survey in 2006/07 found that four percent of children aged under five were severely stunted.

CAP funding
A mid-year review in 2009 of the Common Humanitarian Action Plan said approximately $270 million had been requested.


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Yemen

Type of food insecurity
Severe localized food insecurity.

Reason
Escalating conflict in the northern governorates of Saada and Amran has affected the food security situation there. The number of IDPs has doubled since August 2009.

Change since November 2009
Yemen is a new entry in the list with the food security situation in north having taken a turn for the worse. The Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen 2010 said structural factors had limited agricultural growth and the country had become a net food importer, bringing in 90 percent of wheat and 100 percent of rice, the two staple commodities. An estimated 48 percent of households are food-insecure.

Nutritional status
According to the Humanitarian Response Plan half of all children were chronically malnourished.

CAP funding
The Humanitarian Response Plan 2010, issued in November 2009, appealed for $177.4 million.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88361HANOI Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - Serious efforts are under way to respond to the impact of climate change in Vietnam but a lack of capacity and resources remains a challenge, experts say.HANOI Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - Serious efforts are under way to respond to the impact of climate change in Vietnam but a lack of capacity and resources remains a challenge, experts say.

Vietnam has been identified as one of 12 countries at highest risk from climate change and is the most threatened by rising sea levels, according to World Bank studies. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85179]

UN-cited data on global climate change and model studies show that Vietnam is at increased risk of floods and droughts, saline intrusion and increased health risks from heat waves, dengue fever and malaria.

However, experts say the government has acted quickly and is leading neighbouring countries such as Cambodia and Laos in trying to create policies to respond to climate change.

The National Target Programme (NTP) was approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in December 2008, and began implementation last year.

“Vietnam is to be commended for having pulled this off so quickly,” Koos Neefjes, policy adviser on climate change at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Vietnam, told IRIN.

Coordinated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), the NTP is intended to help develop an overall climate change strategy, including goals for adaptation and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The document lays out responsibilities for ministries and government agencies and asks all cities and provinces to devise their own climate change action plans by the end of this year, to be implemented by 2015.

It also aims to assess climate change impacts and ensure assessments are incorporated into development and investment plans.

Challenges

Vietnam is home to two major fertile plains, the Mekong Delta and Red River Delta, key agricultural areas and home to 40 percent of the country’s 86.2 million inhabitants.

They were identified as the most vulnerable areas in a November 2009 government report [http://www.roap.unep.org/pub/VTN_ASS_REP_CC.pdf] supported by the UN Environment Programme, which stated that more than one-third of the Mekong Delta could be submerged if sea levels rose by 1m.

Nine of the 10 provinces in Vietnam likely to be worst hit are in the Mekong Delta, but the effects on Ho Chi Minh City could be equally devastating.

Besides hosting potential climate change “refugees” from the Mekong Delta, infrastructure and housing would be damaged in the city, energy demands would increase, as would vector-borne diseases, experts say.

Vietnam is well-versed in water management because of a history of disasters such as floods, but there are questions over its capacity to fully implement policies, they say.

“The policy frameworks are very good. [The problem is] the capacity in government agencies to pick up on policy commitments. It’s not only skills,” said Jeremy Carew-Reid, director of the Australia and Vietnam based-International Centre for Environmental Management (ICEM) consultancy [http://www.icem.com.au/index.htm]. There are possible hurdles in multi-tiered government with 58 provincial administrations.

“The challenge is to do the planning of the sectors [such as agriculture] as well as the planning in provinces,” said Nguyen Van Kien, climate change adviser to the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in Vietnam.

Strong coordination between sectors and effective oversight are needed at a national level, while capacity, technical expertise and awareness of climate change varies from ministry to ministry, according to a UN discussion paper on Vietnam and climate change released in December 2009. [http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/MDCS-7YCJ3Y?OpenDocument]

“Provinces and lower-level authorities must rapidly develop their action plans to respond to climate change too, which will also require large-scale awareness raising and capacity-building efforts,” it says.

Funding questions

The government said last month it needed US$3-$5 billion until 2015 to respond to climate change.

“To protect Vietnam’s deltas and coastal regions from … sea level rise and related saline water intrusion, large investments in research and design are needed, followed by investments on an unprecedented scale.”

For the NTP, the government is aiming for foreign and private sector capital to comprise 60 percent of the funds needed for the activities outlined.

However, experts say it will be difficult to attract private sector funding for adaptation or mitigation measures. Meanwhile, Vietnam also needs to develop the capacity to access international financing available for climate change adaptation.

“Vietnam still needs to raise the money itself,” said UNDP’s Neefjes. “The high economic growth the country is experiencing is the magic bullet. Vietnam realizes it will have to rely on itself. If you can keep the economic growth up, the money will flow in the right direction.”

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88362MANILA Monday, March 08, 2010 (IRIN) - Warnings have been raised over food security in the Philippines as the El Niño phenomenon wreaks havoc across vast agricultural areas, leaving staple crops such as rice dying in parched earth, officials say. MANILA Monday, March 08, 2010 (IRIN) - Warnings have been raised over food security in the Philippines as the El Niño phenomenon wreaks havoc across vast agricultural areas, leaving staple crops such as rice dying in parched earth, officials say.

The cost of crop damage has topped US$239 million since the phenomenon started a heat wave across much of northern Luzon Island and parts of the central Visayas region in late December, said the Department of Agriculture in a recent report by its special task force on El Niño.

Some 14 provinces have been affected, with the brunt of the crisis borne by the agricultural provinces of Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, Cagayan and Isabela, where irrigation has dried up.

The El Niño drought is compounding problems for an already bleak agricultural sector recovering from devastation wrought last year by two powerful storms, Ketsana and Parma, that pummelled Luzon, officials say.

To stave off a potential shortfall in rice supply, the agriculture department has said it may import some three million metric tonnes of rice this year.

Gary Olivar, spokesman for Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, confirmed that the government had entered into import contracts for rice as a "short-term alternative".

"There are no long-term food shortage effects from a short-term phenomenon like El Niño, but we are preparing for its more frequent recurrence due to global warming by expanding our water supply sources, exploring dry weather cultivation methods, as well as similar other policies," Olivar told IRIN.

Range of crops affected

Pig and poultry farmers are also alarmed at the impact on corn crops, fearing skyrocketing prices of animal feeds, since corn is a major raw material.

According to official statistics, 54 percent of the total 487,389ha planted with rice, corn, tobacco and other high value commercial crops have been affected in the northern region.

Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya and Cagayan provinces are officially under a “state of calamity”, so they can now tap extra government funding.

The government is also racing against time to save remaining crops by bringing in additional irrigation pumps and seeding clouds in what has so far been a failed bid to induce rain. Teams of experts are also monitoring possible drought-triggered outbreaks of pests and diseases.

The World Food Programme (WFP) described the situation as "a slow onset emergency".

“We are particularly concerned for people still trying to recover from floods and storms that hit the country in September and October, that now, when they are trying to grow crops, they are again confronted with another natural disaster,” WFP country director Stephen Anderson told IRIN.

Long-term solutions needed

With much of the arable land relying on rain-fed irrigation systems, the situation has become dire, a coalition of rice farmers and traders is warning.

It noted that the bulk of rice production was expected in the last quarter of the year, but this could be weakened by the extended effects of El Niño.

The group is urging the government to help farmers withstand abnormal weather conditions threatening the country’s staple foods instead of “quick fix” solutions like importing rice.

"Being in the typhoon corridor of the Pacific, the Philippines is naturally vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather," said Jessica Reyes-Cantos, head of the Rice Watch and Action Network. "However, the government continues to resort to [the] quick fix solution of importing when struck by natural calamity."

Farmers are marginalized after years of neglect, while the government has failed to "devise strategic and effective measures" confronting the industry, such as climate change, she said.

She said only $212.7 million was needed to put in place working irrigation systems for some 164,000ha of rice fields in the country, thereby increasing yields.

Ernesto Lactao, a 52-year-old father of two in Isabela province, said without proper irrigation systems, small farmers like him had to invest in pumps to draw out ground water, increasing capital outlays but not improving harvests.

“What we need now is support from government, price subsidies and proper irrigation," Lactao told IRIN. "Do we have to wait until people are dying of hunger before we get help?"

El Niño is a weather phenomenon in which warmer water from the western Pacific Ocean flows towards the east, disrupting atmospheric systems.

It creates a major shift in rainfall, bringing floods and landslides to arid countries and drought to areas in the western Pacific.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88347LAHORE Sunday, March 07, 2010 (IRIN) - Experts say it is only a matter of time before wind carries a deadly wheat stem pathogen into Pakistan, the ninth largest wheat producing nation in the world. Known as Ug99, the disease could potentially decimate the country’s highly vulnerable wheat crop and cause a huge food security problem. LAHORE Sunday, March 07, 2010 (IRIN) - Experts say it is only a matter of time before wind carries a deadly wheat stem pathogen into Pakistan, the ninth largest wheat producing nation in the world. Known as Ug99, the disease could potentially decimate the country’s highly vulnerable wheat crop and cause a huge food security problem.

“There is a real possibility that winds could move the pathogen directly into southern Pakistan from Yemen or even the Horn of Africa. Realistically, I believe it is only a matter of time before Ug99 or variants appear in Pakistan,” said David Hodson of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Wheat Rust Disease Global Programme.

According to FAO, Ug99 is a virulent race of wheat stem rust first identified in Uganda in 1998 and 1999 that leaves behind fields filled with shriveled wheat grains.

Over the past decade, FAO estimates that 29 countries in East and North Africa, the Near East, and Central and South Asia, accounting for 37 percent of global wheat production, have been affected by the wind-borne Ug99 or were at potential risk.

Major wheat rust epidemics have occurred in the past, namely in the 1950s in North America and in 1993-94 in Ethiopia, with devastating consequences. Wheat rust decimated the grain crop across Pakistan in 1977, forcing the government to import over 2 million tons of wheat.

An Ug99 outbreak could be even more disastrous, FAO warns.

On high alert

In 2008, FAO put Pakistan and five other wheat producing countries on high alert following the detection of Ug99 in Iran.

“At present this virulent race of stem rust does not seem to have established a strong presence in Iran. However, the concern is that in time this status in Iran could change and analysis of regional wind patterns indicates that the pathogen could move into Pakistan,” Hodson told IRIN.

Soon after the discovery of Ug99 in Iran, Mujeeb Qazi, programme director of Pakistan’s National Wheat Program, warned that along with 80 percent of all wheat varieties planted in Asia and Africa most of Pakistan’s major wheat strains tested in Kenya over the past few years did not have adequate resistance to the disease.

“The big cause for concern in Pakistan is the widespread cultivation of wheat varieties that are extremely susceptible to Ug99 or variants. Of major concern is the cultivation of single wheat varieties like ‘Inquilab-91’ on millions of hectares in Pakistan,” Hodson said.

He also said many of the wheat-growing areas in Pakistan, particularly in the south, had a combination of heat and moisture that the disease favoured.

In 2008, the government allocated Rs 40 million [US$645,000] for research to combat the threat of Ug99 and over the past two years, the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock has been working on developing resistant varieties.

Disastrous consequences

An outbreak of Ug99 would spell disaster in a country where most of the population is dependent on wheat to meet their basic food needs. According to official figures, 22 million tons of wheat is consumed in Pakistan every year, making it the fifth biggest wheat consumer in the world.

“Basically, we eat only roti [flat wheat flour bread] with pickles, day after day. This is all we can afford,” Muhammad Javed, a local labourer and father of six, told IRIN.

There are millions more like him in Pakistan, a country in which 35 percent of its 165 million citizens live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

“If wheat stem rust gets here, we would see famine,” Shahzad Chandio, a farmer in the southern Sindh province, told IRIN from the town of Jamshoro.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88340HANOI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - As temperatures rise in Vietnam, a nationwide drought has dried up riverbeds, sparked forest fires and now threatens one of the world's richest agricultural regions, upon which millions depend for their livelihoods.HANOI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - As temperatures rise in Vietnam, a nationwide drought has dried up riverbeds, sparked forest fires and now threatens one of the world's richest agricultural regions, upon which millions depend for their livelihoods.

"The Mekong Delta is facing a serious drought," Nguyen Minh Giam, deputy director of the National Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting Centre for the southern region, told IRIN.

Water levels on the Mekong River are at an almost 20-year low, largely as a result of the rainy season ending early and a precipitous drop in water flow upstream, he said.

With virtually no rainfall in the north since September, fires have burned through the northern provinces of Lao Cai and Lai Chau. In central Vietnam, sustained temperatures of about 38 degrees Celsius have sent hundreds to local hospitals.

According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the heat and humidity have sparked a plague of insects and worms, which have eaten through thousands of hectares of rice paddies.

The drought conditions in the delta are also being felt in other Mekong countries because of the early end to the 2009 wet season, as well as low monsoon rainfall.

The Mekong River Commission, a regional monitoring body, on 26 February [http://www.mrcmekong.org/MRC_news/press10/drought-condition26-2-10.htm] warned of significantly lower than average water levels on the Mekong River in Laos and Thailand, which it says will affect the economic development of already impoverished people there.

Red River low

The Red River, upon which millions of Vietnamese in the north depend for fishing and irrigation, is at its lowest in more than 100 years, according to records beginning in 1902. The drought has turned sections of the normally bustling river into sand dunes, bringing river traffic to a halt.

"Never before has the water been so low that most ships cannot move," said Nguyen Manh Khoa, from Phu Tho province, whose debts are piling up as his new boat sits idle.

Each day Khoa does not work hauling cargo on the Red River he loses about US$80. But after getting his boat stuck on the sandbars several times, it has become too risky to venture out.

With the spring rice crops already in, frantic farmers living along the Red River have had no choice but to pay out large sums to private entrepreneurs armed with pumps to extract dwindling amounts of water for their fields.

As an emergency measure, the government has released water from its reservoirs, which are at critical lows. But the seedlings are competing with the state-owned hydroelectric firm, which says it will need the water to meet record-breaking power demands as temperatures are set to soar this summer.

Mekong Delta worst affected

The region under greatest threat, however, remains the southern Mekong Delta, known as the nation's rice bowl, where the Mekong River flows into the sea.

During the dry season, salt water from the South China Sea can push 30km inland. This year, communities as far as 60km up-river are reporting salt contamination.

"Salinization has been a pattern in the Mekong Delta the last 30 to 50 years, but things are getting worse every year due to climate change," said Pham Van Du, deputy director at the Department of Planting in the agricultural ministry. He estimates that 100,000ha of rice in the Mekong Delta are under threat.

Some blame China, where the Mekong begins, for Vietnam's water woes. According to the Mekong River Commission, China has built or is planning to build eight dams on its side of the border.

But meteorologists say the return of El Niño, a cyclical warming pattern, is the real culprit.

Ian Wilderspin, senior technical adviser for disaster risk management at the UN Development Programme in Hanoi, said climate change meant Vietnam would experience droughts that arrived sooner and lasted longer.

The government has moved to assist farmers by releasing water from the reservoirs and installing pumps. But considering the magnitude of the problem, "more needs to be done", he said.

"We have to look at the ways and means to build resilience of local communities," said Wilderspin, whether by providing drought-resistant seeds, planting different crops or protecting fresh water sources. "Climate change is only going to make these cycles worse."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88320NAIROBI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Health services in Kenya should prepare for above-average precipitation during the March-to-May rainy season, according to a government forecast.NAIROBI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Health services in Kenya should prepare for above-average precipitation during the March-to-May rainy season, according to a government forecast.

"Water-borne diseases associated with poor sanitation as well as flooding may emerge in areas expected to receive enhanced rainfall,” the director of meteorological services, Joseph Mukabana, warned in a 4 March statement.

"Health authorities are, therefore, expected to be on the lookout and equip hospitals with necessary drugs to be able to deal with such situations as they arise," he added.

Some regions within seven of the country’s eight provinces are expected to “receive normal rainfall with a slight tendency towards above-normal”, according to the statement, adding that rains in Coast Province may, however, tend towards “below-normal”.

Several districts in northwestern Kenya experienced a prolonged cholera outbreak in 2009; the region is forecast to have above-normal rains from March to May.

Mukabana also urged local authorities to clear drainage systems to avoid flash flooding.

At present, Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) teams are responding to two days of flash flooding in some divisions in Mandera East District, in the northeast, where streams running through the town have burst their banks, the acting head of disaster preparedness, Abdishakur Othowai, told IRIN.

"Residents are not able to cross from one side of the road to the other," Othowai said.

A game reserve in the central northern region of Samburu was also flooded; staff and tourists are being evacuated.

Flooding risk

According to an update by the Flood Early Warning Team of the Ministry of State for Special Programmes, a moderate risk of flooding is expected along the Nzoia River in the west, based on the meteorological department's long rains forecasts.

The Nzoia River perennially bursts its banks, displacing thousands of people in the Budalangi and Kano regions. Mudslides also occur in central, western, and parts of Rift Valley provinces, which are forecast to have increased rains.

As of 4 March, the river basin was receiving very heavy rainfall, with water levels continuously rising to warning levels, raising the risk of flooding, stated the Flood Early Warning Team bulletin.

In 2009, Kenya experienced drought conditions that left millions hungry and thousands of livestock dead, after successive failed rains.

At present, food security has improved in some regions due to enhanced October to December short rains, according to a January to June update by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net). The rains extended to February in some areas.

The availability of crop harvests and short cycle crops between April and June will sustain food security improvements, says FEWS Net, as will normal long rains.

However, it notes that prevailing high maize prices, which are 100 percent above average levels, will still affect pastoralists and urban consumers, who do not produce the staple.

KRCS is providing certified maize seeds to at least 100,000 farmers in the northwestern areas of Turkana East and South as well as West Pokot ahead of the long rains, said Othowai.

"Besides just preparing for emergencies, communities also need to be prepared to take advantage of the rains to avoid perennial dependence on food aid," said KRCS.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88321NAIROBI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Just as purchasers of electronic goods can buy extended warranties in case their TV goes wrong, farmers in parts of Kenya can now mitigate the risk of weather shocks by insuring their inputs at the point of sale. The programme, dubbed “Kilimo Salama”, Swahili for “safe farming”, was launched on 5 March in the Rift Valley provincial capital, Eldoret. It takes advantage of the ubiquity and multi-functionality of mobile phones in Kenya.NAIROBI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Just as purchasers of electronic goods can buy extended warranties in case their TV goes wrong, farmers in parts of Kenya can now mitigate the risk of weather shocks by insuring their inputs at the point of sale.

The programme, dubbed “Kilimo Salama”, Swahili for “safe farming”, was launched on 5 March in the Rift Valley provincial capital, Eldoret. It takes advantage of the ubiquity and multi-functionality of mobile phones in Kenya.

“Every time a farmer buys seeds, fertilizer, or other agro-chemicals, they can insure them, even for those who buy in very small quantities,” Rose Goslinga, the coordinator of the Agricultural Index Insurance Initiative at the Syngenta Foundation, told IRIN.

Policies, costing 10 percent of the inputs purchased, split equally between farmer and manufacturers, who hope to increase sales as a result, will be sold by agricultural suppliers armed with mobile phones loaded with dedicated software.

“To insure a farmer, the stockist first scans a code with all relevant product information via the phone’s camera; then he selects the weather station closest to the farmer’s fields.

“Finally, the stockist enters the farmer’s mobile number and sends the registration to our server. An immediate text message sent to the farmer provides him with his policy number and insurance confirmation,” said Goslinga.

“You have to make it very easy for the farmers to try the insurance,” she said, adding that the main administration costs incurred were sending out the text alerts.

Weather stations monitor rainfall amount and distribution in the field, which are then compared with the crop's water requirement vis-à-vis historic rainfall patterns. In case of crop failure due to drought or too much rain, farmers will receive a text message informing them of a payout, which they will directly receive through M-PESA, a cash transfer service run by telecoms operator, Safaricom.

Index-based insurance “pays out in events that are triggered by a publicly observable index, such as rainfall recorded on a local rain gauge”, notes a December 2009 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report, Innovations in Insuring the Poor.

As the insurance is based on an independent trigger that cannot be influenced by actions of the farmer, it reduces the likelihood of insured individuals taking greater risks. However, there is a basis risk in that payouts may not always exactly match the losses farmers experience, which can be difficult for farmers to understand, noted IFPRI.

Challenges

The Kilimo Salama programme was piloted on a group of 200 farmers in the central region of Laikipia during the 2009 long rains. “They [the farmers] thought it sounded too good to be true,” said Goslinga, adding that the farmers were now taking more insurance after experiencing the benefit. Some of them received a payout of up to 80 percent.

“For farmers the biggest risk is weather. To minimize exposure, they tend to use as little inputs as possible. As a consequence, their harvest is below the optimum even when rains are good. Insurance gives them the security of a payout in case of a full crop failure, therefore promoting investment in farming inputs and subsequently improving productivity,” she said.

The insurance programme is targeting at least 5,000 farmers in Central, Rift Valley and Western provinces, covering maize and wheat, which are facing considerable weather risk.

Said Goslinga: “A key challenge is that insurance is new to farmers and it generally has a bad reputation. Capacity building and trust are key challenges.”

“These new tools to manage risk will need to be complemented with investments that reduce the risks faced by poor households, such as low-cost irrigation schemes and drought-resistant seed varieties,” the IFPRI report stated. “To make index insurance viable, a long-term, reliable, and homogeneous database of weather information is needed, as are weather stations that report weather data quickly.”

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88327CIWIDEY Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Small-scale disasters affect thousands of Indonesians every year, yet the floods and landslides that constantly hit the country are overshadowed by more devastating events, agencies say.CIWIDEY Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Small-scale disasters affect thousands of Indonesians every year, yet the floods and landslides that constantly hit the country are overshadowed by more devastating events, agencies say.

One such disaster was a landslide in Bandung district in West Java province on 23 February, which buried more than 40 people and displaced about 1,000.

Three hectares of the Dewata tea plantation in Tenjolaya village, Ciwidey, gave way, creating a mudslide around 10m deep. The search and rescue operation ended on 1 March with 33 people killed and 11 still buried under the mud, according to the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB).

More than 400 displaced people are now living in camps near the site in makeshift tents that they say are boiling during the day and cold at night. They are receiving rice, noodles and biscuits from the government and Red Crescent Indonesia.

“We need more help,” said Ajat, who has been living in a 3 sqm tent with his wife and two children since the disaster. “I don’t want my family to stay in this tent for too long, but we’re too scared to go back.”

Disaster-prone

Indonesia is the most disaster-prone country in the world, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA); in 2009 alone, it experienced 469 earthquakes with a magnitude of five or higher – more than any other nation.

Some disasters are natural, while others are the result of poor urban planning, a lacklustre enforcement of construction and pollution laws, and environmental degradation.

The most common result is flooding, which has accounted for about 40 percent of Indonesia’s disasters in the past few years, according to government data.

Other types of disasters include landslides - often triggered by floods - earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, drought and cyclones.

Amien Widodo, an environmental geologist with the November 10 Institute of Technology in Surabaya city, said heavy rain triggered landslides each year.

“There hasn't been a significant change in rainfall patterns over the past five years. However, floods are lingering for longer, perhaps because of bad infrastructure and clogged drainage,” he told IRIN.

Data from the BNPB since 2005 shows dozens killed every year by floods alone, and tens of thousands affected. About five million people were affected by floods, mostly because of incessant flash flooding in South Kalimantan province, in 2008 and 2009.

Limited capacity

Flooding during the wet season, which generally falls between October and March, costs Indonesia millions in aid and reconstruction.

The government’s budget for flood management this year is 957.2 billion rupiah (US$103 million). Despite this, there is limited capacity to respond to small- and medium-scale disasters.

Laksmita Noviera, an OCHA humanitarian affairs analyst, said local governments were shouldering more responsibility for disaster response because of Indonesia’s increasingly decentralized government.

There is enough effort from humanitarian actors in the emergency phase of small-scale disasters, she said, “but there is a lack of attention in the transitional and early recovery phases, which are equally important”.

Amin Kuats, a relief team coordinator with Red Crescent Indonesia, said the government and NGOs had less cash and resources for small disasters.

“Big disasters attract more money in donations. In smaller disasters, the aid is mostly provided by the government, and that’s usually not enough,” Amin said.

“Often, if the disaster happens just before local elections, the government will give more aid, but if it happens after, there generally won’t be enough,” he said.

Be prepared

The government says it will conduct an investigation into the landslide disaster in Bandung district to determine whether it was caused by nature, or decades of deforestation.

Survivors said they did not know what to do when the disaster struck, raising questions about preparedness.

“We didn’t know what to do or where to go,” said Wiwin, 30, who is living in a large tent with her husband, four children and four other families. “I looked for my children and then just ran,” she said.

Amin said NGOs were now better prepared to respond quickly to disasters after lessons learned from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated Indonesia’s Aceh province, and last year’s earthquake in West Sumatra.

However, more had to be done in terms of preparedness as well as planning, he said.

“There needs to be more training for these disasters, on the government level and for the people. The government should also understand the land and not allow people to run plantations and build houses in such disaster-prone areas.”

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88291DAMASCUS Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Thousands of people have fled drought-affected eastern Syria and those that remain are struggling to survive on limited food stocks, according to a UN report released at the end of February.DAMASCUS Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Thousands of people have fled drought-affected eastern Syria and those that remain are struggling to survive on limited food stocks, according to a UN report released at the end of February.

The third consecutive year of drought has caused widespread food insecurity in what has long been the poorest part of the country.

“This has led to a dramatic decrease in communities’ resilience capacity,” said Selly Muzammil, spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Syria.

According to the report  - billed as a mid-term assessment of the Syrian Drought Response Plan (SDRP) formulated in August 2009 - 65,000 families have left the region since early 2009. Those who remain face chronic food shortages.

Eastern Syria, comprising the governorates of Deir Ezzor, Hassakeh and Al-Raqqa, has always been a poor and vulnerable part of the country, heavily dependent on agriculture. Economic development has been difficult; levels of education, health and nutrition lag behind those in the rest of the country.

The steppe-like terrain is susceptible to desertification, and irrigation methods are poor. Furthermore, water-intensive crops, like cotton, have depleted water resources.

UN and government figures say 1.3 million inhabitants have been affected - 800,000 severely.

Up to 80 percent of the severely affected are living on a diet of bread and sugared tea - not enough to cover daily calorific and protein needs for a healthy life, according to the report, which said: “Most families have not consumed animal protein in months. Daily meals have been reduced from three to one for adults, and to two for children.”

The report says the population will remain in “dire need” of food, agriculture and other assistance until mid-2010, when crops are expected to mature owing to recently improved rainfall patterns.

However, the SDRP has only received 19 percent of the revised-down request for just under US$44 million, forcing cutbacks to food handouts and other measures.

WFP this week started distributing emergency food aid to almost 200,000 people in the northeastern region, the agency said in a statement on 3 March, after plans to reach 300,000 beneficiaries were scaled down owing to a lack of funds.

Children at risk

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it was especially concerned about the nutritional intake of the region’s children. “It is not just about a scarcity of food: there are poor traditional feeding practices [as well],” said a spokesperson for UNICEF Syria.

According to the report, there was a drastic increase in nutrition-related diseases between 2006 and 2009. Recent data show 42 percent of children in the northeastern governorate of Al-Raqqa suffer from anaemia.

Other factors such as high food and fuel prices and the global financial crisis have aggravated the situation, said WFP’s Muzammil.

The UN has set up a Food Security Coordination Team, and aid agencies are focusing on their programmes in the region in the hope of preventing full-scale and irreversible devastation.

WFP said on 3 March it would start distributing supplementary food rations to under fives and pregnant and nursing mothers in Al-Shadadi District, Al-Hassakeh Governorate, one of the worst-affected areas with the highest rate of migration and school closures.

The report warns that more funding is needed to ensure future food security: Current interventions offer only short-term solutions when the region requires long-term development, say agencies.

“The region was improving before the drought,” according to UNICEF. “This is a real setback.”

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88294PORT-AU-PRINCE Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Thirteen dead. Submerged houses. Fields and banana plantations waterlogged. Drowned livestock. Impassable roads. Fresh trauma for quake-displaced thousands. This is the plight of Les Cayes, a city on Haiti’s south coast, after an unseasonal deluge. And hurricane season is not far off. PORT-AU-PRINCE Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Thirteen dead. Submerged houses. Fields and banana plantations waterlogged. Drowned livestock. Impassable roads. Fresh trauma for quake-displaced thousands. This is the plight of Les Cayes, a city on Haiti’s south coast, after an unseasonal deluge. And hurricane season is not far off.

Trucks loaded with 4,030 meals left Port-au-Prince on 2 March for emergency distribution in and around Les Cayes. Food has also been sent to Nippes region, north of Les Cayes, which has experienced bad flooding.

The UN World Food Programme, with local authorities and NGOs, plans to supply 10-day rations to affected populations, including some 3,000 people evacuated from their homes.

"The poor state of the sewers caused flooding in every [district] of the city," said the regional president of the Haitian National Red Cross Society, Jean-Yves Placide.

“In some places the waters rose to ceiling level in people's houses," he said. "The situation will be really worrying if it continues to rain. The sun is out now, but the storm clouds come and go."

“People are used to dealing with floods, just not this early,” one aid worker in Les Cayes told IRIN.

A mother of two in the city’s Solon disrict told IRIN her family had lost everything to the flooding. “All our belongings were destroyed – our beds, our clothes, everything.”

Rains hit the area on 27-28 February. On 2 March many homes still had standing water, the aid worker told IRIN.

“Many, many people have told us they lost their crops [including banana trees and sugar cane] and their animals,” he said.

Local NGOs who work with Christian Aid are assessing damage to agriculture, Prospery Raymond, the charity’s head in Haiti, told IRIN.

According to Haiti’s Department of Civil Protection, agriculture has been “heavily affected”.

The rainy season proper usually starts in the beginning of April and peaks in May.

According to Iain Logan, head of operations for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is ill-equipped to cope.

“The early floods in Les Cayes are a sharp reminder that the very significant disaster preparedness effort we started after the 2008 hurricanes will have to be expanded and adapted,” he said in an IFRC release.

"We face an almost unique set of circumstances generated by a catastrophic quake, a rainy season, and a hurricane season, one after the other in rapid succession," he added.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88298KAMPALA Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Bad weather and lack of on-the-ground data are restricting the relief response to the 1 March landslide that is believed to have killed hundreds of people in eastern Uganda. KAMPALA Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Bad weather and lack of on-the-ground data are restricting the relief response to the 1 March landslide that is believed to have killed hundreds of people in eastern Uganda.

The areas are inaccessible, and the use of rudimentary tools is slowing down the rescue operation in Bududa, where 88 bodies have been recovered and an estimated 300 others are still missing.

Kevin Nabutuwa, the Uganda Red Cross Programme officer for disaster management in the region, told IRIN that President Yoweri Museveni flew to the affected areas by helicopter on 3 March and witnessed the burial of the victims before he ordered that nearby villages susceptible to a similar tragedy be evacuated. Up to 1,000 families (an estimated 6,000 people) will be moved to safer places. The difficult terrain in the region has restricted any use of mechanized digging.

A team of UN and other relief agencies is on the ground to determine what type of response is needed. “We could not respond without data. So teams are now assessing the situation and by the end of the day, a more thorough relief operation will get under way,” Nabutuwa said.

Burial ceremonies took place on 3 March as the military clawed through mud to find any survivors from the more than 300 people still missing after the massive landslides at the foot of Mount Elgon, which straddles the Uganda-Kenyan border where heavy rains are still falling.

Reports from the region suggest there is widespread flooding that has affected several other areas and in some places schools have been forced to close.

The Uganda Red Cross said the immediate needs were for non-food items, food, medicine and water purification equipment.

Cultural conflicts

The minister in charge of northern Uganda, David Wakikona, said that culture was slowing down efforts to evacuate people from dangerous areas. “In the Bagishu [the ethic group in the region] tradition, people attach a lot of importance to areas. Some people say this is the place where I did my ‘Imbalu’ [circumcision ceremony to mark a boy’s transition to manhood] and they do not want to move easily,” the minister said. “But we are telling them that they have to move and save their lives because it is still raining and we can see cracks in the ground above them or on which they live.”

Some relief is on the way to the area and according to the UN Children’s Agency, UNICEF, immediate priority is the provision of safe water, shelter and food while mitigating disease outbreaks among the displaced.

“A mid- to longer-term challenge will be the return of populations to original villages, due to the extent of damage. The general expectation is for resettlement in safer areas,” noted Chulho Hyun, UNICEF chief of communication.

The agency had dispatched two Interagency Emergency Health Kits – each containing basic drugs and equipment to treat wounds, eye infections, diarrhoea and other diseases, for use by healthcare workers with limited training. Each kit serves up to 1,000 people for three months or 10,000 for one month.

The agency has also given the health ministry 400 Non-food Item Kits – each containing a blanket, tarpaulin, soap, cooking set and related emergency household items, including water purification/chlorination tablets and shovels.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88299BOSASSO Tuesday, March 02, 2010 (IRIN) - Prolonged and persistent droughts have drastically changed the fortunes of Hujale Jama, 80. Originally from the village of Has Wanaje, 480km east of Bosasso, commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous state of Puntland, Jama was once considered fairly well-off. Then the drought slowly decimated his livestock. Today, he lives with relatives in Bosasso, without any livestock to his name. BOSASSO Tuesday, March 02, 2010 (IRIN) - Prolonged and persistent droughts have drastically changed the fortunes of Hujale Jama, 80. Originally from the village of Has Wanaje, 480km east of Bosasso, commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous state of Puntland, Jama was once considered fairly well-off. Then the drought slowly decimated his livestock. Today, he lives with relatives in Bosasso, without any livestock to his name.

Jama is one of thousands of people in Bosaso displaced by drought who have moved to urban centres where they depend on relatives. He spoke to IRIN in Bosasso:

“Three years ago I had 600 heads of goats and sheep and more than 30 camels. I was a man of means and would be asked to help those with less. I was one of the leaders of my community and never needed help, I was the one helping.

"Nowadays, I am the one asking people for help. I have seen many people lose all their animals but I never thought I would be one of them. It is not what I expected to be doing at my age. My livestock died one by one until there was nothing left.

"Unfortunately I am not the only one suffering. Many people in this town were once herders but have since lost everything. The droughts are becoming longer and more devastating. When there was no pasture or water in our area we would move to another part of the country but all areas are now the same; no pasture no water.

"If the situation continues like this, there will be no more people left in the countryside. The young ones can adjust and maybe find something to do but what is there for an old man like me? We are almost invisible; nobody is talking about rural people who are destitute.

"Today I am sick but I don’t have the money to go to the doctor. I never thought I would depend on anyone but look at me now. I used to be a respected man but I don’t feel like a man.

"What will I do? I cannot beg at my age."

ah/mw http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88274KAMPALA Tuesday, March 02, 2010 (IRIN) - At least 300 people, including 100 children, are believed to have been killed when landslides buried three villages in eastern Uganda late on 1 March after heavy rains. Some 2,000 people have been displaced and entire fields of crops ruined.KAMPALA Tuesday, March 02, 2010 (IRIN) - At least 300 people, including 100 children, are believed to have been killed when landslides buried three villages in eastern Uganda late on 1 March after heavy rains. Some 2,000 people have been displaced and entire fields of crops ruined.

According to David Wakikona, Minister for Northern Uganda, who travelled to the scene shortly after the disaster, more than 40 bodies have been recovered from a now-buried health centre in the market town of Nametsi, in the mountainous Bududa district, some 250km east of Kampala. Many people had sought shelter in the unit from torrential rains.

He said the morning after the landslide villagers were scrabbling through mud and rocks with farm tools and using bare hands in a desperate search for survivors.

Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) officials said that on 2 March 50 bodies had been counted while four people with broken limbs had been admitted to Bududa Hospital. More people from neighbouring villages had joined the search for survivors.

The officials described the situation as “desperate”, saying a total of 300 residents from the three villages were missing and just 31 villagers were known to have survived.

Meanwhile, nearby rivers had burst their banks and flooded homes.

“In another nearby village, five people were buried in a church, including their pastor, while about 100 children from Nametsi Primary School, who had been barred from crossing to their home by the flooding Wukha River, were also buried. Two nurses and three of their patients in Nametsi Health Center were buried. I had counted 50 bodies by the time I left the scene,” Kevin Nabutuwa, the Uganda Red Cross Programme officer for disaster management, said.

“The situation is very bad. We are still waiting for the army to come in with equipment and a medical team to see whether there are those who can be rescued,” Wakikona said.

Officials in the region said food was very short as gardens and plantations were swept away by the mud, while drinking water was not available and sanitation facilities destroyed.

“We have mobilized up to 250 soldiers and 200 policemen to join the rescue mission, but the task is overwhelming because none of us was prepared for this, including the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness,” Wanzusi Wasieba, the Bududa Resident District Commissioner, said. “The government needs to train people who are well versed in how to handle these situations and post them to districts like ours that are prone to landslides.”

Wasieba added: “The main task now is to help people survive. We need food for them, tents for shelter and safe drinking water because all water sources are contaminated. The damage is not yet known, but it is obvious that we are witnessing a critical humanitarian situation here.”

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88283JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, March 02, 2010 (IRIN) - Long dry spells in parts of Africa and erratic rainfall in Asia have cast uncertain clouds over crop yields for 2010 in the world's poorest countries. Food prices in most developing countries are down from their 2008 crisis levels, but still higher than they were in 2007. JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, March 02, 2010 (IRIN) - Long dry spells in parts of Africa and erratic rainfall in Asia have cast uncertain clouds over crop yields for 2010 in the world's poorest countries. Food prices in most developing countries are down from their 2008 crisis levels, but still higher than they were in 2007.

In the first of a four-part series on food security in some of the world's most vulnerable countries, IRIN asks, "Are we heading for another crisis?"

It would take "two consecutive bad years" for a repeat of the 2008 food and fuel crisis to arise, said Abdolreza Abbassian, economist and secretary of the Intergovernmental Group on Grains at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Unlike the situation in 2008, global cereal stocks are at comfortable levels.

But there were "many factors at play" in food prices. "In fact, we're projecting prices to stay firm, even in the medium term (the next 10 years), although they may not exceed the highs witnessed in 2008," Abbassian commented.

It is still a matter of adequate supply to meet growing demand, and the supply of food cereals has been declining. The gradual reduction in subsidies and support for the world's biggest producers in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries - the US and the European Union (EU) in particular - has meant smaller surpluses.

"On the other hand, population growth and economic prosperity fuel demand - as in Asia, especially in China and India - therefore, we are moving into a situation whereby supply expansion could decelerate, while demand will continue to grow - sometimes even faster than in the past," said Abbassian. 

A paper by the OECD suggested that food prices would start rising again, "(albeit not to 2008 peaks) once economies come out of the recession, as the basic structural demand and supply-side determinants are still very much present ... [with] demand growing faster than supply. Food prices should therefore no longer be seen as a 'shock' or short-term 'crisis', but rather as a longer-term structural issue."

Biofuels still a threat

Some of the structural changes that brought about the 2008 food price crisis, such as diverting agricultural land from producing food cereals to grains for biofuel, had yet to be addressed, Abbassian said.

ActionAid, an international NGO, calculated in its new report, Meals per gallon: the impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger, that by 2020 biofuel consumption in the European Union (EU) would jump nearly four-fold, and that two-thirds would be imported, mainly from the developing world.

"Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 percent of the global food price spike in 2008," said ActionAid, which warned that a repeat of crisis could be in the offing, with the supply of food cereals likely to be compromised by a demand for biofuels in the EU.

"Up to 100 million more people could go hungry if Europe commits itself to a huge increase in biofuels consumption in order to meet new European Union legislation," said the report.

The legislation dates back to an agreement between the EU states in 2008 to meet 10 percent of their transport fuel needs from renewable sources, including biofuels, hydrogen and green electricity, by 2020.

In a scenario that takes into account a planned and predictable biofuel expansion in some countries, the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), projected maize prices rising by more than 20 percent by 2020, and by more than 71 percent in a drastic expansion scenario.

C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, academics at the University of Minnesota, wrote in an article published in 2007 in Foreign Affairs, an American magazine, that if the prices of staple foods continued to increase as per the IFPRI projections, the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods.

ActionAid noted that "If all global biofuel targets are met, it is predicted that food prices could rise by up to an additional 76 percent by 2020." The NGO said it found that EU companies had already acquired, or were negotiating for, at least five million hectares in developing countries, which could threaten food supplies of some of the most vulnerable populations.

According to FAO, one in six people in the world are now hungry, with the 2008 crisis having pushed another 100 million into poverty and food insecurity.

There could be a solution. The global stock of cereals, which has relied on countries in the western hemisphere, has begun to look towards the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a regional organization comprising the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Georgia.

Abbassian pointed out that Russia has become the world's second largest exporter of wheat after the US. "Unfortunately, they [the CIS] are located in a part of the world which is extremely vulnerable to environmental shocks."

Weaker international prices for sugar, dairy and cereals have caused FAO's Food Price Index, released on 2 March, to register a decline: "The index is down 21 percent from its peak in June 2008, but up 22 percent from the corresponding period a year ago," said Abbassian.

There was always a chance that prices might spike "as a result of market imbalances but, overall, high prices will encourage more investment in agriculture, which in turn will help in closing the gap between supply and demand", he noted.

Liliana Balbi, a senior economist at the FAO Global Information and Early Warning System, said she thought speculation was contributing to price volatility. "The fact is, prices go up quickly but don't come down fast."

Nevertheless, Abbassian was optimistic. "Technological progress and changing diets will help in maintaining a stable global food situation, even though developments at country/local level may not always be as rosy!"

The percentage hike in food prices varies between countries, as do the causes. Balbi's unit identified 33 countries that were the world's most food insecure in its Crop Prospects and Food Situation report for February - the first in 2010. Many were going hungry because they could not afford food.

Most countries on the February list have been there before; new entries are rain-poor Niger, conflict-torn Yemen and earthquake-hit Haiti.

The ActionAid report found that "each 10 percent increase in the prices of cereals (including rice) adds nearly US$4.5 billion to the aggregate cereals import cost of those developing nations that are net importers."

In the next three parts of the series, IRIN will provide a snapshot view of food vulnerability in the 33 countries spread across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

jk/he http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88287KABUL Monday, March 01, 2010 (IRIN) - Up to 25 million tree seedlings will be planted in Afghanistan this year by the government, NGOs and private entities to combat soil erosion and desertification, and help improve air quality in urban environments, says the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL).KABUL Monday, March 01, 2010 (IRIN) - Up to 25 million tree seedlings will be planted in Afghanistan this year by the government, NGOs and private entities to combat soil erosion and desertification, and help improve air quality in urban environments, says the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL).

Funding for the project is from various government departments and NGOs, including the US Agency for International Development.

The seedlings would be planted mostly in and around urban areas. Air pollution hastens the deaths of over 3,000 people in Kabul every year, says the Health Ministry.

“We must revitalize forests and expand green areas because they are essential for the future of our country,” MAIL spokesman Abdul Majid Qarar told IRIN, adding that three million seedlings would be planted by MAIL, but warned that they had to reckon on 45-50 percent of them dying due to lack of water or care. Afghanistan has lost up to 80 percent of its forests in the past three decades, according to the government.



ad/cbhttp://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88259NUSA DUA Thursday, February 25, 2010 (IRIN) - The use of pesticides in Asian countries has exposed communities across the region to unacceptably high health risks, according to a study conducted by the international Pesticide Action NetworkNUSA DUA Thursday, February 25, 2010 (IRIN) - The use of hazardous pesticides in Asian countries has exposed communities across the region to unacceptably high health risks, according to a study conducted by the international Pesticide Action Network (PAN) [http://www.panap.net/].
 
PAN Asia and the Pacific said interviews with peasant farmers in eight Asian countries revealed that 66 percent of pesticide-active ingredients used on vegetables, paddy and other crops were highly hazardous according to the group's classification criteria.
 
“Exposure to these pesticides puts communities at high risk of developing severe permanent health problems such as endocrine disruption, which can be caused at low doses of exposure to certain pesticides,” said Bella Whittle, coordinator of the project and author of the report, [http://www.panap.net/panfiles/download/asrep_lowres.pdf] launched to coincide with an environmental conference organized by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Bali, Indonesia, from 22 to 26 February.
 
The interviews with more than 1,300 farmers were conducted in 2008 in China, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Malaysia, said PAN, an umbrella group for more than 600 NGOs worldwide.
 
Poison symptoms
 
Respondents said they experienced one or more symptoms, such as headaches, when using pesticides or being exposed to them, with reports ranging from 5 percent in one area to 91 percent in another.
 
In Bangladesh, pesticide poisoning was recorded in 2008 as a leading cause of death, and officially recorded as the second-highest cause of death among 15-49 age group, the PAN report said.
 
Given that previous studies have found that up to 98 percent of cases of pesticide poisoning were under-reported, many agricultural communities may be suffering acute and chronic health effects of chemicals, the group said.
 
“It is essentially distressing that the most vulnerable populations, such as women and children, the sick, the malnourished and the elderly are disproportionately affected and cannot escape the sources of exposure,” Whittle told reporters in Bali.
 
Several pesticides used in the Asian countries have been banned elsewhere, even in countries that are home to the agrochemical companies' headquarters, the PAN report said.
 
Paraquat, an acutely toxic herbicide with no antidote, is banned in Europe, where it is produced, while endosulfan is banned in over 62 countries, the group said.
 
Deadly exposure
 
However, Hedi Surya, 51, a farmer in Bali, told IRIN: “I've sprayed pesticides for 20 years and I have not been sick because of poisoning. I always use a towel to cover my mouth when spraying and face the direction of the wind.”
 
The PAN report said people were exposed to the deadly chemicals for various reasons, including a lack of protective equipment, spills during mixing and spraying, and spraying against the wind.
 
PAN is urging countries to make huge efforts to implement international regulations on pesticides and stop the registration of pesticides that require personal protective equipment, saying its shortcomings and cost made proper use unfeasible.
 
“Governments should phase out highly hazardous pesticides and progressively phase in non-chemical pest-management approaches,” said PAN Asia and the Pacific director Sarojani Rengam.
 
Lucrative Indonesian market
 
In Indonesia, six out of 100 farmers interviewed in the Central Java district of Wonosobo as part of the PAN study had experienced serious poisoning, said Rossana Dewi, an activist with Gita Pertiwi, an NGO which conducted the survey.
 
“Indonesia is a lucrative market for pesticides,” Dewi told IRIN. “Indonesian farmers use pesticides extensively, many of them using several pesticides for their crops.”
 
In 2009, there were 1,832 brands of pesticides sold in the country, an increase from 1,702 brands in the previous year, she said.
 
Farmers usually wear long-sleeve shirts, trousers and hats when spraying pesticides, but few use proper protective equipment, she said.
 
The use of pesticides as mosquito repellants is also widespread in Indonesian households, she said.
 
“Our survey in seven cities on Java shows that each household used two types of pesticides as mosquito repellants. That means it's highly likely the food we consume is contaminated with pesticides,” she said.
 
In Bali, environmentalists also expressed concern that the heavy use of pesticides on farms had contaminated lakes. “The government is not taking action to seriously address the problem of chemical pollution in lakes,” Children of Nature Community, a local NGO, said on its website anakalam.org.  “One hundred percent of locals still use chemical pesticides.”
 
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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88234JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, February 24, 2010 (IRIN) - Temperatures seem set to soar to perilously high levels because of climate change. In another 40 years, would maize still be the staple food in Kenya, already hit by five failed rainy seasons? If not, what could people grow and eat? And if you could grow maize, how much water and fertilizer would it need? JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, February 24, 2010 (IRIN) - Temperatures seem set to soar to perilously high levels because of climate change. In another 40 years, would maize still be the staple food in Kenya, already hit by five failed rainy seasons? If not, what could people grow and eat? And if you could grow maize, how much water and fertilizer would it need?

If you live in the remote semi-arid Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda - beset by 14 droughts in 25 years - you might also want to know what your options are for continued food security.

For the first time, a customized regional climate model linked to crop growing and water models, run on a supercomputer at Michigan State University (MSU), will help provide crop breeders in three East African countries - Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania - with detailed answers on crop yields.

Many research institutions have been working on models to predict the impact of climate change on food production in Africa, but in a few months the MSU model will help scientists and breeders to zoom in at a regional level on the possible impact of climate change on a wide variety of crops in these countries.

The research could help produce climate-resilient varieties of food crops, said Jennifer Olson, lead researcher and associate professor at MSU's College of Communication Arts and Sciences.

"East Africa is already experiencing the impact of climate change - food crops are experiencing extreme water stress," she commented. People living in Kenya's highlands, who have traditionally grown tea and coffee, have begun experimenting with maize and beans as the climate has grown warmer.

Work on the model began 10 years ago with the recording of relevant data, such as the impact of nutrients on a certain food crop, or the impact of water stress on another, which were subsequently fed into the model. "The model is still being perfected," said Olson.

The model can experiment with the impact of climate change, such as high temperature and water stress on a certain crop variety, saving the time that would have been spent on field trials, "which will help speed up the agricultural research cycle", she noted.

The researchers intend to launch the model at a workshop in June. Concern about increasing food insecurity in East Africa has prompted two institutions to set up a research grants to encourage innovative solutions.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), based in South Africa, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, announced a US$10.67 million grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) to support the establishment of a multidisciplinary competitive funding mechanism for biosciences in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

ILRI's Bruce Scott said they would be looking for innovative solutions using bioscience to improve crop resilience to climate change, or perhaps to improve the shelf-life of a food product.

jk/he http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88225NAIROBI Tuesday, February 23, 2010 (IRIN) - Four years after an innovative slum-upgrading project was launched in Huruma, to the northeast of the Kenyan capital, at least 200 households are now living in improved homes, complete with infrastructure such as running water, sewage connection, electricity, drainage, paving and renovated toilet blocks.NAIROBI Tuesday, February 23, 2010 (IRIN) - Four years after an innovative slum-upgrading project was launched in Huruma, to the northeast of the Kenyan capital, at least 200 households are now living in improved homes, complete with infrastructure such as running water, sewage connection, electricity, drainage, paving and renovated toilet blocks.

"We have at least 50 houses still under construction. We hope to complete these in the near future as the project comes to an end," said Chiara Camozzi, project manager for the Italian NGO, COOPI, which spearheaded the project.

Initially planned to take three years (2005-2007), the 1.5 million euro (US$2.1 million) project has stretched into 2010 due to complications, such as the post-election violence of early 2008, which affected parts of Huruma. COOPI is the project's implementing agency, with the Italian ministry of foreign affairs one of the main donors.

To begin with, the beneficiaries pay 20 percent of the cost of the house through local saving schemes, Camozzi said.

"Thereafter, they get a loan for the remaining 80 percent that they have to repay, so at the end of the process they will pay all the cost of the house," she added.

It costs at least 300,000 shillings ($3,850) to complete one house, a three-level 50 sqm structure that can be built in phases, subject to cash availability. COOPI supports the construction of the infrastructure and Pamoja Trust, a local NGO, provides social and technical support.

David Maina, 29, one of the beneficiaries of the project, cannot wait to finish paying for his two-bedroom house.

"I have about three years to go to complete payment for my home; I am looking forward to when the house will be fully complete and I will be a home-owner," he told IRIN. "I have no plans to sub-let or sell it; owning the house is a dream come true for me."

In the 1990s, residents of informal settlements across the city, including five villages of Huruma, which have since benefited from the COOPI project, were often subjected to forced evictions by city council officials. These evictions gave rise to a community initiative, the Muungano wa Wanavijiji, a network of community savings groups. Residents of Kambi Moto, Gitathuru, Mahira, Ghetto and Redeemed villages formed savings groups to facilitate access to home loans.

Brokered by COOPI and Pamoja Trust, an agreement was signed in 2002 between the Huruma community and the Nairobi City Council, with the council committing itself to transfer the land occupied by the informal settlement to the community, in accordance with a community land tenure system.

The city council also designated Huruma a "special planning area", facilitating the adjustment of conventional planning standards and the adoption of a "more appropriate" building code.

Camozzi said this was important because the application of high construction standards and the usual procedure to issue title deeds were some of the elements blamed for the failure of previous slum upgrading.

"In the past, after the redevelopment of an area and the delivery of new houses, the dynamic of the market caused the expulsion of the targeted beneficiaries, replaced by better income populations [and thus] shifting the problem from one area to another," Camozzi said.

Another slum-upgrading project is under way in Kibera [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86203], reputed to be Africa's largest informal settlement, also in Nairobi. Supported by UN-HABITAT and the World Bank Cities Alliance [http://www.citiesalliance.org/index.html],
the project targets thousands of slum dwellers. Already, hundreds of households have moved into improved housing units in flats built near the slum.

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