Uganda faces agriculture output drop

Paul Tentena in East African Business Week: Agriculture is repeatedly described as the backbone of Uganda’s economy. But in terms of productivity, it has the lowest output per worker researchers say. According to Edward Bbaale, a researcher with Centre for Basic Research and School of Economics at Makerere University, it  implies that the majority of workers in Uganda are holders of low paying jobs.

This is an issue, which means that there are low prospects of overcoming the problem of poverty by those employed in agriculture. “Even when Uganda records growth in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, youths remain jobless while growth in the services and industrial sectors is generating jobs for them. So, is it necessary for so many Ugandans to engage in agriculture? Especially, at this point in time, when the demographic changes of the population are generating a window of opportunity to raise per capita income and thus reduce poverty?” Bbaale said.

Bbaale, in his research paper entitled ‘Is Uganda’s Growth Profile Jobless?’, points out that more people should be engaged in other productive activities and sectors rather than agriculture if Uganda has to reduce on its poverty levels and create jobs for the young people.  He however, cautions that agriculture still remains important because it is a major employer in Uganda.

...Overall, the promising sectors for poverty reduction through productivity and employment generation in Uganda by order of importance are; services sector, industrial sector and manufacturing. If adults manage to engage in these sectors, the demographic shift will have an important poverty reducing impact.

The services sector was employing over 2 million Ugandans, that is 19% in 2006 and 22% in 2011 of the labor force. It had all its contributions positive; contributed 39% to output per worker and 14% to the growth in employment. Since agriculture generates low income for its workers this puts a policy question on the productivity of jobs held in the agricultural sector....

A handful of millet in Uganda, shot by Pete Lewis/Department for International Development (UK), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Food security alarm for east, central Africa

IRIN: Some 20 million people are facing acute food insecurity in eastern and central Africa, with most of them being at “crisis” and “emergency” levels, according to aid agencies. This figure compares unfavorably with 15.8 million people in July 2013.  The affected countries include Somalia, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Central Africa Republic (CAR), Sudan, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania.

“The overall nutrition situation in the region has deteriorated precipitously and, according to survey results, the Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) levels are higher than 20 percent, exceeding the World Health Organization’s emergency threshold of 15 percent, especially in parts of South Sudan, CAR, Somalia and northern Kenya,” said the East and Central Africa Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG), a multi-stakeholder regional forum chaired by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

FSNWG warned that the situation could deteriorate further in the absence of quick action.  “FSNWG strongly believes that in the absence of an increased and immediate multi-sectoral response, the food and nutrition status of affected populations is likely to deteriorate further.”...

Kenya food aid, image by USAID

Heavy rains ravage Bullisa in Uganda, transport paralyzed

Ismael Kasooha and Robert Atuhaire in AllAfrica.com via New Vision (Uganda):  River Waiga on the Buliisa-Masindi road has burst its banks paralyzing transport to Buliisa. The river flooded on Thursday after torrential rains in Buliisa which left several low lying areas flooded.

The new bridge constructed to allow the transportation of machinery to the oil fields is completely submerged and vehicles were using the old bridge which is narrow to cross. David Wanume, the Ag. Station engineer, Masindi station under Uganda National roads authority-UNRA said a team of experts has been dispatched to assess the condition of the bridge.

"We have been informed of the flooding of the diversion bridge and we are in the process of doing the needful," said Wanume.

He said that the flooded bridge was constructed by Tullow oil Uganda to enable them transport wide trucks which could not use the existing bridge there. Wanume said that the existing bridge is still strong although it is risky and dangerous to allow wider trucks to use it....

Wildlife soars in Uganda

Samuel Nabwiiso in AllAfrica.com via East African Business Week (Kampala): The number of animals in Uganda's national parks and game reserves has soared over the past decade, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has said.

Latest figures show that the population of some species has doubled since 1999, spokesperson Lillian Nsubuga said. "Wildlife has benefited from improved monitoring and the expulsion of rebels from the countr. This led to the animals population rise, especially for buffalos, giraffes and elephants," she said in a statement.

New statistics show that the population with the biggest increase is that of the Impala, a grazing antelope. The number of Impala in Uganda has surged to more than 35,000, from around 1,600 at the time of the last census in 1999....

A jumping impala, shot by Charlesjsharp, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Dirty water is the major cause of Ugandan children's illness and death

Watuwa Timbiti in AllAfrica.com via New Vision (Uganda): At a communal water spring in Kinawataka, a low-end squalid suburb of Kampala, children with all sorts of repulsively dirty containers are not only collecting water, but equally littering the water point with rubbish.

Visibly, the stagnant water down the collection point is such a distasteful sight. At a short distance away, some ladies are drawn in washing clothes, some of which contain child excreta, used water runs off to the water point, thus contaminating it.

Such gross hygiene abuse is not limited to the Kinawataka spring, it is a replica of what happens at most community springs or water sources such as taps, in other poorly planned and densely populated areas of Kampala and Uganda as a whole. Many areas in the country have no access to safe water and improved sanitation.

Consequently, lack of access to safe water and absence of sanitation integrity due to contamination of most water sources has over time spurred repercussions, both of an economic and health nature, especially water-related diseases such as diarrhoea.

According to the minister of state for primary health care, as cited by the New Vision of February 25, over 400 people die daily of various infections, including diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, typhoid, ebola and marburg fever....

A girl at a well in Uganda, outside Kampala, shot by Barefootvet, public domain

Regional disaster officers deployed for Ugandan floods

Francis Emorut in AllAfrica.com via New Vision (Uganda): Government has deployed regional risk disaster officers in all disaster prone areas in the country to handle victims of floods that have ravaged the country, the state minister of refugees and disaster preparedness, Musa Ecweru has said.

"We are getting bad floods, landslides, storms and frequent lightning bolts therefore, need to have disasters officers in these areas in case disaster strikes," Ecweru told World Bank representatives, disaster specialists, MPs resident district commissioners and disaster management officers.

Floods have killed four people in Kasese and displaced thousands and property destroyed in the same area and FortPortal. He said in Acholi-Lango sub-region the officers will be based in Gulu while in Teso region the officers will be stationed in Mbale and for Karamoja in Moroto.

In western Uganda, the disaster officers will be stationed at Fort Portal and Mbarara while in the central region the officers are based at Masaka. The minister also said that Government is setting up disaster risk reduction centres in all the 112 districts.

Ecweru made the remarks during the opening of disaster international workshop on Learning from Mega Disasters-the Great East Japan Earthquake and implementing lessons learnt in Uganda. Ecweru called for the training of district leaders in disaster issues. "It extremely critical to train district leaders in disaster risk reduction so as to form disaster committees in the districts," Ecweru said...

Bioscience should underpin African agriculture, meeting hears

Mekonnen Teshome in SciDev.net: Bioscience projects including ones that turn tannery waste into manure can improve crop productivity and food security, and boost agricultural resilience to climate change-related impacts in East Africa, according to scientists.

Agricultural and biosciences scientists who met at the 1st Bio-Innovate Regional Scientific Research Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last month (25-27 February), say that using bioscience in East Africa could bring about socioeconomic transformation.

For instance, in Uganda, tannery and slaughter wastes are being turned into manure for crop production and clean water. Other innovations include the production of drought-resistant seed varieties that are suitable to specific agriecological areas.

The Bio-resources Innovations Network for Eastern Africa Development (Bio-Innovate) Program was established in 2010 to support multidisciplinary biosciences and product-based innovation activities in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. It currently supports nine biosciences innovation and policy consortium projects, bringin

Seyoum Leta, Bio-Innovate programme manager and an environmental biotechnology expert, says that modern biosciences must be harnessed to improve crop productivity. He tells SciDev.Net that Bio-Innovate is implementing programmes in four areas aimed at:  addressing climate change adaptability; food and nutrition security; energy production from industrial waste; and securing freshwater resources....

A farm compound in Ethiopia, shot by A. Davey, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Ugandan communities plant trees to avert disaster

British Red Cross: The Red Cross has responded to a call from the Ugandan Ministry of Disaster Preparedness to provide 50,000 tree seedlings, which will help reforest parts of the Mount Elgon region.

The tree-planting project is part of a new Uganda Red Cross programme, launched in September 2012, to reduce the impact of disasters in the Elgon region. The majority of families depend on the land for their survival, putting pressure on natural resources.  Environmental degradation in this region is one of the factors causing more frequent floods and landslides over the last few years.

Karen Peachey, British Red Cross representative in east Africa, said: “Such disasters are only going to become a greater threat due to a rapidly growing population, continuing environmental degradation and climate change, which is predicted to increase both the dry spells and intense rains. The programme, which is supported by the British Red Cross, will help communities be better prepared, saving both lives and livelihoods.”

The Uganda Red Cross is helping 30 communities in the districts of Bududa, Bulambuli, Manafwa and Bukedea. William Kimanai, a 34-year old community volunteer in Wanga village, Bulambuli district, said: “We’ve been given a number of tree species including mangoes, guavas, oranges and eucalyptus. The trees conserve moisture and that is why we plant them along the river banks. We encourage every household member to plant at least three trees.”...

Mount Elgon, shot by Kristina Just, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Uganda to get a climate change policy

Ronald Musoke in AllAfrica.com via the Independent (Kampala): The Climate Change Unit in the Ministry of Water and Environment is in the process of initiating a national Climate Change Policy before the end of the year according to a top Ministry of Water and Environment official. The Climate Change Unit was created by the government in 2008 although it started work in 2009 following its endorsement by the Cabinet.

Paul Isabirye, the Co-ordinator of the Climate Change Unit and the national focal person for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) said the policy will be accompanied by an implementation and communication strategy to avoid falling prey to the usual folly where well written national policies often fail to realize their goals because they lack an 'implementation strategy.'

In an exclusive interview with The Independent at the Climate Change Unit offices in Kampala on Nov. 9, Isabirye said the unit was working hard to have both the 'costed implementation' and communication strategies accompany the policy. "By the end of the year, these two will be out (and) these will help Uganda's climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts," Isabirye said....

Climate change awareness in Africa and Asia 'varies greatly'

Vumiria Collins in SciDev.net: For women living in rural areas of developing countries, levels of vulnerability to climate change and the capacity to adapt to its impacts varies greatly — with some even more resilient than men, three pilot studies in Africa and Asia has revealed.

Researchers found that women's abilities to cope with various climate change impacts depend on factors such as social status; access to resources; cultural norms; and access to social networks such as discussions in community groups and message passing, for instance through church gatherings

The team from the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) at the CGIAR Consortium revealed their findings in a working paper entitled Participatory Gender-sensitive Approaches for Addressing Key Climate Change-related Research Issues — Evidence from Bangladesh, Ghana and Uganda, published by the consortium on 23 August.

The three sites were chosen for their similar cultures and levels of development.

Researchers used participatory research tools to assess responses to and knowledge of climate change impacts among women in these regions. They assessed farmers' use of exchange visits as one adaptation strategy, seasonal weather forecasting platforms, and gender-sensitive, climate-smart agricultural practices.

Florence Birungi Kyazze, a researcher involved in the study, said the study had revealed that irrespective of gender, farmers relied on indigenous knowledge for weather forecasting. This has severely hindered their adaptability to environmental change, Kyazze explained. "The reason farmers, especially women, rely on indigenous knowledge is because [they] cannot afford radios, television sets or mobile telephones to access formal weather forecast information," said Kyazze....

Women and children and the major working force in the rural villages on farm work today. Here is a site we visited in Jukwa rural village in Ghana to understand the process for palm oil extraction. They are sorting the fiber and the palm nuts to ensure the maximum usage of the palm nuts. Shot by oneVillage Initiative, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Technology will help Ugandan farmers cope with climate change

Esther Nakkazi in SciDev.net:  Ugandan cattle farmers are set to benefit from the use of information and communications technology (ICT) tools and meteorological data to improve their ability to adapt to climate change-induced hazards such as water stress and prolonged droughts.

Climate Change Adaptation and ICT (CHAI), a two-year project launched in Kampala earlier this month (3 August), will generate agricultural, environmental management, market and meteorological information for herdsmen in Uganda's 'cattle corridor'.

The corridor — a broad dryland area covering 84,000 square kilometres from southwest to northeast Uganda, and home to 12 million people and about 60 per cent of the country's seven million cattle — is one of the African areas hardest hit by climate change.

"When there is a crisis like a prolonged drought, herdsmen sell their animals as a coping strategy. We will provide them with information to cope and make choices," said Berhane Gebru, director of programmes at the US-based FHI360-Satellife, a non-profit development organisation helping to implement the project.

The US$600,000 project, funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), will provide users with ICT tools to collect and disseminate information. The data generated will be reliable, timely, accurate and appropriate for planning on water-related climate risks and adaptation options....

Climbing beans in southwestern Uganda, shot by Neil Palmer (CIAT), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

UNISDR appoints parliamentary champions for risk reduction

Dizery Salim at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction:  The United Nations office for disaster risk reduction, UNISDR, today officially welcomed five members of parliament from Bangladesh, Uganda, Cambodia, Senegal and the East African Legislative Assembly as parliamentary champions committed to promoting legislation for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

This month they officially began two-year terms as members of the first Advisory Group of Parliamentarians for Disaster Risk Reduction, solidifying a multi-year initiative by UNISDR to make progress in the realm of national legislation and risk reduction.

The champions are Saber Chowdhury, Chair of Bangladesh’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change and Environment; Alex Bakunda Byarugaba, Chairman of Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament; Saumura Tioulong, member of Parliament representing Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and former Deputy Governor of Cambodia's Central Bank from 1993-1995; Abdou Sane, member of the National Assembly of Senegal and President of the parliament’s Network for Disaster Risk Reduction; and Abdirahin Abdi, former speaker of the East African Legislative Assembly from June 2007 to June 2012.

“Parliamentarians play a particular role. They can put pressure on the executive to think about prevention. They can hold governments accountable,” said Feng Min Kan, Special Adviser to the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, who has nurtured the UNISDR parliamentary initiative since 2008.

“Our role is in developing our capacities,” said Mr. Chowdhury, Chair of the Advisory Group. “What can we do in our own constituencies? How we can get communities involved? We may have grand national plans, but it is at the local level that action is taken.”...

Western Uganda: crop-raiding elephants call for plan bee

Peter Jones in globaldevelopment, one of the Guardian's blogs (UK), describes a clever way of protecting crops without harming the elephants: Among the rolling volcanic hills in western Uganda lies Queen Elizabeth National Park, famed for its natural beauty and wildlife. The park's varied fauna has spawned a productive safari industry. However, more recently, the animals have been destroying, rather than supporting, local people's livelihoods.

"Elephants from the park have raided my fields for beans, maize and matooke," says Mohamood Mwapiri, a farmer in Kibodi, a village on the edge of the park. "When they come to eat they also destroy everything. At its worst, the effect was close to famine. We had nothing to eat and nothing to sell – they ate or destroyed all we had."

...Stopping the elephants is no easy task. Innocent Kahwa used to work for the UWA trying to prevent crop raiding by elephants. "We tried digging deep, steep-sided trenches around crops," he says. "But elephants are intelligent. They just used dirt to fill in the trenches and crossed over." In the absence of effective prevention mechanisms, farmers have been watching over their fields at night, attempting to scare off animals by shouting and banging empty jerry cans, or calling in the UWA to fire shots in the air.

... King began researching elephant reactions to bees after reading that elephants tended to avoid acacia trees that were hosting beehives. "I saw just how much elephants were running away from disturbed bee sounds," she explains. This, she says, inspired the idea of a beehive fence deterrent system. The system uses trip wires to link beehives together, forming a protective fence around land that is raided. When elephants trip the wire, the bees are disturbed and emerge from their hives, scaring the elephants away....

Get those bees away from me: Elephant in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda, shot by Daryona, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Climate change affecting Uganda's wildlife, reserves

Paul Tentena in AllAfrica.com via East African Business: Wildlife managers and the Uganda Wildlife Authority have dismissed reports that poor management of national parks and game reserves is leading to the dwindling number of wild animals especially ostriches, lions and zebras in Uganda.

The authority said in Kampala that due to climate changes where animal breeding grounds have been tampered with, population pressure on wildlife reserves by the growing number of people is leading to low reproduction of animals hence the decline in animal figures.

Mr. Andrew Sseguya, the executive director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) told reporters that whereas his body acknowledges that the Office of the Auditor General carried out a value for money audit in 2011; the reports had errors on the exact situation of wildlife populations in Uganda's national parks.

"The decline in some wildlife in some protected areas is a result of many factors both anthropogenic and environmental as a result of climate change," said Sseguya. "It should therefore not be entirely attributed to the weakness in management as climate change is a global reality and has affected almost all countries," he stressed adding that "Worth noting as well is that as the human population continues to grow, the number of wildlife worldwide continues to reduce due to habitat loss and other pressures exerted by increasing human population."...

Uganda keeps coffee-output target amid disease, climate change

William Davison in Bloomberg: Uganda, Africa’s biggest coffee exporter, is maintaining its target to boost production to 4.5 million bags by 2015 even as it faces challenges from rising temperatures and coffee-wilt disease, an industry body said.

The East African nation plans to begin planting seven strains of robusta-variety trees that are resistant to coffee wilt, while climate change will partly be combated by irrigation programs, said Edmund Kananura Kyerere, quality and regulatory manager at the Uganda Coffee Development Authority.

“We are still targeting increased production,” Kyerere said in an interview at the African Fine Coffee Conference in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, yesterday. “The target is still 4.5 million bags.”

Uganda exported 3.14 million 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags of coffee in 2011, ranking the country as the world’s ninth- biggest shipper of the beans, according to data on the International Coffee Organization’s website. Robusta beans, which are used in espressos and instant drinks, account for about 85 percent of the nation’s annual production, according to the authority...

A coffee plant in Uganda, shot by Nathan leibel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Uganda lacks active crop insurance

Joseph Miti in AllAfrica.com via the Monitor (Uganda): Farmers will have to incur more losses caused by climate related conditions since there is no active insurance scheme for the agricultural sector, a new study has revealed.

The feasibility of agricultural insurance report, released on Monday, also indicates that there is no active private sector player offering crop insurance in the country. "This is partly due to a lack of technical expertise and distribution capacity of insurers to develop and service agricultural insurance," Mr John Ariko, a consultant with Friends Consult limited - a firm that conducted the study said.

The study was commissioned by the Uganda Co-operative Alliance (UCA) to explore the feasibility of agricultural insurance with specific emphasis on weather index insurance (WII) as an alternative risk management approach for farmers.

According to the report, carried out in Eastern and Northern Uganda -areas more vulnerable to hydro-meteorological risks, 53 per cent of what farmers may have obtained is lost in fields due to climatic related conditions....

Poor legislator - scientist relations to blame for African drought

David Muwanga in East African Business Week: Speaker of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) Abdirahin Abdi has attributed the current drought in the Horn of Africa to lack of closer working relationships between Parliamentarians and scientists. "It is unfortunate that the drought we are experiencing in the Great Horn of Africa, which is the worst in over six decades, had long been predicted before it occurred, but nothing was done," he said.

"This is a sign of clear disparity between the scientists and legislators and we urgently need to close ranks and begin working together for the betterment of the communities", he said at two day consultative workshop for parliamentarians on disaster risk reduction (DRR) that was held in Geneva, Switzerland recently.

However participants at the meeting hailed Senegal and Uganda for the positive progress on disaster risk and reduction. According to Mr Alex Byarugaba, Uganda had developed and refined its policy on DRR and was headed towards instituting an Act of Parliament - a first in the EAC region in its quest to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

The objective of the meeting organized by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) was to review progress with regards to UNISDR's initiative on Parliamentarians in disaster risk reduction, exchange views on challenges that Parliamentarians encountered in promoting disaster risk and reduction and identify priorities for the 2012-2013 Action Plan.

It was attended by Parliamentarians from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Uganda, Senegal and the East African Legislative Assembly. He therefore called for building of new bridges between scientists, technocrats and Parliamentarians if meaningful advances in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and disaster management were to be realized....

Single mothers left behind in flooded Ugandan swampland

Andrew Green in IPS: Life in Bwaise – a slum on the outskirts of the capital of Uganda – has never been easy. But increasingly erratic rains over the last three years have brought constant floods to the former swampland. Residents who can afford to are moving out, leaving the poorest – often single mothers and grandmothers – behind.

The gardens around Regina Bayiyana’s home in Bwaise keep washing away. Her husband and all five of her children died after long illnesses, leaving her to raise 15 grandchildren on her own in her one- bedroom house. The crops she grew in the gardens – bananas, sweet potatoes and yams – were her main source of both food and income. Now she and her family have cut back to one meal a day and there is no longer money for school fees. "Ten years back this used to be a good place," Bayiyana said. "Now we can’t plant… The water is entering our homes whenever it rains. All my property was washed away by the rains."

...A 2008 Oxfam International report, written with assistance from district officials in Uganda, said many of the changes to the country's climate - including "heavy and violent" rains - were consistent with global warming effects.

Though weather patterns in Uganda have always been unpredictable, the authors said the recently inconsistent rainfall combined with the country's continuing deforestation could increase risk of floods, as the soil is unable to absorb as much water. And the report predicted that the entire region could expect to become even wetter in the future....

A street view in Kampala, shot by Simisa, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Nile Basin states appeal to UN over failure to access climate funds

Walter Menya in the East African: Ten African countries have appealed to the United Nations, funding agencies and the developed nations to eliminate bottlenecks to access to climate change adaptation funds. Convening in Kigali, Rwanda for the 3rd Nile Basin Development Forum from October 26 to 28, ministers in charge of water resources from the Nile Basin countries underscored the need to remove the bureaucracy that has slowed down access to the billions of dollars in the Climate Change Fund for developing nations.

The forum, attended by ministers, lawmakers, researchers and water experts under the theme “Climate Change and its Implications for Sustainable Development and Cooperation in the Nile Basin” also called on the African governments to establish national policies and initiatives for climate change adaptation that would not rely on donor funds.

The 16th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, last year established a yearly fund, potentially worth up to $100 billion to help countries adapt to climate change. However, the participants from the Nile riparian states of Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, complained about inability to access the funds...

Map of the White Nile and the Blue Nile by Roke, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Let’s seize the benefits of climate change in Africa

In the East African, Jeff Otieno interviewed the United Nations Development Programme’s Africa Adaptation Programme manager (possibly Ian Rector, could not tell from the source). The entire interview is worth a look: ....Given the list of priorities ranging from improving food security, developing infrastructure to tackling threats of terrorism, should East African governments take the phenomenon seriously?

Regardless of any doubts, governments should take risk management seriously. This means that those countries that have high risk exposure to climate change (based on evidence) will have to take serious action to mainstream within overall policy, planning and practice at all levels. When such an approach is followed, there is no reason why multiple priorities such as food security, poverty reduction, environmental and ecosystems management, for example, cannot be addressed through a comprehensive suite of strategies. The problem in many countries is that these issues are often planned for and implemented separately as ad hoc interventions, when in fact they should be seen as interactive parts of the same development wheel.

Many countries are clearly not even adapted to the challenges presented by the climate we have now, let alone those predicted for the future.

The most urgent priority is for countries to get onto aggressive and sustainable paths of development. If governments are not taking this seriously, with this unmitigated human disaster at our doorstep in the Horn of Africa, then heaven help us. But tragically, this seems to be the case with people blaming the drought or climate change for this catastrophe. What they seem to be saying is that the extreme poverty and vulnerability of these populations is a given, that it is not the fundamental problem and that there is nothing they are prepared to do about that. But blaming the weather is far too easy an excuse, and if we accept it, then we are letting the governments that are responsible for the development of their countries off the hook. Climate change must never be allowed to legitimise inaction or failed development....

From NASA, a side view of the Horn of Africa