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Sahel: Beyond Any Drought
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Sep 3, 2007 (070903)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"People blame locusts, drought and high food prices for the crisis
that affected more than 3 million people in Niger in 2005, But
these were just triggers. The real cause of the problem was that
people there are chronically vulnerable. Two years later, they
still are." - Vanessa Rubin, CARE International UK
In Beyond Any Drought, a new report by the International Institute
for Environment and Development, commissioned by the Sahel Working
Group, the authors conclude that both agencies and governments have
focused too much on short-term emergency assistance and failed to
address more fundamental issues. "Poor farmers and herders buy up
60% of their food from the market, but prices fluctuate widely,
even in times of plenty," Rubin notes. People in debt who have sold
their assets are chronically vulnerable to new crises, the report
stresses. The Sahel Working Group, composed of ten international
development NGOs working in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, says
both more aid and better coordinated aid, building on local
resources, are needed.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a press release from CARE
International UK and excerpts from the report. The full report and
a two-page briefing paper are available at
http://www.iied.org/mediaroom/releases/070711Sahel.html
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Food Crisis is Inevitable in Africa's Poorest Nations
Devastating but preventable food crises will hit the world's
poorest countries yet again because of a failure to address the
root causes of the problem. The warning that millions of people in
the Sahel region of Africa are as vulnerable as ever to famine
comes in a report launched by the Sahel Working Group - a coalition
of prominent aid organisations - and the International Institute
for Environment and Development. The report, Beyond any Drought,
identifies the underlying factors that make people in the region
vulnerable to food shortages, and warns that unless these factors
are addressed, there will be more and worse food crises.
But it says short-term solutions are being applied to a long-term
problem and that the development and emergency responses of
different agencies - including governments, donors and aid
organisations - need to be joined up.
"People blame locusts, drought and high food prices for the crisis
that affected more than 3 million people in Niger in 2005," says
Vanessa Rubin, Africa Hunger Advisor for CARE International UK, and
author of a briefing paper that accompanies the report. "But these
were just triggers. The real cause of the problem was that people
there are chronically vulnerable. Two years later, they still are."
This is because poor farmers and pastoralists have been
marginalised, women lack rights and access to healthcare, education
and property, and traditional ways of life are being eroded.
"Poor farmers and herders buy up to 60% of their food from the
market but prices fluctuate wildly, even in times of plenty," says
Rubin. "When people are forced to take on debt or sell assets such
as land or livestock to buy food, they wave goodbye to the very
things that help them to cope with the challenges of living within
the region."
"Governments need to support the livelihoods of poor farmers and
pastoralists," says Mbairodbbee Njegollmi, Regional Advisor for
Tearfund, a member of the Sahel Working Group. "Donors need to
redesign their aid packages. And both need to focus on making the
poor more resilient to future shocks."
The report focuses on three of the world's four poorest countries:
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. It urges international agencies to
direct more aid to the region and to close the gap between
supporting development and responding to emergencies. These two
efforts - often promoted by the same agency - are rarely
coordinated and may not even share objectives.
Niger is the world's poorest country, yet it ranks 71st in the
amount of aid it receives per capita. Much of this aid is in the
form of food donations, which undoubtedly save lives but do nothing
to address people's vulnerability to future shocks.
Donors have also promoted poverty reduction strategies that assume
that liberalising markets will create wealth for all. But poor
cotton farmers in Burkina Faso and Mali have been unable to trade
their way out of poverty because fertiliser is expensive and US
subsidies to its own cotton farmers price African farmers out of
the market.
"History will repeat itself unless governments in the Sahel and
donor agencies adopt an entirely new strategy for the region," says
Camilla Toulmin, director of IIED. "This needs to build on the
knowledge, skills and priorities of local people, strengthening
local rights to land, soils and water, and giving people a voice in
how decisions are made. Building local resilience is key to
reducing vulnerability."
Dr Youba Sokona, Executive Secretary of the Observatory of the
Sahel and Sahara in Tunisia, warns that climate change could make
people in the Sahel even more vulnerable to food crises. "Many
communities in the Sahel are using traditional knowledge to
increase their resilience to climate stress. But they need external
financial support and the backing of their governments to ensure
that their traditional farming and herding options remain open to
enable them to do this."
The report's findings were presented and discussed by its authors,
representatives of the Sahel Working Group and guest speakers,
including Youba Sokona and Mustapha Darboe, Regional Director for
West Africa, World Food Programme at Chatham House, London, on 11
July.
The full report Beyond Any Drought or a two-page briefing paper by
Vanessa Rubin on the report's findings and recommendations are
available from:
Mike Shanahan, Press Officer, International Institute for
Environment and Development (IIED),
Tel: +44 (0)20 7388 2117, mike.shanahan@iied.org
Photos from Mali and Niger are available at:
http://www.iied.org/mediaroom/Gallery/index.html
Notes to Editors
The Sahel Working Group (SWG) is an inter-agency network focusing
on Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. It was formed to identify and
implement solutions to the chronic vulnerability and hunger of
communities, as highlighted by the 2005 food crisis. The SWG
shares information, commissions research and coordinates
programming and advocacy messages. Participating agencies that
have jointly commissioned the report, Beyond Any Drought, are:
Action Against Hunger, British Red Cross, CARE International,
Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Oxfam, Relief International, Save
the Children, Tearfund and World Vision.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)
is an independent, non-profit research institute. Set up in 1971
and based in London, IIED provides expertise and leadership in
researching and achieving sustainable development (see:
http://www.iied.org).
The Sahel is an area that extends across Africa on the southern
edge of the Sahara desert. Three countries in the West African part
of the Sahel - Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger - are among the four
poorest countries in the world.
Beyond Any Drought
Root causes of chronic vulnerability in the Sahel
The Sahel Working Group
June 2007
Pippa Trench, John Rowley, Marthe Diarra, Fernand Sano, Boubacar
Keita
[excerpts. Full report available on-line at
http://www.iied.org/mediaroom/releases/070711Sahel.html
Foreword
The Sahel has long been vulnerable to drought, impoverishment and
food insecurity, as the droughts of the mid- 1970s, 1980s and 2005
show. Over the past 20 years, IIED has run a major programme of
work in the Sahel that aims not only to demonstrate the fragility
of human and environmental systems, but also to show the remarkable
energy and innovation that local people can draw on to adapt and
survive in an often hostile setting.
As Beyond Any Drought makes clear, people's vulnerability stems
from a combination of political, economic and social forces, as
well as the impacts of highly variable rainfall. The latest report
from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms
the likelihood of higher temperatures for the region over the next
few decades. Current predictions of changes to rainfall in the
Sahel are less certain, with forecasts ranging from a drop of 20%
to a 20% rise. In either case, more heat will increase evaporation
from soils, rivers and lakes, and reduce the value of whatever rain
does fall. For a region already suffering from poverty and drought,
such predictions are unwelcome news. Finding ways to help
strengthen resilience in human and environmental systems is thus
key to helping people adapt to the challenges ahead.
The experience of the Sahel over recent decades shows what
"adaptation" to climate change might mean in practice. Since the
late 1960s, the Sahel has experienced a 25% fall in rainfall in
tandem with several harsh drought years. Livestock have been herded
further south, away from the desert margins and into settled,
cultivated areas, where a new accommodation between animals and
crops must be sought. This has not always been easy. Herders have
found their livestock tracks and grazing areas ploughed up, while
farmers have had to stop hungry cattle, sheep and goats from
straying into fields and gardens in their search for pasture.
Farmers have coped by shifting to shorter-cycle varieties of millet
and maize, and abandoning crops like groundnuts that need higher
rainfall. Some have dug wells and built small dams to provide
enough water to grow saleable crops of onions, tomatoes and
mangoes. Many farmers have also moved southward, seeking land in
better-watered areas. Since the late 1960s, 5 million people from
Burkina Faso and Mali have migrated south to neighbouring C“te
d'Ivoire. Much of the civil strife there today stems from the
uneasy relations between this large number of incomers and local
people, and the growing shortage of land in a region where it had
formerly been considered in endless supply.
People in the Sahel have "adapted" to changes in climate, but the
process has not been cost free. The harrowing images from Niger of
starvation and suffering from 2005 are a reminder of the fragile
livelihoods on which so many depend. Governments can help or hinder
adaptation to drought and climate change - such as enabling
movement across national frontiers, and ensuring migrants can
safely send money to their families back home, now a key survival
strategy for many.
There is more governments can do. By strengthening local
institutions, they can ensure more transparent systems for gaining
access to land, and for resolving disputes between different land
users. They can encourage technical and financial support for
small-scale irrigation activity and simple methods to trap
rainwater and conserve soils, and they can build up grain reserves
for urgent food needs in case of harvest failure.
Governments and donor agencies need to support local people as they
try to build resilience in their families, communities and local
institutions. We hope this report will leverage greater support for
local people and their organisations and help them construct more
productive livelihoods in future.
Camilla Toulmin
Director IIED
Summary
This report examines how vulnerability is understood and addressed
by development agencies and government departments in Mali, Niger
and Burkina Faso. The 2005 food crisis highlighted the extent of
vulnerability in the Sahel region, increased international
attention paid to the people of the Sahel and led to large sums of
money being released to help those people survive the immediate
crisis. Most studies written in the aftermath of the crisis have
looked at the particular circumstances of the events of 2005. This
report was commissioned by the Sahel Working Group, which was
concerned that too much attention has been paid to a quite specific
scenario and too little to the unacceptable and growing levels of
vulnerability that pre-dated the crisis and persist two years
later.
The present study took place during April and May 2007 and is based
on a series of interviews with development practitioners and donor
representatives in London, Washington DC, Bamako, Niamey and
Ouagadougou, and on a desk review of academic and grey literature
including commissioned reports on development approaches from Mali,
Niger and Burkina Faso.
The report is divided into four main sections. The first explores
the meaning of vulnerability as perceived by theorists and
development practitioners in the context of the Sahel and
identifies who is most vulnerable. The study finds that the
understanding of vulnerability varies between different
stakeholders, and that there is a tendency to equate vulnerability
with poverty. Most analyses in development agencies and government
offices divide causes of vulnerability into temporary and
structural, and carry an assumption that structural issues cannot
be addressed by development initiatives. Vulnerable households can
be found among farmers and pastoralists, and among the growing
workforce of landless labourers. Continuous loss of assets,
including land and livestock, without time or opportunity to
rebuild has left people extremely vulnerable. Among all these
groups, children are particularly vulnerable, as reflected in the
high levels of acute child malnutrition seen in 2005.
The second part of the report assesses the root causes of
vulnerability in the Sahel. It considers a wide range of critical
and interlocking factors that lead to so many people being
vulnerable. Changes in climate and increasing drought frequency,
population increase, a dependence on natural resources and lack of
economic alternatives, poor access to services, poor governance and
inequitable markets are all factors that lead to more people
becoming more vulnerable, and many have been at play for many
decades.
The third section reviews aid delivery mechanisms adopted, and the
impact these have had on vulnerability in the Sahel. The report
highlights the relatively modest level of overall aid flow to the
region despite it being home to three of the world's four poorest
countries. The effects and sensitivity of structural adjustment
programmes (SAPs) and Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) to
vulnerability concerns, as championed by multilateral institutions,
are reviewed together with the trend towards donor budget support
among bilateral donors. Project-based approaches are then
considered, together with the interaction between long-term
development and humanitarian responses during the many episodes of
heightened crisis in the region.
The final section raises a set of conclusions and sets out a number
of key recommendations that emerge from the overall report, as
follows.
- The landlocked countries of the Sahel include three of the four
poorest countries in the world and yet rank low in the amount of
funding they receive. Short-term emergency responses to crises will
not affect the ability of people in the Sahel to cope with future
shocks. A commitment to significant and sustained increases in
funding for long- term development is required. The short
timescales of most analyses and most interventions make it
difficult to address the root causes of vulnerability.
- There is an urgent need for a regional affirmation of pastoralism
as a viable livelihood in the Sahel. Pastoralism exists in many
forms and is adapted to make the most of scattered, variable and
unpredictable resources, but the mobility upon which pastoralists
depend is under severe threat. Support to pastoralism offers real
hope for sustainable production in some parts of the Sahel.
- All development initiatives must include planning for drought as
a normal condition and not as an unfortunate event. Drought happens
and must be part of development planning. Plans need to include
reducing the impact of drought, and increasing both resilience to
drought and the ability to recover from it.
- New development work must combine elements of humanitarian and
development work. The situation in the Sahel requires new
approaches that combine welfare and development practices. Agencies
need to experiment with flexible models including social transfers,
and cash and food distribution, integrated in different ways with
development work on improving production and diversifying
livelihood systems. Agencies will need to overcome the
administrative, budgetary, personal and cultural divisions and
antagonisms that exist between these two disciplines.
- The imposition of external ideas about what constitutes good
development and a focus on economic growth as a driver for national
development are not addressing the needs and realities of the most
vulnerable rural poor. Rural development policies and approaches
need to be more locally based and community driven, and should
relate to the resource-poor and risk-averse. Development
initiatives using different forms of aid delivery (e.g. budget
support and project support) should ensure synergy in the
initiatives they support. Long-term commitment and flexibility are
essential for successful interventions.
- Donors should be prepared to support recipient governments in
international trade negotiations. They should acknowledge
inequities in terms of subsidized support to farmers in developed
countries when considering conditionalities on development aid.
- Decentralization, underway in all three countries, offers
considerable potential to improve accountability and representation
of local interests in decision-making, but requires a long-term
substantial financial and moral commitment from donors and
government. Tiered approaches to service provision (e.g. health,
veterinary) can improve access to services among more remote or
mobile populations. Support to civil society and to mechanisms to
improve communications between elected officials and their
constituents is necessary to improve accountability and
representation, as well as training and support to the officials
themselves.
- There are some exciting positive developments in the region.
These derive almost exclusively from long-term project work based
on good learning from the communities concerned.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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