the syllabus says
Case study:
- Examine the variety of causes responsible for a recent famine.
defining key terms
FED - Food Entitlement Deficit (people can't pay for food)
FAD - Food Availability Deficit (there is no food to buy)
FAD - Food Availability Deficit (there is no food to buy)
where?
The map to the right shows the famine levels in the Horn of Africa in late 2011. Though the map shows a projection, it did indeed become a famine in Somalia. However, the serious long term shortage of food means that the entire area can be studied from the point of view of the factors affecting a famine.
The countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and to a lesser extent Eritrea and Djubouti suffered a shortage of food, but neighbouring countries were less severely affected. |
Source: http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0167603c997e970b-pi
|
what is a famine? The IPC scale
The IPC is the way in which
governments, NGOs and the public are informed about the severity of a famine.
It is a 1-5 scale. IPC stands for Integrated Food Security Phase
Classification.
One of the major problems with establishing whether famine is occurring has historically been a lack of agreed criteria. The IPC is the solution to this. It looks at a range of data about human welfare and livelihoods, alongside nutritional data, to decide when an area is experiencing famine. They argue this is more accurate because nutritional problems are a ‘late outcome indicator’ of food insecurity. This means that by the time people are experiencing malnutrition, it is likely that there has been a food shortage for a long time already.
One of the major problems with establishing whether famine is occurring has historically been a lack of agreed criteria. The IPC is the solution to this. It looks at a range of data about human welfare and livelihoods, alongside nutritional data, to decide when an area is experiencing famine. They argue this is more accurate because nutritional problems are a ‘late outcome indicator’ of food insecurity. This means that by the time people are experiencing malnutrition, it is likely that there has been a food shortage for a long time already.
IPC Acute Food Insecurity Phase Descriptions (Area)
Source: http://www.fews.net/IPC
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02rzvm8
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However, the IPC has been criticised for being too difficult to understand. The audio (see left) describes some of the problems in deciding when a famine should be declared. The IPC argues that the simple colour coded scale provides an easily understood final outcome despite the complexity of the method itself.
The IPC has also been criticised for not declaring a famine until the condition is very severe. In common terms, famine applies to any serious long term shortage of food; the IPC definition of famine includes a much larger range of factors that make it hard to distinguish (and, there is no definition of ‘famine’ by the IPC). |
when?
The beginning of the famine lay in the drought that started in early 2011 and continued until mid 2012. However, the famine was first declared in two areas of Somalia in June 2011 and not officially widely declared until November 2011. It was officially declared over in February 2012, with the following news report dating from the week after the declaration.
who?
The famine affected more the people of the south than the pastoralists (who rely on livestock) in the north. There was a total 50,000-260,000 deaths and around 9.5m people were affected in some way. As this food crisis coincided with a civil war (see below), hundreds of thousands of people had fled Somalia with 440,000 in three refugee camps in Kenya, despite the UN only having space for 90,000. This led to disease, such as measles at the camps in Dadaab which killed 11 and affected over 400, while in the wider population over 17000 required treatment. In total, $1.3bn was donated by international aid agencies towards the effort.
Why? The causes of the famine
There are
several causes associated with the famine. The
video below is 25 minutes but summarises very clearly the problems experienced
during the famine. The following text information is redacted from the CBC News article "Horn of Africa famine as much about geopolitics as drought", updated on 4th August 2011.
Drought
The immediate cause of the famine was a lack of rainfall - the rains failed for two consecutive rainy seasons leading to the driest year on record in 2011 and created a harvest of just 40% of normal amounts. This was the worst drought in 60 years. 60 per cent of the Horn is classified as arid and almost 17 per cent as semi-arid. The end of the famine in February 2012 was due to the arrival of the rains as farmers were able to grow enough food. However, the long term problem has not been solved. Massive desertification and deforestation has occurred in recent years. Ethiopia, for example, lost almost 19 per cent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010.
Conflict
Somalia’s population of 9.3 million has been without a functioning government and riven by conflict since the overthrow of military dictator Siad Barre in 1991.
Al-Shabaab, which has aligned itself with al-Qaeda, denied access to the areas under its control to large UN humanitarian organizations like UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) from 2010. Aid from abroad has been restricted in any case – the United States pledged US$28 million for UN relief operations targetting Somalis but said it would still not authorize aid to regions under al-Shabaab control unless aid agencies could guarantee it would not be diverted or taxed by the rebel group
The conflict has also caused people to migrate. The combination of conflict and food crisis drove more than 166,000 Somalis from south and south-central parts of the country to neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia since the beginning of 2011. Another 1.4 million were displaced internally.
Demographics
More than 40 per cent of the Horn of Africa’s population of over 160 million live in areas prone to extreme food shortages. The population of the region has doubled since the 1970s.
Nomadic livestock farmers who number about 20 million in the Horn and account for as much as 70 per cent of the population in Somalia, began losing their livestock because they couldn't find water or pasture for them. This made them migrate, and people who left ended up in Mogadishu when they couldn’t find aid closer to home.
Poverty and global markets
Farmers are generally poor and lack access to fertilizer and machinery, and there is little irrigation despite the farmers relying on seasonal rainfall. This leads to food crisis being chronic (not ending or being cyclical, but rather continuing perpetually). Farmers are disincentivized from growing food by cheaper imports and the dumping of surplus food aid onto local markets. Some areas of Somalia saw price increases over 2010-11 of 300 per cent.
In addition, the selling off of farmland to foreign interests that use it to grow food for their own countries has created conditions where farmers are more likely to produce food for export than local consumption. Both Ethiopia and Kenya have sold or leased agricultural land to agri-businesses from China, Saudi Arabia, India and other countries with cash reserves. In countries such as Ethiopia matters are complicated by the fact that all land is government owned and peasants only lease it from the state.
Drought
The immediate cause of the famine was a lack of rainfall - the rains failed for two consecutive rainy seasons leading to the driest year on record in 2011 and created a harvest of just 40% of normal amounts. This was the worst drought in 60 years. 60 per cent of the Horn is classified as arid and almost 17 per cent as semi-arid. The end of the famine in February 2012 was due to the arrival of the rains as farmers were able to grow enough food. However, the long term problem has not been solved. Massive desertification and deforestation has occurred in recent years. Ethiopia, for example, lost almost 19 per cent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010.
Conflict
Somalia’s population of 9.3 million has been without a functioning government and riven by conflict since the overthrow of military dictator Siad Barre in 1991.
Al-Shabaab, which has aligned itself with al-Qaeda, denied access to the areas under its control to large UN humanitarian organizations like UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) from 2010. Aid from abroad has been restricted in any case – the United States pledged US$28 million for UN relief operations targetting Somalis but said it would still not authorize aid to regions under al-Shabaab control unless aid agencies could guarantee it would not be diverted or taxed by the rebel group
The conflict has also caused people to migrate. The combination of conflict and food crisis drove more than 166,000 Somalis from south and south-central parts of the country to neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia since the beginning of 2011. Another 1.4 million were displaced internally.
Demographics
More than 40 per cent of the Horn of Africa’s population of over 160 million live in areas prone to extreme food shortages. The population of the region has doubled since the 1970s.
Nomadic livestock farmers who number about 20 million in the Horn and account for as much as 70 per cent of the population in Somalia, began losing their livestock because they couldn't find water or pasture for them. This made them migrate, and people who left ended up in Mogadishu when they couldn’t find aid closer to home.
Poverty and global markets
Farmers are generally poor and lack access to fertilizer and machinery, and there is little irrigation despite the farmers relying on seasonal rainfall. This leads to food crisis being chronic (not ending or being cyclical, but rather continuing perpetually). Farmers are disincentivized from growing food by cheaper imports and the dumping of surplus food aid onto local markets. Some areas of Somalia saw price increases over 2010-11 of 300 per cent.
In addition, the selling off of farmland to foreign interests that use it to grow food for their own countries has created conditions where farmers are more likely to produce food for export than local consumption. Both Ethiopia and Kenya have sold or leased agricultural land to agri-businesses from China, Saudi Arabia, India and other countries with cash reserves. In countries such as Ethiopia matters are complicated by the fact that all land is government owned and peasants only lease it from the state.