News Brief by Kip Hansen — 21 April 2024
Southern Africa has had very low precipitation over the last few months – which is the end of their summer. November through March, are the rainy season bringing 75% of the precipitation for the year, but even then, compared to elsewhere, they are dry-ish. As happened last year, when it does rain, it floods.
“The rains this year began late and were lower than average. In February, when crops need it most, parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique and Botswana received a fifth of the typical rainfall.That’s devastating for these largely agrarian countries, where farmers rely entirely on the rains”. [ source ]
The year before was particularly wet, leaving vast areas of mud still sticky, in some cases leading to free ranging cattle to get stuck in the mud seeking water.
This type of meteorological drought, simply less, or lack of, precipitation is particularly hard on subsistence farmers who depend on rain-fed crops for their livelihoods and to feed their animals and their families.
The story originates with the UN’s World Food Programme and from OXFAM.
Caveat: OXFAM is terrific at raising money and public awareness of human suffering in many parts of the word, but it is an advocacy organization prone to exaggeration to achieve its ends. The linked article from OXFAM makes the claim: “Since October 2022, the cholera outbreak – which experts attribute to climate change – has killed more than 3,000 people and affected over 130,000 in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi.” Climate Change does not cause cholera. According to the CDC: “Most cases [of cholera] continue to occur in resource-limited settings that have unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation, and inadequate hygiene. The African continent has the highest case fatality rates. About 1.3 billion people are at risk of cholera in countries where local transmission occurs. …. Global Cholera Challenges: Large population migrations into urban centers in developing countries are straining existing water and sanitation infrastructure and increasing disease risk. Epidemics are a marker for poverty and lack of basic sanitation.”
It is no surprise that southern African nations are experiencing yet another drought – a brief check of news stories for hunger, famine, drought, and flooding in southern Africa return far too many results to be counted. Each of those adverse weather and social conditions are the norm not the exception. The actual causes are also far too many to list but conflict, lack of development, less stable governance, and increasing populations without increasing affluence drive vulnerability to weather variations.
The highlight of this story is the report [.pdf] from the so-called World Weather Attribution (WWA) group that operates out of the Imperial College London. WWA states its purpose is to “To encourage actions that will make communities and countries more resilient to future extreme weather events, WWA studies also evaluate how existing vulnerability worsened the impacts of the extreme weather event.” In short, their job is to show that weather is caused by climate change, but only bad weather. Good weather is natural variability.
In an astonishing turn of events, and much to the dismay and disappointment of the team assigned to evaluate the drought and impending famine in southern Africa, they were unable to blame climate change for this disaster. Even worse, they had to admit that climate change made the drought less likely. Some excerpts from the report titled: ”El Niño key driver of drought in highly vulnerable Southern African countries”:
- “Multiple drivers contributed to the currently high, and rising, food insecurity and malnutrition levels including several years with high food prices, ongoing recovery from floods, as well as agricultural pests and diseases.”
- “High deforestation rates are a major driver of environmental degradation across the countries, exacerbating risk and impacts associated with drought.”
- Using four different observational data products we find that droughts such as this one are expected to happen in today’s climate about once every decade. However, when we consider the effect of El Niño, we find that these droughts are twice as likely to occur in El Niño years. Thus El Nino is a key driver of the 2024 event.
- To analyse the role of human-induced climate change we first looked at the relationship between global warming and rainfall anomalies in observation-based data products. We find that as global temperatures increase, rainfall in DJF also increases. This means that in the current climate, with 1.2ºC warming, droughts such as this one are actually less likely than in a cooler, pre-industrial climate. This finding is consistent with previous studies that show wetter conditions in DJF that contrast with drying in the region earlier in the season, between the months of September and November).
- In summary, our analyses show that El Nino significantly increases the likelihood of such a drought to occur, while climate change did not emerge as the significant driver influencing assessed drought in the affected countries.
So, it is business as usual in southern Africa, not the flood this time, but the drought, and the resulting hunger and social breakdown. Millions of dollars in aid are required to ease the suffering, yet again.
And kudos to the WWA team that produced an honest report.
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Author’s Comment:
Hunger and famine are seldom caused by the weather – but rather by grinding poverty and lack of development. Families that have what most readers here would easily refer to as “nothing” can be ruined by a single crop failure. If you are thinking of donating funds to help relieve the suffering there, pick you charities carefully.
Some charities spend almost 90% of funds on actual programs that help people. Some charities are the reverse, spending 80% on fundraising. My wife and I worked with a church-based group that spent 100% on programs that actually helped people in need, with our church itself covering all of the administrative and other costs.
It was refreshing to see a report from the WWA group that pointed out that climate change would make things better in southern Africa.
Thanks for reading.
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Son-of-a-gun! Somebody who has actually been there on the ground and working on the overall problem. Thank you and your church for actually doing something to alleviate the real problem; poverty.
Speaking of churches, Habitat for Humanity, etc.–Someone whose name I have lost had posted about the Bridging Barriers program. As some one very familiar with Texas drought and hurricanes in general who doesn’t have the time to study this enough to say that it is just having a tantrum and lack of homework, we always welcome youth and hope they can improve things that the older ones mess up.
https://bridgingbarriers.utexas.edu/news/icymi-five-key-takeaways-planet-texas-2050-symposium
hd ==> Youth are often the answer to social problems — unfortunately, youth are also those that are most easily fooled by propaganda and mis-education.
While doing humanitarian work in the Dominican Republic, we had an American couple ask if they could come down, bringing their high-school graduating teen-aged boy, and work on a project on their two-week vacation. That idea didn’t fit with the program we were involved with, so we said “Sure, come on down!” We were helping a home for grown-up disabled children whose building had been neglected (for lack of funds) for many years–we supplied the paint and materials and the couple and their son painted the interior of the building, sewed curtains, hung paintings in the walls, and had a terrific time doing it. Their teenager later decided to participate in a further two-year missionary project in Africa….
Today’s kids just need a heavy dose of reality to straighten most of them out.
From recent polling, it appears that SOME yutes are learning thanks to Bidenomics.
Thus he again trying to “forgive” student loan debt. He really needs to buy those votes.
I make no reference to particular actions or programs with which I am unfamiliar, but I want to point out that helping people with one problem, say the results of drought or disease transmission, while extremely important aids in some circumstances, is quite different than attending to other conditions, such as poverty and bad government, that can prevent the effected populations from helping themselves when natural disasters strike..
It would have been difficult for WWA to have said otherwise. The connection between El Niño and Southern Africa rainfall has been well documented for a long time. Even WHO has a website section on it—hotter, drier, more food insecurity.
Rud ==> Correct, and if you read their full report, they tried very had with analyses and re-analyses, but had to abandon the idea of Climate Change as a cause.
“Since October 2022, the cholera outbreak – which experts attribute to climate change
________________________________________________________________
What experts?
The ones with degrees in PR and marketing, who are working for Oxfam.
Nobody said they were experts in climate science.
“so many experts, so few facts”
Steve ==> There seems to be an endless supply of un-named and un-nameable “experts” and “scientists” for the media and advocacy groups to attribute their desired viewpoint.
‘Un-nameable experts’.
Reminds me of a bad joke from my consulting days. “An expert is an unknown drip (x) under pressure (spurt).”
During my consulting periods, an expert was a regular guy 50 miles from home.
I recall a cholera outbreak after a hurricane or some other natural disaster in, I think it was, Central America several years ago.
Why the outbreak?
They trusted the USEPA and the scary stuff about disinfection by-products and, so, reduced the Cl2 used in the emergency water supplied.
Dam levels across the whole of South Africa were at 87% on 18 April. Last year they were at 94%. Much of the problem lies in not building large dams for decades – while there was considerable growth in population – and proper maintenance of the water distribution system accompanied with the horribly mismanaged electricity production – needed to pump water.
Many of the farmers that best knew how to adapt to droughts and floods have been forced off the farms and replaced with subsistence farmers. It is not a climate but a people problem This has been clearly illustrated by what has happened in Zimbabwe since 1980. It was literally the breadbasket of Southern Africa before independence having much surplus grain when neighbours were struggling but now it is dependent of a huge amount of food aid. It is a man made tragedy as this country has huge agricultural potential. I visited a number of farms in various parts of that country, years ago, and been stunned by their abundance.
A small fraction of the money wasted on promoting climate policies would more than enough to help all these countries – with good practical advice by people who know how – to adapt to the floods and droughts and take advantage of both.
Read Cathy Buckle: Zimbabwe’s farmers defy drought and sanctions, harvest hope amidst hardship on website biznews dot com
Except that the people with the know-how have, in many cases, been driven off their farms at gunpoint in both South Africa and especially Zimbabwe. There’s a reason the Zim dollar is worth less than toilet paper. Generally speaking, nothing will change for southern Africa so long as corruption and violence remain part of the political landscape.
About 70 years ago, my mother gave me a quarter to put in a collection basket for a visiting missionary from Africa.
I believe the situation has gotten worse.
As long as “corruption and violence remain part of the political landscape“, I can find better uses for my quarters.
Michael ==> To be clear, the drought is affecting southern Africa — “Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique and Botswana” — not the nation named South Africa.
For the Buckle piece, see here.
Yes, Rhodesia was beautiful and productive, but had many social/racial problems.
And they have many more social/racial problems now.
Kip, my point was that the various countries in Southern Africa need to learn to navigate between droughts and floods. A good surplus one year can be of great help the next year and even for neighbours. Countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola and Mozambique have no good excuse having much fertile land and more rain than much of South Africa. How are they managing their land and water resources? Like everything else mismanagement, corruption and fraud deprive countries of the capital that could be used for beneficial purposes.
Michael ==> Rhodesia was destroyed by its new government in the name of reform….now it is a backwater.
“OXFAM is terrific at raising money and public awareness of human suffering”
Caveat
“The UK has suspended aid funding for Oxfam again after fresh allegations of sexual exploitation and bullying were made against staff.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43112200
Predators go where the meat is.
Poverty, underdevelopment, maladministration and corruption. Four horseman of the apocalypse.
Very nice Kip.
“weather is caused by climate change, “
No, a climate is the result of long-term local weather patterns (30yrs min)
So you may see a change in the local climate after 60 years… or not !!
65 yrs of Gov’s, UN, World Bank other NGO’s ‘assistance’ and little effort to store water for dry years. Antidevelopmment bent, harrassment of foreign investment activity – anti-miniing, anti- electrification, anti-infastructure, etc. NGOs were essentially on safari.
Yep. As Ted Nordhaus put it in an article in Foreign Policy (5th June 2022)
“For decades Western Environmental and other NGOs, often with the tacit or direct support of Governments and international development institutions, have broadly opposed large scale energy and resource development, from dams to mines to oil and gas extraction.”
“In recent years Western development assistance has prioritised factors such as transparency, civil society engagement, market liberalisation and climate change……the practical result has been the withdrawal of western governments, development agencies and financial institutions from virtually all large scale infrastructure, energy development and other resource related projects across the developing world.”
He notes China and Russia have no such qualms.
Isn’t it amazing that with all the laws in then US, there isn’t one that requires charities to provide on their advertisements and all public news releases. etc. the % of funds that go to the actual benefit of the named need. Also the salaries of all their employees and their names to be listed and searchable. Also the names and pay of all companies hired to do their fundraising. AND the names of all then employees of those businesses, also searchable.
It would make it easy to prove the incestuous relationship among all the leftist NGOs.
Apace all the above requirements on EVERY “charitable” or “nonprofit” foundation, thinking of Tides, Heines, Yale, etc.
I think it has been shown that the “Clinton Initiative” paid close to 100% of the income some years to the family/managers.
and easy on the subsidy farmers