Early weather forecasts key to saving lives in drought – U.N.. ROME, June 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – With droughts set to become more frequent due to global warming, delivering timely, long-term weather forecasts to farmers in the developing world will be key to limiting damage and saving lives, the head of the U.N. food agency said on Monday.
Droughts have killed more than 11 million people worldwide since 1900 and now affect double the land area than in 1970, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Better access to reliable weather data and early warning systems could help farmers in rural areas get ready to endure long spells of no rain, said FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva.
"Most of the times poor rural communities in developing countries don’t even know that a drought is about to strike," he told a conference at the FAO headquarters in Rome.
Measures such as planting resistant crops and building water reservoirs can greatly reduce the impact of droughts, but international responses too often focus on emergency relief, said Graziano da Silva.
"People die because they are not prepared to face the impacts of the drought – because their livelihoods are not resilient enough," he said.
WMO secretary general Petteri Taalas said weather forecast accuracy had greatly increased in recent years thanks developments in satellite, computing and scientific research.
The last El Nino, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that typically occurs every few years, subsided in 2016 and was linked to crop damage, fires and flash floods.
(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Ros Russell.
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For women in Kenya’s dry north, water is power.
By Anthony Langat WAJIR, Kenya, June 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Sitting a couple of kilometres outside the village of Wajir-bor in northeast Kenya is something quite rare for these dry parts: a small, well-maintained reservoir full of water with a watchman standing guard at the gate.
A dam was constructed here after the Wajir County Assembly passed a climate change act in 2016, one of the first in Kenya, freeing up government funds for projects chosen by local people.
The people of Wajir-bor, 40 km (25 miles) west of the border with Somalia and inhabited mainly by the Degodia clan of the Somali ethnic group, decided on the water pan, which provides water for domestic use and for livestock to drink.
"This dam will be opened for use when the livestock have exhausted water in other dams."
She also works to maintain the fence around the water pan, and prevent people and animals from trespassing.
El-Ben dam is another water project paid for by Wajir´s Climate Change Fund.
"Giraffes are strong and can damage the fence and get into the dam to drink, especially when it is dry," said Hussein.
The El-Ben water users association has already reported the invasions to the Kenya Wildlife Service, asking it to provide water for the wild animals.
Women´s involvement in climate change adaptation committees is a step forward but it is not yet enough, experts say, as they do not yet have equal representation in most cases.

Maasai manure helps Kenya’s drought-hit herders fight hunger.
“Prolonged drought is making it hard to find pasture and food,” he explained, estimating a third of his cattle have starved this year.
“Selling manure helps me buy food and pay hospital bills for my family.” Demand for manure collected from Kenya’s rangelands for use as fertilizer is on the rise.
Wanjiru has been farming her one-eighth of an acre using both manure collected from Maasai land and composted manure from her own cow penned on a corner of her land.
But finding enough good-quality fertilizer is becoming “a challenge”, she noted.
Much of this highland area has been planted with cash crops such as tea, crowding out staple crops, she said.
But for enterprising herders like Sankare, the manure trade offers a new source of income that is helping compensate for losses caused by drought.
That is enough to fertilize 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of tea plantation in central Kenya, said James Njuguna, a farmers’ field assistant working in the area.
“When manure from Maasai land is applied on the tea farms, the production is higher than expected,” said Njuguna.
ICIPE’s Karanja sees big potential in the manure trade because more Kenyans are investing in agriculture.

Aid groups seek to turn on funding tap to douse drought crises.
BARCELONA/HARARE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – When a big earthquake, flash flood or other sudden disaster hits, aid agencies spring into action with emergency responses and public appeals for donations.
Hunger kicks in only after crops fail, food stocks are exhausted and livestock start dying – but by then, help often comes too late to head off the worst.
The Start Network, funded by the British, Dutch and Irish governments, is putting together a new financing facility to enable a faster and more coordinated response to droughts, and plans to test its model in Pakistan and Zimbabwe.
In May, the network convened local and international agencies in Harare to discuss how it might work in the southern African nation still smarting from a devastating 2015-2016 drought, driven by the El Nino climate pattern, which left some 4 million people in need of food aid.
"We realized humanitarian responses were not kicking in fast," said Emily Montier, manager of the drought project for the Start Network.
Montier said many aid groups responding to drought had tried to access the Start Network’s existing fund for swift relief in small-scale crises, but it backs 45-day projects which is too short for drawn-out situations like droughts.
With little help at hand, poor families are forced to sell off their cattle and other meager assets to survive.
"The government agencies do not have any plan so far to respond to drought," said Arif.
With work near completion on web-based scientific models to calculate drought risks and potential funding options, the Start Network is talking to donor governments about funding the next stage of implementing the facility in Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

Faced with more drought, Zimbabwe’s farmers hang up their plows.
MUREHWA, Zimbabwe (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Preparing his three-hectare plot of land for planting each year used to take Musafare Chiweshe – or the laborers he hired – two weeks.
Better yet, the land is producing a crop even as southern Africa’s droughts grow stronger and more frequent, a problem linked to climate change.
No-till farming is hardly new.
Besides planting seeds directly into the soil, no-till farming involves allowing the stalks and leaves left from earlier harvests to remain on the ground, to help hold moisture and eventually add nutrients to the soil, building soil fertility over time.
In some areas where soils are sandy, farmers practicing no-till farming saw yields no higher than those of farmers who plowed their land.
Before taking up no-till farming, he said he harvested just one ton of maize from his 3-hectare plot last year, during the drought.
This year he expects twice that from just one-sixth of his land.
In Malawi, no-till farmers find they need to spend fewer days each year planting and weeding their fields – though they may need to buy and use herbicides to get rid of weeds without tilling the land, Thierfelder said.
Under a 2011 government plan to promote the practice, each of the country’s 4,300 farm extension officers was expected to train at least 75 farmers a year, said Phillimon Ngirazi, an extension officer from Chavakadzi in Shamva District, 120 km northwest of Harare.

GITHURAI, Kenya (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Now onto his third job since finishing high school a decade ago, Festus Chege is hoping his latest venture as a water vendor in Githurai, a growing suburb to the south of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, will pay off. Like many young people from poor families, the 30-year-old passed his high-school exams but lacked the funds to pursue his studies, confining him to work in the city’s fast-expanding informal sector. Kenya’s current drought, which is affecting some 3 million people across the East African country, has led to a drop in water volumes in reservoirs serving Nairobi residents. The city authorities have been forced to ration water services, giving priority to critical facilities like hospitals, as well as manufacturers. Taps in poor households are now empty of piped water most of the time, and they have little choice but to buy their water from vendors like Chege. “The water business is good,” said Chege, who has been selling water for the past four months. “People call me to supply them with water as early as 4 am.” Chege, who uses a rickshaw to transport the water, sells 20-litre drums of water for 50 shillings ($0.49) each. In a day, he can supply as many as 40 drums, earning him 2,000 shillings – more than double a government clerk’s wage. It’s five times more than what he was making last year hawking secondhand clothes. “There were days when I would find myself idle because of a lack of customers,” said Chege. That’s when he would join his friends to smoke bhang, a form of cannabis – a common pastime among young slum-dwellers who take the drug in secret dens. Now, Chege says he no longer has time to mess around with drugs because he is busy from dawn to dusk selling water. In January…

RIO DE JANEIRO, April 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A Congolese park ranger, a Guatemalan indigenous land rights activist and an octogenarian Australian who blocked a coal mining firm from taking her family’s farm were among the six winners of one of the world’s most prestigious environmental prizes on Monday.
Announced in San Francisco, the 2017 Goldman Prize Environmental Prize worth $175,000 to each winner comes as violence against land rights campaigners continues to rise globally.
The prize committee is looking at ways to improve safety for the winners so they can continue their campaigns, she said.
Some of this year’s prize winners say danger is part of life for environmental campaigners.
Another winner, Rodrigo Tot, a land rights campaigner and community leader of Guatemala’s indigenous Q’eqchi people, said one of his sons was murdered because of his activism.
Tot has led campaigns to protect indigenous land from government and foreign mining companies seeking to tap into the nickel deposits in central Guatemala.
We don’t want our resources to be polluted," Tot said.
But the fight continues.
Australian family farmer Wendy Bowman, a co-winner of the prize, is known for her successful fight to stop coal mining expansion that she says causes air and water pollution.
She stopped Yancoal, a Chinese-owned mining company, from taking her family farm and has refused to sell her land to the company, the prize committee said.

U.N. tool uses satellite data to help farmers save water.
ROME, April 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A new Google-powered online tool that uses satellite data to map water consumption in Africa and the Middle East aims to help farmers produce more crops with less water, the United Nations said on Thursday.
WaPOR, an open-access database developed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) enables countries to easily monitor how efficiently farms use water, allowing for improvements in irrigation and food production, the agency said.
As agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of all water used on the planet, it will be critical to increase "crop per drop", experts say.
"Water use continues to surge at the same time that climate change – with increasing droughts and extreme weather – is altering and reducing water availability for agriculture," said FAO’s deputy director-general Maria Helena Semedo.
The tool allows users like governments or farmers to spot areas where water is used inefficiently and take action by changing the irrigation system or switching to a more water-efficient crop, FAO said.
"You can compare with your neighbour and say: ‘Look he is planting his wheat field one month ahead of me or using this kind of irrigation system or fertilizer and he is doing much better’," FAO technical officer Livia Peiser, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Two thirds of the world’s population live in areas experiencing water scarcity at least one month a year, according to the United Nations.
(Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Katie Nguyen.
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BUSIA, Kenya, April 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Armed with a hoe and Wellington boots, George Wandera planted bamboo seedlings in neatly dug holes along the banks of a stream on his farm that feeds a nearby lake in western Kenya.
"I’ve never tried this on my farm before but it’s the first step in protecting the stream," he said.
"Wetlands such as lakes and floodplains act as natural safeguards against disasters, by absorbing excess rainfall during floods, with the stored water then available in times of drought," said Julie Mulonga, programme manager at Wetlands International Kenya, a conservation charity in Busia.
During the current drought, farmers and herders have been drawing water from the wetlands, and streams feeding them have run dry.
Local communities have also been draining them to grow crops, Mulonga said.
Wandera remembers when large parts of the Sio-Siteko wetland, near the border with Uganda, were drained to make way for farmland.
"We never thought our activities were harmful until we saw the consequences – that is, more floods during the rainy season and less water during the dry season, leading to a decline in vegetation and animal species," he said.
Charities like Wetlands International Kenya, with support from the government, are working with communities in Busia to protect their wetlands, while helping them develop alternatives to farming like beekeeping and eco-tourism.
Wandera said some farmers are building greenhouses to cultivate vegetables like yams.
"But they ensure the farmers can grow vegetables using less water and land, thus preventing their encroachment on wetlands," he added.

Solar-powered device pulls drinking water straight out of thin air.
People living in arid, drought-ridden areas may soon be able to get water straight from a source that is all around them – the air, US researchers say.
Scientists have developed a box that can convert low-humidity air into water, producing several litres every 12 hours, they wrote in the journal Science.
Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link "It takes water from the air and it captures it," said Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-author of the paper.
The technology could be "really great for remote areas where there"s really limited infrastructure", she said.
The system, which is still in the prototype phase, uses a material that resembles powdery sand to trap air in its tiny pores.
When heated by the sun or another source, water molecules in the trapped air are released and condensed, essentially "pulling" the water out of the air, the scientists said.
Areas going through droughts often experience dry air, but Wang said the new product could still help them get access to water.
"Now we can get to regions that really are pretty dry, arid regions," she said.
It opens the way for use of [the technology] to water large regions as in agriculture."