Problems Associated with Drought in Africa, and Proposed Solutions

In Somalia, no one is spared from crisis. Children and health workers have been murdered and kidnapped. People fight over food and water, adding another burden to citizens of Somalia who are already struggling to get through resource droughts. In a country with no central government, little happens without trauma-force. As resources continue to diminish, conflict arises when there are very little resources and Somalis all want to have priority (Unicef, 2006). Before environmental resource scarcity in Somalia is discussed in depth, let’s take a closer look at the physical and human geography in the country, global climate change and its impact on Somalia’s vegetation, the evolution of Somalia during the colonial and imperial periods, and many Somali conflicts that cause to be in crisis (in no particular order), even today.

The source of global warming is a very controversial topic. Some scientists think that global warming is a natural part of the Earth’s cycle because the Earth has always had natural heating and cooling cycles. Other scientists believe that global warming is caused by humans dut to the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels. These scientists believe

Sahel was faced with drought conditions through 1910s, 1940, 1960, 1970s and the most recent one being in 2012. To understand the focus area’s and activities around measures taken to cope with repeated drought situation we will be looking closely at the development plan of South Sudan which gained its freedom from Sudan only in 2011. (S. Maskey, 2014)

Situations leading to famine are crop failure, climate change, drought and conflict. One of the main causes of famine is not crop failure or drought; it is the lack of adequate response to the conflict or dough that causes famine. Areas of East Africa, including Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, are experiencing one of the worst droughts in 60 year. 11.3 million People in the Horn of Africa are in need of food assistance due to the drought. Food prices are up as much as 200% in parts of Somalia.

Global warming is caused by human carbon dioxide with industrial productions, this is false. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, most top scientist) suggest that global warming is increasing due to human carbon dioxide caused by the industrial inventions. But, according to the documentary film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" by Martin Durkin (director of Wag TV productions) scientific opinions for the cause for global warming doesn’t have any supporting evidence, the evidence point to the solar system and the theory is simply politics and media outtake.

Water is the most valuable and indispensable resource for all forms of life. People need it for every activity: domestic use, agriculture and industry. Access to fresh water is regarded as a universal human right (United Nations Committee in Economics, Social and Cultural Rights, 2003). Drought has become an increasingly important problem in many parts of the world. Water scarcity is most common in arid and semiarid regions of the world, which cover one third of the Earth’s land surface (Smallwood, 2011). UNESCO and the Italian Ministry for the Environment and Territory (IMET) have launched “The Water Programme for Africa,

A drought is a period of time in which no rain water is available, resulting in water shortages for people of that region. Droughts can harm animals and reduce their food by destroying their grassland it can also reduce or destroy crop harvest.

Humans interact with the environment of Africa in many ways. Some of those ways help to improve the environment, but many of the other ways humans interact with Africa’s environment is hurting its health and sustainability. A couple of ways humans are affecting Africa’s environment are deforestation and desertification. These two environmental changes are happening rapidly and have consequences that all life forms have to deal with.

Declining water resources are one of the causes of the efforts to raise the productivity of the traditional rain-fed farming in West Africa and have affected the growing season and water conservation. With the shortage of water comes the potential for conflict between several African countries.

Global warming is a series issue, threaten the natural life in our planet and reduce the efficiency of it to manage life, as a sequence, climate change causes several inflexible phenomena, influence people’s life in bad manner, this may continue to affect the future too. Human produced global warming, everyone should solve this problem, for the good of them and the next generations of humanity, many governments and people start working on projects to reduce global warming, as find

Drought as a recurring extreme climate event can be defined from various perspective, including meteorological, hydrological, agricultural and socio-economic aspects.

Since we moved into the 21st century, the condition of global environment is one of the most popular topics, and it created many controversies. Those topics are wide ranged, from the natural disasters like earthquake, tornado or volcano eruption; to the man-made disasters like nuclear war or air / water / sound pollutions. As a student, I too am interested and have some concerns for the planet that we are living in. Among the disasters, drought is the one that I want to learn more about it. So what is drought? Drought is described as “a period of time when the water supply is decreasing, and the length of the drought might occur in months or even years” (basicplant). It occurs in virtually all climatic zones and its characteristics may be different in certain regions. According to The Ojos Negros Research Group, the characteristics of the drought are “scarcity of water, low precipitation, and mostly occurred in dry season”. Other climatic factors like “high wind/temperature and low relative humidity” (The Ojos Negros Research Group) are usually related with the drought. Drought can be put into four categories based on the regions, needs, and disciplinary approaches. The first type of drought is called Meteorological drought; it is defined on the “basis degree of dryness [compare to a normal/average amount], and the duration of the dry period” (National Drought Mitigation Center). Agricultural drought is the second type and it is similar to the Meteorological drought, but

There are many serious environmental problems around the world. These problems such as drought, global warming, and pollution are caused by our actions, mistakes, or just by nature. Out of the various environmental problems, drought is one of the hazard of nature that is happening throughout some parts of the world, especially in California, United States. In general, drought is a “period of dry weather” or “an extended shortage of water” (Jaworski). There are two types of drought definitions: conceptual and operational definitions. Conceptual definitions help understand the meaning of drought and its effects. The example definition would be “drought is a protracted period of deficient precipitation which causes extensive damage to crops, resulting in loss of yield”. Operational definitions help identify the drought’s beginning, end, and degree of severity (National Drought Mitigation Center). However, it is hard to define drought because its impacts vary from region to region. For instance, drought in Bali, where it is a drought when rain does not fall for six days, would not be considered a drought in Libya where the annual rainfall is less than 180mm (USGS). Just as we define drought in many ways, there are also four types of drought: meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomic. First, meteorological drought is defined on the basis of the degree of dryness and the duration of the dry period or precipitation. Agricultural drought links various

This essay will talk about the climate change effects in Ghana and steps taken towards the issue. Ghana is a developing economy growing fast with agriculture being the key driver to its development (wiggins & Leturque 2011). Ghana has experienced major climate change in past few years affecting its agriculture sector mainly. Experiencing changes in rainfall patterns, increased temperatures, droughts and longer periods of flooding results in crop failure which further causes frustration and depression in the society as stated in May 2009 in BBC World Service Trust

Caesar (2005) as cited in Inman S. and Rogers M. (2006) estimated that in 2006, one person in five would have less than one dollar per day to live on, ten million people, including 4.5 million children would die from hunger-related diseases and at least 13 million people would be refugees. From the environmental perspective, Climate change is already responsible for a huge increase in extreme weather conditions which bring devastation and disaster. The recent case is the prolonged drought in Kenya resulting from the destruction of the main water catchment areas, such as the Mau, complemented by the uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. According to Connor (2005) as cited by Inman S. and Rogers M. (2006);