The
Century Of Drought
By Michael McCarthy
04 October 2006
The
Independent
Drought
threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land surface
of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according
to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists.
Extreme drought, in which
agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about a third of the
planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre for
Climate Prediction and Research.
It is one of the most dire
forecasts so far of the potential effects of rising temperatures around
the world - yet it may be an underestimation, the scientists involved
said yesterday.
The findings, released at
the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth,
drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid agencies and development
specialists, who fear that the poor of developing countries will be
worst hit.
"This is genuinely terrifying,"
said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It is a death sentence
for many millions of people. It will mean migration off the land at
levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries cannot
cope with."
One of Britain's leading
experts on the effects of climate change on the developing countries,
Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation, said: "There's
almost no aspect of life in the developing countries that these predictions
don't undermine - the ability to grow food, the ability to have a safe
sanitation system, the availability of water. For hundreds of millions
of people for whom getting through the day is already a struggle, this
is going to push them over the precipice."
The findings represent the
first time that the threat of increased drought from climate change
has been quantified with a supercomputer climate model such as the one
operated by the Hadley Centre.
Their impact is likely to
even greater because the findings may be an underestimate. The study
did not include potential effects on drought from global-warming-induced
changes to the Earth's carbon cycle.
In one unpublished Met Office
study, when the carbon cycle effects are included, future drought is
even worse.
The results are regarded
as most valid at the global level, but the clear implication is that
the parts of the world already stricken by drought, such as Africa,
will be the places where the projected increase will have the most severe
effects.
The study, by Eleanor Burke
and two Hadley Centre colleagues, models how a measure of drought known
as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is likely to increase globally
during the coming century with predicted changes in rainfall and heat
around the world because of climate change. It shows the PDSI figure
for moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the Earth's surface,
rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe drought, currently
at about 8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure for extreme drought,
currently 3 per cent, rising to 30 per cent.
Senior Met Office scientists
are sensitive about the study, funded by the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs, stressing it contains uncertainties: there is
only one climate model involved, one future scenario for emissions of
greenhouse gases (a moderate-to-high one) and one drought index. Nevertheless,
the result is "significant", according to Vicky Pope, the
head of the Hadley Centre's climate programme. Further work would now
be taking place to try to assess the potential risk of different levels
of drought in different places, she said.
The full study - Modelling
the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and Projections for the 21st
Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model - will be published later
this month in The Journal of Hydrometeorology .
It will be widely publicised
by the British Government at the negotiations in Nairobi in November
on a successor to the Kyoto climate treaty. But a preview of it was
given by Dr Burke in a presentation to the Climate Clinic, which was
formed by environmental groups, with The Independent as media partner,
to press politicians for tougher action on climate change. The Climate
Clinic has been in operation at all the party conferences.
While the study will be seen
as a cause for great concern, it is the figure for the increase in extreme
drought that some observers find most frightening.
"We're talking about
30 per cent of the world's land surface becoming essentially uninhabitable
in terms of agricultural production in the space of a few decades,"
Mark Lynas, the author of High Tide, the first major account of the
visible effects of global warming around the world, said. "These
are parts of the world where hundreds of millions of people will no
longer be able to feed themselves."
Mr Pendleton said: "This
means you're talking about any form of development going straight out
of the window. The vast majority of poor people in the developing world
are small-scale farmers who... rely on rain."
A glimpse of what lies ahead
The sun beats down across
northern Kenya's Rift Valley, turning brown what was once green. Farmers
and nomadic herders are waiting with bated breath for the arrival of
the "short" rains - a few weeks of intense rainfall that will
ensure their crops grow and their cattle can eat.
The short rains are due in
the next month. Last year they never came; large swaths of the Horn
of Africa stayed brown. From Ethiopia and Eritrea, through Somalia and
down into Tanzania, 11 million people were at risk of hunger.
This devastating image of
a drought-ravaged region offers a glimpse of what lies ahead for large
parts of the planet as global warming takes hold.
In Kenya, the animals died
first. The nomadic herders' one source of sustenance and income - their
cattle - perished with nothing to eat and nothing to drink. Bleached
skeletons of cows and goats littered the barren landscape.
The number of food emergencies
in Africa each year has almost tripled since the 1980s. Across sub-Saharan
Africa, one in three people is under-nourished. Poor governance has
played a part.
Pastoralist communities suffer
most, rather than farmers and urban dwellers. Nomadic herders will walk
for weeks to find a water hole or riverbed. As resources dwindle, fighting
between tribes over scarce resources becomes common.
One of the most critical
issues is under-investment in pastoralist areas. Here, roads are rare,
schools and hospitals almost non-existent.
Nomadic herders in Turkana,
northern Kenya, who saw their cattle die last year, are making adjustments
to their way of life. When charities offerednew cattle, they said no.
Instead, they asked for donkeys and camels - animals more likely to
survive hard times.
Pastoralists have little
other than their animals to rely on. But projects which provide them
with money to buy food elsewhere have proved effective, in the short
term at least.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited
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