WUNRN
THE AVOIDABLE FAMINE: EMERGENCY
RESPONSE MUST
ADDRESS ROOT CAUSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL
DISASTERS - WOMEN
By Yifat Susskind, MADRE Executive Director
August 30, 2011 - I just returned from Kenya, where I
delivered emergency support to a grassroots women’s organization based in the
drought-stricken northeast. The women there are struggling to provide food,
water and medicines to thousands of even harder-hit famine refugees who are
pouring into their parched communities from neighboring Somalia.
I felt privileged to be able to bring this life-saving aid. But I also felt
angry, because this famine could have been avoided. The starvation is the
result of a perfect storm of climate change, political chaos and bad economic
policies: not a natural disaster, but a failure of leadership. So while we must
bring urgently needed aid to the people threatened by famine, we must also work
to address these underlying causes and create sustainable solutions to the
crisis.
The severe drought experienced in East Africa is in part the result of climate
change brought on by the unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions of far-away,
richer countries. As these emissions have pushed global temperatures up and up,
climate scientists have warned for years about the increased likelihood of
extreme weather patterns, including droughts.
But drought alone does not produce famine. In Somalia, years of war and
political instability rendered people even more vulnerable. Once, Somalia had a
government that tried to build community resilience to environmental disaster.
It ran a program to collect rainwater by digging reservoirs in the ground. But
with the collapse of the government in 1991, the program disappeared. It was
left to Somali women, traditionally responsible for providing water to their
households, to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, the effects of drought and famine have been exacerbated by global
speculation on food commodities that’s jacked up food prices around the world.
The headlong push to deregulate global markets has hit the food chain, and
hard. As traders turn huge profits, the price of survival staples like rice,
corn and wheat shoots up. When drought hits, poor people who can no longer
raise their own food for lack of water, can’t afford to buy it either. Again,
it’s rural women, who represent the majority of the world’s subsistence
farmers, who are most threatened by these policies.
Climate change, state collapse and exploitative economic policies are big
problems, but they have solutions. Taming the cycle of drought requires that
industrialized countries immediately and drastically reduce their carbon
emissions. It’s actually less complicated than some of our elected officials
would have us believe. But developing a post-carbon economy does require
prioritizing human survival over short-term corporate profit.
And ensuring the survival of Somali communities will require a viable peace
process, one that listens to and incorporates voices of women. Women have
little representation in Somalia’s transitional government or at the
negotiating table. Yet women have long played a vital role as peacemakers
between clans. Because clans are the organizing unit of Somali society, and
reflect both family and political ties, institutionalizing women’s peacemaking
role at the national level can be a key to progress.
Finally, we need policies that recognize food as a human right, not just a
commodity to be bought and sold. A broad body of human rights laws support this
view and the governments of Nicaragua and South Africa, among others, have
incorporated the Right to Food in their constitutions.
The Right to Food is particularly crucial to African women, who generally eat
last and least when their families gather for meals—yet women grow up to 80% of
the continent’s food. These women fight to feed their communities through the
worst ravages of climate change and unfair economic practices. Most are
stewards of the sustainable agricultural methods that now need to be developed
and adapted to meet the twin challenges of feeding people and protecting the
planet.
MADRE works with women in the Horn of Africa and around the world to realize
sustainable solutions to climate change, political violence and harmful
economic policies. Supporting their voices in their communities, countries and
in the international arena is key to averting the next famine.