The persistent severe drought in East Africa which is now affecting 23 million people, is in a region of the world, where there is not only hunger and thirst but wars, external as well as civil and large numbers of people internally displaced or refugees in foreign lands. The UN Environment Programme has warned that the relentless drought is deepening because of global climate change as well as the continuing destruction of forests, grasslands, wetlands and other critical ecosystems. The humanitarian disasters in East Africa, like others, particularly in the less developed counties are occurring more frequently. The questions that are being asked are: why they are happening? Why they are increasing in frequency? What can be done to prevent them or alleviate their dire effects?

According to Oxfam the severe and persistent five year drought is now stretching across seven countries in East Africa exacting a heavy human toll, made worse by high food prices and violent conflict. The worst affected countries are Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda. Other countries hit are Sudan, Djibouti and Tanzania. Almost twenty million people in East Africa are dependent on food assistance. This number may increase as the hunger season gets under way. Hundreds of thousands of cattle, people’s key source of income, are dying. This is the worst humanitarian crisis seen in East Africa for over ten years. Failed and unpredictable rains are ever more regular as raining seasons shorten due to the growing influence of climate change. Droughts have increased from once a decade to every two or three years. Compounding the problem is the El Nino meteorological phenomenon which typically brings heavy rains to the area at the end of the year. This could result in floods that destroy crops, livestock, infrastructure and homes.

Kenya is among the worst affected countries with almost 4 million people on food aid. This year’s poor maize crop combined with low cereal stocks and high cereal prices, has reduced access to food in the towns and rural areas. In the nomadic herding areas thousands of cattle have died. Forced migrations in search of water and pasture have worsened livestock and exacerbated resource based conflicts. The serious water shortage is due to the drought but also to the destruction of water catchment areas. With electricity supply largely dependent on hydropower, low dam levels have also led to widespread power rationing.

Somalia has been struck by the double blow of escalating hunger and civil war with violent lawlessness making it difficult for relief to reach vulnerable people. The country, labelled a failed state, faces its worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years with more than half of its 7.5 million people needing humanitarian aid. The fighting is between forces of the Transitional Federal Government, supported by US imperialism and fundamentalist Islamic militias. Many people have been forced off their land by the fighting and the drought, the number of refugees having risen by more than 40% since January. Agriculture has virtually collapsed, leaving more people dependent on aid.

Flowers instead of food

Three other countries in East Africa are in need of food aid, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Uganda. Droughts in Ethiopia have reached the stage where water sources have dried up and recurring famines have caused one of the highest levels of malnutrition in the world. Emergency assistance is expected to increase by 1.3 million to 6.2million. Both Ethiopia and Kenya have become increasingly reliant on imported food, which has risen in price dramatically in spite of the recession. Kenya, which was self sufficient in food until 25 years ago imports 80% of its food. In Uganda, over 1 million people are estimated to be food insecure with the fourth successive poor harvest.

The deepening of droughts in East Africa brought about by climate change, the rise in sea levels and the devastating floods, form part of the global dimension of climate disasters. There were 326 of these disasters between 2,000-04, three times as many as compared to 1980-84. More than 200 million of those victims lived in the peripheral capitalist countries, with one out of every 19 people affected by climate change, compared to one out of 1,500 in the developed countries. The sea level around the coast of Africa is projected to rise by 25cm by 2050 leading to coastal erosion. East Africa’s coral reefs are expected to decrease. Africa is uniquely vulnerable to climate shifts with 70% of its people being immediately dependent on rain fed, small scale agriculture. It is estimated that by 2080, while agricultural production in the developed countries could increase 8%, production in Latin America and Africa would be affected most, falling between 12%-15%. The consequences will be that the people in these continents will be even bigger importers of staple foods from the developed countries. The grip that capitalist agribusiness has on the global food industry is tightening. The rises in prices of staple foods, which it has overseen, will exacerbate the famines and the marginalisation of small-scale farmers, who have been displaced from their land. Countries like Kenya, instead of growing their own food are now having to grow flowers for export to Europe. The rise in food prices was at least partly attributable to the global rush to produce biofuels, which the agribusinesses promoted and last year was estimated as having consumed almost 100 million tons of cereals. It is not only food but water shortages that affect Africa and it is expected that 25 countries in the next 25 years will be subjected to water stress. Deforestation in East and other parts of Africa has led to much of nature’s water and rain supplying services being damaged, destroyed or cleared.

Africa’s right to economic development

With the effects of climate change as the result of global warming already being felt, not even radical and rapid reductions of greenhouse gas emissions may be sufficient to save humanity from its serious effects. The IPCC requires the developed countries which account for 70% of climate change to recognise “ common and differentiated responsibilities” and to reduce their CO2 emissions by 80% – 95% by 2050. African countries with the lowest per capita fossil energy use of any major world region are expected by a combination of forest protection and improved energy efficiency to produce emissions reductions of 15-30% by 2050.Their fundamental right to social and economic development requires a massive transfer of clean technologies so that they can escape economic development based on fossil fuels. With climate change already felt in Africa, African countries will need to embark on an action strategy that include both mitigation of the phenomenon and adaptation to its effects. Adaptation measures will have to involve many fields, including management of water resources, agriculture and forestry. It is the historic responsibility of developed countries to finance adaptation in peripheral capitalist countries. The UNDP estimates this will require a financial transfer to the latter of $86 billion dollars a year starting in 2015.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions it is necessary to tackle the issue at source. There has to be a radical reduction of CO2 emissions caused by burning fossil fuels and their replacement by renewable forms of energy. There also has to be a drastic reduction in energy consumption. The response of the developed capitalist countries is to create a market for trading emission rights and credits. Within the carbon market created, polluting enterprises in the developed world are buying land in peripheral capitalist countries, planting rapid growth trees and acquiring carbon credit, corresponding to the CO2 that they create by burning fossil fuels in their industries. Developing a carbon market is laying the basis for carbon neo-colonialism. Privatisation and commodification of the right to emit carbon, along with the appropriation of the ecosystems that can absorb it, constitute a capitalist takeover of the Earth’s carbon cycle, and potentially the total appropriation of the biosphere that regulates this cycle (Tanuro in “The Global Fight for Climate Justice” p.254).

A fight for a system of society that offers a solution to the crisis caused by capitalism’s anti-social and anti-environmental policies, is necessary. This combines a fight for defending the climate and for social justice. The fight for such a system will lead to a transformation of needs for use value rather than exchange value. Ecosocialists have dedicated themselves to this fight.