'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Credit: FAO
So what is at stake ?
Forests play a major role in sustainable agricultural development through a host of channels, including: water cycle, soil conservation, carbon sequestration, natural pest control, influencing local climates and providing habitat protection for pollinators and other species.
But agriculture accounts for the lion’s share of the conversion of forests.
About 60 million people across Southern Africa and the Horn, Central America, and the Pacific face worsening hunger and poverty due to droughts and crop failures in 2014/5 that have been exacerbated by the El Niño weather system in 2015/6. This number is likely to rise, OXFAM International reports.
Lule Abrahn (50 years) with her 6 year-old son. Harisso Internally displaced person (IDP) camp. Siti Zone. Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Oxfam
An OXFAM International short report** –authored Debbie Hillier — gives a voice to some of the people that Oxfam is working with in Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, El Salvador and Papua New Guinea.
Failure to prepare for and adapt to the ‘new normal’ of increasing climate-linked emergencies such as El Niño could put global development targets at risk and deepen widespread human suffering in areas already hard hit by floods and droughts, top UN officials on 6 July 2016 said in Rome.
Farmers in Ethiopia. The Horn of Africa is one of the areas hardest hit by El Niño. Photo: FAO/Tamiru Legesse
Calling for governments and the international community to ramp up efforts to strengthen resilience and safeguard livelihoods in the wake of El Niño’s devastating effects, the heads of the three Rome-based UN agencies, along with the newly-appointed UN Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate, warned that more than 60 million people worldwide, about 40 million in East and Southern Africa alone, are projected to be food insecure due to the impact of the El Niño climate event.
The lives and livelihoods of more than 60 millions people around the world have been turned upside down by the extreme weather events linked to the El Niño phenomenon, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 19 July 2016 said, calling for a scaled-up, unprecedented response that goes beyond humanitarian action.
Chad: Safety and shelter for Chadians fleeing CAR. Photo: OCHA CERF
“Extreme weather events reverse development gains. People and communities cannot escape poverty or banish hunger if their resources are wiped out by floods, storms or droughts every few years,” the Secretary-General said at a high-level event at the UN Headquarters in New York on Responding to the Impacts of and Mitigating Recurring Climate Risks, organized by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 