Coping with climate change
Michael J. Ssali
What you need to know:
- Cattle in many districts are skinny and there are reports of some of them dropping dead on their way to find water.
There is a general observation across the country that we have not received sufficient rain in the past two months, and that crops are wilting in the fields. There are horrifying reports of starvation in Karamoja.
Cattle in many districts are skinny and there are reports of some of them dropping dead on their way to find water.
Hundreds of traditional village wells that are as old as the hills and have always been the source of water since time immemorial are drying up due to both lack of rain and population pressure.
There are far more people drawing water from the wells today than those who did so ages ago. Today’s rural household uses more water than before. Children’s school uniforms must be washed, weeds in the garden are killed with herbicides mixed with water, livestock such as pigs, goats, poultry and cows drink water and some farmers growing crops such as tomatoes and passion fruit use a lot of water spraying pesticides, not to mention others carrying out simple irrigation.
Sadly this sad position has come about when most farmers did not have good harvests earlier this year due to an equally long drought that hit the country last year. Crop production has become even more complicated because of new pests and crop diseases that have no cure so far.
Scientists attribute the arrival of the deadly pests to destruction of forests, which were their natural habitat, and to climate change which has made it possible for them to thrive in areas where they were not known to exist before.
When natural water sources such as swamps and rivers begin drying up it is difficult to plan for successful farming. And it is not easy to provide quick solutions. However everyone, especially our policy makers, must be ready to make pragmatic choices as we fight hunger and poverty.
More attention must be paid to how we use water which is now a scarce resource. Even interventions such as Parish Development Model might not help if the water problem is not addressed. We should begin to question how some countries with less natural endowments than Uganda have become successful food producers.
It is said, for example, that Egypt produces more fish than Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania put together. Its crop production is far superior to ours. But who does not know where that country gets its water from?
Mr Michael Ssali is a veteran journalist,
