Interview with Gary McGurk, Assistant Country Director for CARE Kenya, about the food insecurity in Kenya
Can you describe the current drought situation in Kenya?
In the last year, the short rains have failed and the long rains that were supposed to come this year have been very poor in a number of regions. This means that pasture for livestock is scarce and water resources are depleted. In an area mostly populated by pastoralists, this is an alarming situation. An estimated 2.4 million people in Kenya need assistance, especially in the northern and northeastern pastoral districts, where food insecurity is precarious for about 700,000 people. The shortage of pasture and water has caused exceptionally long migrations as well as death and weak conditions of livestock. In addition to the drought, food and fuel prices have risen in the past months. For example, prices for petrol at filling stations have increased about 37 percent since December 2010. This has a large impact on people, since transport in the massive area of Northern Kenya has become really expensive. What’s worse - at the moment, it is impossible to predict how the situation will evolve.
Unfortunately, drought is nothing new to the Horn of Africa. How does the current situation differ from food insecurities in the past?
We are not sure yet whether this is going to be a multi-year drought or whether the conditions will improve after the next rains. For the time being, the situation is not as dramatic as in the years of 2008/2009, where we saw a devastating drought in the Horn of Africa. However, what makes the situation precarious for people now is that they have not had the chance to recover their assets after the last drought. Usually, it takes two years for Kenyans to rehabilitate and build up their stocks after a drought but this rebuilding period has been interrupted now.
It is important to note that food insecurity is a chronic crisis in Kenya. People did not have enough nutritious food before, and now the current drought puts them into a perilous situation where they have to sell their assets while at the same time having to pay for increased food prices. In normal times, malnutrition rates for children in some areas are as high as 25 percent and now they have increased about two percent. So yes, this is an emerging crisis; but did not start from zero and rather builds on a chronic situation.
What are the reasons for the recurring droughts?
There are two sides of the drought. On the surface, you have the failed rains and the increased food and fuel prices. If you look deeper, the underlying reasons become visible, such as the impacts of climate change, chronic vulnerability, poverty and social injustice. Conflict does also play a role, but is not a main driver in all areas. The drought does not only affect Kenya but other countries in the Horn of Africa. We already see a larger than usual influx of refugees from Somalia into the camps in north eastern Kenya. Currently, there are 346,000 refugees, which is the population of a small European or American city.
What needs to be addressed now?
We need to build sustainability. The CARE team in Kenya emphasizes an approach to ‘build back better’, meaning that we need to focus on strengthening people’s resilience capacity and coping mechanisms. The goal is to avoid short term humanitarian responses which can build dependency, but rather to ensure that people are able to feed themselves and break the cycle of recurring food insecurity. CARE Kenya aims to support disaster risk reduction measures without creating dependency. We are, however, monitoring the situation closely and are prepared to respond in case it deteriorates and there is a need for a larger humanitarian intervention.
How can communities become more resilient to droughts and adapt to the changing climate?
CARE has worked in North Eastern Kenya, where 700,000 people face food insecurity, for more than ten years and our main interventions focus on building the resilience of the people we work with. We have been working with communities to establish their own disaster risk reduction measures to improve management and governance of their resources, to mitigate conflict, improve cross border relations and make governance of grazing land more accountable. The North East is a region of pastoralists and livestock are the communities’ main asset. So CARE trains animal health workers to diagnose diseases and provide treatment to livestock; provides transport for pastoralists selling their livestock on markets; supports vaccination campaigns for livestock and supports diversification of their income.
Within our response to the current drought facing the region CARE will continue to emphasize building local capacity. We plan to rehabilitate water boreholes and train communities to manage these water infrastructures – and we want to promote a leading role for women in the management of the water. Together with partners, we also plan to support established outreach centers and mobile clinics in areas where malnutrition rates are significantly high.