Food Security Should Be Top Priority For Pakistan Because Of Climate Change

KARACHI: Experts from various disciplines gathered at the Climate Change Conference in Karachi stressed a dire need for research on the issue in Pakistan as it ranked amongst countries highly vulnerable to the phenomena.

The conference, organised by Habib University, highlighted the urgent need to incorporate climate change adaptation into the national climate policy. The keynote speaker, Dr Bruce McCarl, a disitinguised professor of Agricultural Economic at Texas A&M University, sounded the alarm and advised the government of Pakistan to put a special emphasis on saving it agricultural sector, first and foremost since it was most sensitive to extreme weather.

McCarl, who was also part of the Noble Peace Prize winning team of Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, said, "From agricultural point of view, Pakistan should focus on its most staple crops like Wheat" because food security should be the top priority in the climate change scenario.

Shafqat Kakakhel, chairperson of Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) said that Pakistan was prone to natural disasters and was frequently facing an increase in floods, droughts and other extreme events.

Kakakhel also stressed the need for educational institutes to introduce climate change and environment policy in the school curriculum.

Climate change and the role of media was the subject of another important panel discussion at the conference where Rina Saeed Khan, a prominent writer on environment, said in her presentation that though Pakistan was one the lowest emitters of green house gases in the world it remained highly susceptible to the climate uncertainties.

Her presentation touched upon the hurdles of communicating climate change phenomenon to the masses in local languages without losing its impact.

Muhammad Badar Alam, the editor of Herald Magazine, was also of the opinion that there was a serious lack of credible information about climate change as the government departments were often tight lipped about the dissemination of information about the issue.

Alam had a three-point solution to address the situation. Firstly, access to viable information from the institutes and the scientists, secondly, its comprehension from the journalists, and most importantly passing that information to the masses in jargon free language. More

 

Farmers worldwide suffer as extreme weather wreaks food havoc

To address the crisis, farm ministers from around the world are gathering in Berlin Saturday to discuss climate change and food production.

BOSTON — Volatile weather around the world is taking farmers on a wild ride. Too much rain in northern China damaged crops in May, three years after too little rain turned the world’s second-biggest corn producer into a net importer of the grain. Dry weather in the U.S. will cut beef output from the world’s biggest producer to the lowest level since 1994, following 2013’s bumper corn crop, which pushed America’s inventory up 30 percent. British farmers couldn’t plant in muddy fields after the second-wettest year on record in 2012 dented the nation’s wheat production.

“Extreme weather events are a massive risk to agriculture,” said Peter Kendall, president of the British National Farmers Union, who raises 3,953 acres of grain crops in Bedfordshire, England. “Farmers can adapt to gradual temperature increases, but extreme weather events have the potential to completely undermine production. It could be drought, it could be too much rain, it could be extreme heat at the wrong time. It’s the extreme that does the damage.”

Farm ministers from around the world are gathering in Berlin Saturday to discuss climate change and food production at an annual agricultural forum, with a joint statement planned after the meeting.

Fast-changing weather patterns, such as the invasion of Arctic air that pushed the mercury in New York from an unseasonably warm 55 degrees Fahrenheit on Jan. 6 to a record low of 4 the next day, will only become more commonplace, according to the New York-based Insurance Information Institute. While the world produces enough to provide its 7 billion people with roughly 2,700 calories daily, and hunger across the globe is declining, one in eight people still don’t get enough to eat, some of which can be blamed on drought, the United Nations said.

“There’s no question, while there’s variability and volatility from year to year, the number and the cost of catastrophic weather events is on the rise, not just in the U.S., but on a global scale,” said Robert Hartwig, an economist and president of the insurance institute. “It’s all but certain that the size and the magnitude and the frequency of disaster losses in the future is going to be larger than what we see today.”

The number of weather events and earthquakes resulting in insured losses climbed last year to 880, 40 percent higher than the average of the last 30 years, according to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer.

Research points to a culprit: an increase in greenhouse gases, generated by human activity, that are forcing global temperatures upward, said Thomas Peterson, principal scientist at the U.S. National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The warmer the air the more water it can hold, he said.

“What we’re finding worldwide is that heavy precipitation is increasing,” Peterson said.

Flood waters in Passau, Germany, in May and June reached the highest level since 1501, Munich Re said. That was the year Michelangelo first put a chisel to the block of marble that would become his sculpture of David. High water did $15.2 billion in damage in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, according to Munich Re.

A July hailstorm in Reutlingen, Germany, led to $3.7 billion in insured losses, according to Munich Re. Hailstones the size of babies’ fists cracked the windshield of Marco Kaschuba’s Peugeot.

“Two minutes before the storm started you could already hear a very loud noise,” said Kaschuba, a 33-year-old photographer. “That was from hailstones hitting the ground in the distance and coming closer.”

In 2012, Britain had its second-highest rainfall going back to 1910, according to Britain’s meteorology office. England and Wales had its third-wettest year since 1766. More

 

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity - Lester Brown

Peak Water and Food Scarcity

Although many analysts are concerned about the depletion of oil resources, the depletion of underground water resources poses a far greater threat to our future. While there are substitutes for oil, there are none for water. Indeed, modern humans lived a long time without oil, but we would live for only a matter of days without water.

Not only are there no substitutes for water, but the world needs vast amounts of it to produce food. As adults, each of us drinks nearly 4 liters of water a day in one form or another. But it takes 2,000 liters of water—500 times as much—to produce the food we consume each day. 1

Since food is such an extraordinarily water-intensive product, it comes as no surprise that 70 percent of world water use is for irrigation. Although it is now widely accepted that the world is facing severe water shortages, not everyone realizes that a future of water shortages will also be a future of food shortages. 2

The use of irrigation to expand food production goes back some 6,000 years. Indeed, the development of irrigation using water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers set the stage for the emergence of the Sumerian civilization, and it was the Nile that gave birth to ancient Egypt. 3

Throughout most of history, irrigation spread rather slowly. But in the latter half of the twentieth century it underwent a rapid expansion. In 1950, there were some 250 million acres of irrigated land in the world. By 2000, the figure had nearly tripled to roughly 700 million acres. After these several decades of rapid increase, however, the growth in irrigated area has slowed dramatically since the turn of the century, expanding only 9 percent from 2000 to 2009. Given that governments are much more likely to report increases than decreases, the recent net growth in irrigated area may be even smaller. This dramatic loss of momentum in irrigation expansion, coupled with the aquifer depletion that is already reducing irrigated area in some countries, suggests that peak water may now be on our doorstep. 4

The trend in irrigated land area per person is even less promising. For the last half-century, the irrigated area has been expanding—but not as fast as population. As a result, the irrigated area per person today is 10 percent less than it was in 1960. With so many aquifers being depleted and more and more irrigation wells going dry, this shrinkage in irrigated area per person is likely not only to continue but to accelerate in the years ahead. 5

Roughly 40 percent of the world grain harvest is grown on irrigated land. The rest is rainfed. Among the big three grain producers—China, India, and the United States—the role of irrigation varies widely. In China, four fifths of the grain harvest comes from irrigated land. For India it is three fifths, and for the United States, only one fifth. Asia, where rice is the staple food, totally dominates the world irrigated area. 6

Farmers use both surface and underground water for irrigation. Surface water is typically stored behind dams on rivers and then channeled onto the land through a network of irrigation canals. Historically, and notably from 1950 until 1975, when most of the world’s large dams were built, this was the main source of growth in world irrigated area. During the 1970s, however, as the sites for new dams diminished, attention shifted from building dams to drilling wells for access to underground water. 7

Most underground water comes from aquifers that are regularly replenished with rainfall; these can be pumped indefinitely as long as water extraction does not exceed recharge. A small minority of aquifers are fossil aquifers, however, containing water put there eons ago. Since these do not recharge, irrigation ends once they are pumped dry. Among the more prominent fossil aquifers are the Ogallala underlying the U.S. Great Plains, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, and the Saudi aquifers. 8

Given a choice, farmers generally prefer having their own wells because it enables them to control the timing and amount of water delivered with a precision that is not possible with large, centrally managed canal irrigation systems. Pumps let them apply water precisely when the crop needs it, thus achieving higher yields than with large-scale, river-based irrigation systems. Forty percent of world irrigated area is now dependent on underground water. As world demand for grain has climbed, farmers have drilled more and more irrigation wells with little concern for how many the local aquifers could support. As a result, water tables are falling and millions of irrigation wells are either going dry or are on the verge of doing so. 9

As groundwater use for irrigation expands, so does the grain harvest. But if the pumping surpasses the sustainable yield of the aquifer, aquifers are depleted. When this happens, the rate of irrigation pumping is necessarily reduced to the aquifer’s natural rate of recharge. At this point, grain production declines too.

The resulting water-based “food bubbles,” which create a short-term false sense of security, can now be found in some 18 countries that contain more than half the world’s people. In these countries, food is being produced by drawing down water reserves. This group includes China, India, and the United States. 10 (See Table 6–1.) More

 

Many Countries Reaching Diminishing Returns in Fertilizer Use

When German chemist Justus von Liebig demonstrated in 1847 that the major nutrients that plants removed from the soil could be applied in mineral form, he set the stage for the development of the fertilizer industry and a huge jump in world food production a century later.

Growth in food production during the nineteenth century came primarily from expanding cultivated area. It was not until the mid-twentieth century, when land limitations emerged and raising yields became essential, that fertilizer use began to rise.

The growth in the world fertilizer industry after World War II was spectacular. Between 1950 and 1988, fertilizer use climbed from 14 million to 144 million tons. This period of remarkable worldwide growth came to an end when fertilizer use in the former Soviet Union fell precipitously after heavy subsidies were removed in 1988 and fertilizer prices there moved to world market levels. After 1990, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the effort of its former states to convert to market economies led to a severe economic depression in these transition economies. The combined effect of these shifts was a four-fifths drop in fertilizer use in the former Soviet Union between 1988 and 1995. After 1995 the decline bottomed out, and increases in other countries, particularly China and India, restored growth in world fertilizer use.

As the world economy evolved from being largely rural to being highly urbanized, the natural nutrient cycle was disrupted. In traditional rural societies, food is consumed locally, and human and animal waste is returned to the land, completing the nutrient cycle. But in highly urbanized societies, where food is consumed far from where it is produced, using fertilizer to replace the lost nutrients is the only practical way to maintain land productivity. It thus comes as no surprise that the growth in fertilizer use closely tracks the growth in urbanization, with much of it concentrated in the last 60 years.

The big three grain producers—China, India, and the United States—account for more than half of world fertilizer consumption. In the United States, the growth in fertilizer use came to an end in 1980. China’s fertilizer use climbed rapidly in recent decades but has leveled off since 2007. In contrast, India’s fertilizer consumption is still on the rise, growing 5 percent annually. While China uses 50 million tons of fertilizer a year and India uses 28 million tons, the United States uses only 20 million tons. (See data.) More

 

Peak oil – reached. Peak water – reached. Next on the list? Peak soil

Soil is becoming endangered – this is the reality a meeting between experts in Reykjavik has reached. They explain that this has to receive public awareness if we want to feed 9 billion by 2050.

The main culprit is the one also responsible for global warming: Carbon.

“Keeping and putting carbon in its rightful place needs to be the mantra for humanity if we want to continue to eat, drink and combat global warming, concluded 200 researchers from more than 30 countries”.

Indeed, for all the attention the air and water gets, soil seems to be the forgotten child, just because we don’t eat or drink it. But everything we eat comes from it.

“While soil is invisible to most people it provides an estimated 1.5 to 13 trillion dollars in ecosystem services annually,” Glover said at the Soil Carbon Sequestration conference that ended this week.

It’s practically impossible to calculate the benefits that soil brings us – a mere cup of soil contains some 500.000 species, including worms, ants, fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms. 99% of our food comes from it, directly or indirectly, compared to the only 1% we get from oceans.

Soil cleans water, keeps contaminants out of streams and lakes, and prevents flooding; it can also absord massive quantities of carbon. But as hard as it may seem – it’s really fragile.

“It takes half a millennia to build two centimetres of living soil and only seconds to destroy it,” Glover said.

Plowing, removal of crop residues after harvest, and overgrazing all leave soil naked and vulnerable to wind and rain, resulting in gradual, often unnoticed erosion of soil. Erosion not only destroys crops, causes landslides and other catastrophes, but also releases carbon into the air.

“Soil can be a safe place where huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere could be sequestered,” said Rattan Lal of Ohio State University.

So we’ve pretty much screwed the atmosphere – unless practically all of science that we do now is wrong, that’s a fact. We’re well into doing the same to the water, as a massive, large scale water shortage seems like a matter of time. Are we going to do the same with soil? Are we going to try to milk the cow until it runs totally dry? We know what should be done, we have the technology, and we also have the money for it.

A Sad Example

About 1000 years ago, when the first settlers arrived there, Iceland was mostly covered by forests, lush meadows and wetlands. By the late 1800s, about 96 percent of all icelandic forrests were gone. Half of the grasslands were destroyed by overgrazing. Humans pushed the land way beyond the limit of sustainability, up to the point where it became barren.

Due to necessity, Iceland pioneered a number of groundbreaking techniques in terms of soil protection, but the results in the past 100 years are moving extremely slowly.

“We’re still fighting overgrazing here,” Halldórsson said.

But the public is living in the urban areas, has forgot these troubles, and is not supporting land restoration anymore.

“The public isn’t supporting land restoration. We’ve forgotten that land is the foundation of life,” Halldórsson said.

More

 

Less Than 3 Percent of Oceans in Marine Parks Despite Recent Growth

In May 1975, rising concerns about overfishing and deteriorating ocean health prompted scientists and officials from 33 countries to meet in Tokyo for the first global conference on marine parks and reserves.

Noting the need for swift action to safeguard more of the sea, the delegates were unanimous in calling for the creation of a global system of marine protected areas (MPAs)—zones explicitly managed for the conservation of aquatic ecosystems.

Today, with oceanic resources more threatened than ever, the world is far from that envisioned MPA network. Although coverage has doubled since 2010, just 2.8 percent of the ocean surface—some 10 million square kilometers (4 million square miles), roughly the size of the United States—is now in designated MPAs. And the level of protection varies. Some MPAs allow seabed mining, for instance, and most MPAs allow at least some fishing. In others, fishing and other destructive activities are off-limits entirely. These “no-take” MPAs, also called marine reserves, are thought to provide the greatest conservation value, yet they account for less than half of the world’s marine protected area.

A wealth of experience and scientific research shows that by protecting all habitats and marine life within their borders, well-managed no-take zones effectively preserve biodiversity and can restore adjacent fisheries, greatly benefiting both ecosystems and the people dependent on them. In general, fish populations increase after a reserve is established, and individual fish grow larger. Heavily overfished species usually show the greatest gains, and the positive results can come quickly.

While there are often concerns that closing fishing grounds will negatively impact access to food and livelihoods, evidence suggests that reserves often have the opposite effect. Because there is no physical boundary, fish may venture out of the MPA to areas where anglers can catch them. Older, larger fish have more offspring, which also can leave the reserve as eggs or larvae, eventually replenishing depleted stocks. The potential to support fisheries has great implications for food security: worldwide some 3 billion people get at least 20 percent of their animal protein from fish, but close to 90 percent of fish stocks are being fished at or beyond sustainable levels. There are also non-fishery benefits. Protected areas can attract more tourist dollars, helping offset MPA management costs. (See Table.)

Surveys of people living near reserves in Fiji, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands, support this point. Summarized in a report by The Nature Conservancy called Nature’s Investment Bank, the surveys pointed to improved fish catches outside MPA boundaries, increased protein intake, and even poverty alleviation—especially from new jobs in tourism.

Thus marine reserves are widely seen as a crucial tool in the conservation toolkit—one that is sorely needed as pressures on the world’s oceans continue to mount. Take the highly productive coral reefs that provide nurseries for fish, protect shorelines, and support the livelihoods of millions of people. Some 75 percent of the world’s coral reefs are threatened by overfishing, pollution, warming waters, and a host of other hazards. A 2013 study in Belize showed that protection from fishing and industrial activity bolsters reef resilience: coral reefs in marine reserves there may be six times more likely than unprotected ones to regrow after major disturbances such as hurricanes.

The world’s largest coral reef system, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, is home to probably the best known MPA, which opened in 1979. Spanning some 340,000 square kilometers, this park boasts incredible biodiversity, including more than 1,600 fish species, and brings in some $4 billion a year from tourism. Zoning plans developed in the 1980s made a scant 4.5 percent of the MPA off-limits to fishing and provided very uneven habitat protection. But in 2004, it was rezoned to better protect all 70 of its distinct habitat types—30 of them reef habitats, and the rest non-reef types such as mangroves. Now at least 20 percent of each of these “bioregions” is no-take and, all told, fishing is banned in one third of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Nearly all no-take MPAs to date have been small and near to shore, but calls are growing for more set-asides of hundreds of thousands or even millions of square kilometers to create vast buffers around islands and to protect open ocean wilderness areas—and with them, conceivably, the entire life cycles of far-ranging marine species like sea turtles, sharks, and tunas. The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Global Ocean Legacy project has been a prominent champion of the idea, working with scientists and both national and local governments to establish “the first generation of great marine parks around the globe by 2022.” It was integral, for example, in the U.S. designation of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in 2006, which protects 362,000 square kilometers around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. At the time this was by far the largest no-take marine reserve in the world.

Then in 2010 it was surpassed by another Pew-backed park when the United Kingdom declared a 640,000-square-kilometer reserve—larger than the United Kingdom itself—in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. In 2012, after an aggressive public outreach campaign led by Pew, Australia declared a 1-million-square-kilometer MPA adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea, half of it no-take. And Pew is also proposing a park around the Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific, another U.K. territory, that would add 830,000 square kilometers to the global no-take area.

Not all recent attempts to create large reserves have succeeded. In early November 2013, Russia, Ukraine, and China—worried about possible harm to their fishing interests—scuttled international talks on two massive proposed reserves in the Southern Ocean. This was the third time in a year that countries reached an impasse on the proposals, which would have banned fishing in 2.8 million square kilometers in Antarctic waters. Although proponents will resubmit the reserves for consideration in 2014, prospects look grim after this latest setback.

In addition to expanding the number and area of MPAs worldwide, another marine conservation priority is improving the effectiveness of existing parks. Most MPAs to date lack the trained staff and funding needed to properly manage them, making monitoring and enforcement of restrictions difficult and leading many to be dubbed “paper parks” (that is, protected on paper only). One encouraging attempt to address this problem is the Caribbean Challenge Initiative. With the backing of a $42-million endowment—funded by The Nature Conservancy, the Global Environment Fund, and the German Development Bank—10 Caribbean nations are developing national trust funds to be used solely to improve management of existing parks (land and marine) and to establish new ones that are effective from the start. Funds are set to be disbursed beginning in early 2014, as the countries move ahead on their overall goal of having at least 20 percent of their near-shore marine and coastal area in well-managed MPAs by 2020.

What would it take to run a global network of MPAs? In 2004, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined the potential costs of administering a worldwide network that would conserve 20 percent or more of the world’s oceans. Based on data for over 80 existing MPAs, the authors conservatively estimated that such a network might cost $12.5 billion annually. What they concluded nearly a decade ago is still true today: we could protect a large chunk of our marine ecosystems for much less than the estimated $20 billion that governments spend to subsidize overfishing each year.

Well-designed and managed MPAs are only part of the puzzle in restoring fisheries and ocean ecosystems. Other important steps include putting stricter catch limits on fisheries, removing harmful fishing subsidies, and dramatically reducing the pollution entering the sea from farms, cities, and industry. Cutting emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, will also be essential to minimize the rise in temperatures and changing chemistry already undermining ocean ecosystems. Only by tackling all of these problems simultaneously will we have a decent chance at reversing marine decline. More

 

Pakistan's food shortage alarms rights organizations

Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission (HRCP) has urged the government to take up the issue of food scarcity and rising prices in the country. The organization said food insecurity in Pakistan was reaching alarming levels.

“Growing food scarcity in Pakistan and the subsequent rise in prices have gravely affected access to food and nutrition not just for the poor but also for the large middle-income segment of the population," HRCP said in a statement. "The lack of attention to this critical issue is no less dangerous and frightening than the food scarcity itself."

The NGO also pointed out that the food shortages were the result of bad governmental policy, blaming successive governments for neglecting the issue.

"World Food Day is an occasion for all to reflect on what has undermined people's access to adequately nutritious food and resulted in the geographic and demographic incidence of food scarcity. It should also be an occasion to make a meaningful commitment to helping those struggling with hunger and malnutrition,” HRCP said.

Ali Khan of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Islamabad told DW that the UN was working with the Pakistani government on various projects dealing with food shortages and rising food prices in Pakistan.

"At the moment, about 868 million people in the world have little access to food," he said. "One in eight people is either malnourished or is getting unhealthy food. Pakistan's situation is no different."

Access to food is a constitutional right

Meanwhile, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari vowed that his government would deal with the issue on an emergency basis. In a public message issued on World Food Day, he said he had directed the food and agriculture ministry to formulate a "comprehensive national policy" to improve the agricultural sector. He said that the Pakistani people had a constitutional right to access food.

However, HRCP Chairperson Zohra Yusuf said she doubted the government was sincere. She said "land reforms" were urgent and pointed out that Pakistani farmers were being exploited by the authorities. "They don't give them their rightful dues. This has resulted in apathy among farmers and subsequent food shortages. You need to give incentives to farmers and those associated with agriculture to motivate them."

She also said that Pakistan should learn from the experience and expertise of other countries in overcoming food shortages and reforming the agricultural sector. More

 

ADB Releases Report on Managing the Water-Food-Energy Nexus

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September 2013: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has released a report, titled 'Thinking About Water Differently: Managing the Water-Food-Energy Nexus,' which argues for recognition of water as an economic and social good and the urgent assurance of regional water security to eliminate risk to food and energy security in Asia and the Pacific.

According to the ADB report, which offers high-level guidance on water issues affecting the region, governments need to think differently about water, taking a longer-term view of the limited resource. It highlights the importance of the following strategic approaches: reforming water governance through advocacy at global, regional, and national levels; generating reliable data and information on the availability and behavior of water resources; resource protection through effective reduction of wastewater and other waste discharging into freshwater supplies through regulation, investment, and innovation; water for food through stimulating research into improving the use of water in agriculture, increasing food production on the same area of land, and using less water; and increasing storage including via aquifer recharge, as a response to uncertainties in supply that are being aggravated by climate change. [Publication: Thinking About Water Differently: Managing the Water-Food-Energy Nexus] [ADB Press Release]

More: http://energy-l.iisd.org/news/adb-releases-report-on-managing-the-water-food-energy-nexus/

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Namibia battles worst drought in decades

Opuwo, Namibia - The Tjikundi family sits around a small fire boiling a tin pot filled with water and maize - the only food that's available this day. A band of children crawl about, chewing on plastic tubing, and chase the visitors with animated curiosity.

The homestead is spectacular in its bareness. Soft, dry sand interrupted only by rocks and boulders fashion a molten envy for a lighter, brighter time. The livestock kraal is empty. So too are the granaries.

Scraggy roosters gawk and peck at the dust with fraught expectation while a domestic cat, at total odds with the environment, purrs and curls around people's ankles.

"This year is very bad because we have lost all our cattle," Mukaokondunga Tjikundi, in her early 20s, told Al Jazeera. "Sometimes the children go to bed with empty stomachs. Sometimes they just drink some water and go to sleep."

Hunger and hardship are recurring themes in Kunene, the northwest province in Namibia, considered the hardest-hit region by a drought many consider the worst in decades.

Almost one million people out of Namibia’s 2.3 million population face moderate to serious levels of food insecurity. The Namibian government in May estimated this year's harvest would yield 42 percent less than 2012.

In Kunene, two years of failed rains have devastated millet and maize plantations, dried up watering holes for livestock, and forced a population to search for precarious water supplies. Animals drink stagnant water in dry riverbeds, while some Namibians dig for water across the province and guard any source found with little wooden fences.

'Catastrophe'

"If people can resort to [drinking] dirty water, more are likely to suffer from water-borne diseases and the health situation is likely to deteriorate for animals and humans," Jack Ndemena, water and sanitation officer with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told Al Jazeera.

"There is nothing and if the rains don’t come, it is going to be a catastrophe."

In May, Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba was forced to declare a state of emergency and requested $33.7 million in international support to avert a crisis. Recognising the strain across the country, the IFRC and UNICEF launched appeals for $1.2m and $7.4m, respectively.

President Hifikepunye Pohamba has appealed for aid [EPA]

But little aid has arrived.

On September 2, Algeria donated $1m in food aid but the reaction from the rest of the international community has been poor.

Experts say Namibia’s status as a middle-income country hasn’t helped its appeals. Despite its wealth, the country suffers from high levels of income inequality. One-third of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and Namibia ranked 120 out of 187 countries on the 2012 UNDP Human Development Index.

Malnutrition is the second-most common cause of death recorded for children under five, even in non-drought years. And with the onset of this year’s drought, an estimated 109,000 children under five are at risk of acute malnutrition.

"Namibia still does not feed itself, and the middle-income classification comes from livestock, mining and fisheries industries - [this] does not provide an accurate situation on the ground," Cousins Gwanama, head of the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Namibia in Windhoek, told Al Jazeera.

And it is unlikely the situation is about to get better.

'Confused'

With little rainfall predicted for later this year, farmers have described the drought as among the harshest in a generation. Granaries are empty as few crops were planted last year. With plateaus unsuitable for grazing, many pastoralist farmers have been forced to leave their homes and families and herd their livestock to higher ground with more vegetation, often involving a few days’ walk.

Accustomed to little rainfall, farmers have survived in semi-arid regions of Namibia for decades. But the total absence of precipition has left many perplexed and concerned, their farms lurching towards economic ruin.

"I thought we understood the environment, nature, but we are almost confused and don’t know what to expect," farmer Toivo Ruhozu told Al Jazeera.

"If the government doesn’t help, we will just have to face death." More

 

Uncertainty on figures hampering food security efforts

More than 600 scientists gathered in the Netherlands for a global food security conference, described as the first of its kind.

The combination of poor harvests
and rising demand has increased
price volatility in global grain markets

Organisers said science could help end uncertainty surrounding efforts to meet the food needs of future generations.

They added that, until now, there were many policy debates on food security but there was no scientific forum for researchers to share knowledge.

The next food security conference will be held in the US in 2015.

"A really key message from the conference for us is that we have got lots of estimates about needs of population growth etc, but at the moment we are so uncertain of the exact numbers - the uncertainty is really very high," said conference co-chairman Ken Giller, professor of plant production systems at Wageningen University.

"We talk about the current population being seven billion, moving to 9.2 billion in 2050 and the estimate is that we need to increase production 70% or more.

"But there are many different ways of addressing that. If we don't know what the problem is then we can't get started in addressing them."

Appetite for change

Prof Giller said there was "unprecedented interest" among the scientific community when details of the conference was first announced.

"We did anticipate about 250-300 people , but we actually ended up with more than 900 abstracts being submitted," he told BBC News.

"The conference was basically sold out - we had 600 people and that was all we could accommodate."

He explained that the conference was designed to create a forum where representatives from the different branches of science could come together and discuss and debate the issues of global food security.

"We pulled together a science committee with the real aim to make the conference broad and to include all the main disciplines," he said.

"We had people on the science committee from economics, nutrition and we had people dealing with food waste, which is a very important topical issue."

Prof Giller said that current estimates suggested that 30-40% of the food produced was wasted and not eaten.

Other themes that were discussed at the conference included:

• Nutritional security,
• Sustainable intensification of food production systems,
• Novel ways of feeding nine billion,
• Agricultural production as feedstock for renewables.

The organisers hope that the outcomes from the four-day event in Noordwijkerhout, South Holland, will help focus the scientific world's contribution to the UN global policy system.

One of the UN's eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger" by 2015, which included the target of halving - between 1990 and 2015 - the proportion of people suffering from hunger.

Assessments suggest the target is "within reach". However, a 2013 report on the progress of the MDGs warned that one in eight people remained chronically undernourished.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced that he wants to build on the MDGs, replacing them with a suite of Sustainable Development Goals that will run from 2015-2030.

He said one of his priorities was to "adopt globally agreed goals for food and nutrition security, mobilise all key stakeholders to provide support to smallholder farmers and food processors and bolster the resilience of communities and nations experiencing periodic food crises". More