Climate Change: Lush Land Dries Up, Withering Kenya’s Hopes

The Shape of Things to Come?

LOKORI, Kenya — The sun somehow feels closer here, more intense, more personal. As Philip Lolua waits under a tree for a scoop of food, heat waves dance up from the desert floor, blurring the dead animal carcasses sprawled in front of him.

So much of his green pasture land has turned to dust. His once mighty herd of goats, sheep and camels have died of thirst. He says his 3-year-old son recently died of hunger. And Mr. Lolua does not look to be far from death himself.

“If nobody comes to help us, I will die here, right here,” he said, emphatically patting the earth with a cracked, ancient-looking hand.

A devastating drought is sweeping across Kenya, killing livestock, crops and children. It is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land.

The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy, agriculture and tourism, are especially imperiled. The fabled game animals that safari-goers fly thousands of miles to see are keeling over from hunger and the picturesque savanna is now littered with an unusually large number of sun-bleached bones.

Ethiopia. Sudan. Somalia. Maybe even Niger and Chad. These countries have become almost synonymous with drought and famine. But Kenya? This nation is one of the most developed in Africa, home to a typically robust economy, countless United Nations offices and thousands of aid workers.

The aid community here has been predicting a disaster for months, saying that the rains had failed once again and that this could be the worst drought in more than a decade. But the Kenyan government, paralyzed by infighting and political maneuvering, seemed to shrug off the warnings.

Read more . . .

Related articles by Zemanta

• Starvation ravages East Africa (thestar.com)
• U.N. seeks $230M to fight Kenya hunger (cnn.com)
• Drought, death grips Kenyan heartland (cnn.com)
• ‘Climate change is here, it is a reality’ (guardian.co.uk)

Random Posts:

• Economy Has Become a Drag on Silicon Valley
• Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
• New Sources Of Biofuel To Take Pressure Off Traditional Crops
• ‘Five Dimensional’ Discs With A Storage Capacity 2,000 Times That Of Current DVDs
• Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp

Related posts:

1. Farmed Out: How Will Climate Change Impact World Food Supplies?
2. Climate Change May Mean Slower Winds
3. Combating climate change by observing the Earth
4. Climate change cover-up? You better believe it
5. Climate Wizard Makes Large Databases of Climate Information Visual, Accessible

Tags: bleached bones, climate change, drought, ethnic conflict, game animals, grazing land, green pasture, heat waves, pasture land, robust economy, shape of things, water taps

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under Consider This, Innovation Needed, NY Times, Shape of Things to Come?, environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.