Tag Archives: Drought

Monsoon rains arrive at India’s Kerala coast

A commuter jumps from a bus during a heavy rain shower at a bus stop in Kochi

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Annual monsoon rains arrived at the Kerala coast in southern India on Wednesday, a day later than forecast, a weather office source said, easing fears over farm and economic growth after two straight droughts hit rural income and agricultural output.

The monsoon delivers nearly 70 percent of rains that India needs to water farms, and recharge reservoirs and aquifers. Nearly half of India’s farmlands, without any irrigation cover, depend on annual June-September rains to grow a number of crops.

“We’ll soon make an announcement that the monsoon has arrived and it has already covered Kerala,” the source said.

After its April forecast of above average rains this year, the weather office on May 15 said the monsoon would arrive by June 7.

Despite the slight delay, the monsoon would not set back crop sowing and rains are expected to make rapid progress after their arrival, India Meteorological Department chief Laxman Singh Rathore told Reuters last month.

Farmers plant rice, cane, corn, cotton and oilseeds during the rainy months of June and July. Harvest starts from October.

Of its 1.3 billion population, more than 60 percent of people in India depend on agriculture to eke out a living.

Jettisoning a statistical method introduced under British colonial rule in the 1920s, India’s meteorology office is spending $60 million on a new supercomputer to improve the accuracy of one of the world’s most vital weather forecasts in time for next year’s rains.

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Biju Dwarakanath)

Armed guards protect last water in drought parched Indian city

Cracked soil at Manjara Dam is seen in Osmanabad

By Shuriah Niazi

TIKAMGARH, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Authorities in this drought-parched city in central India have deployed round-the-clock armed guards at a river-fed community reservoir to prevent farmers from siphoning the remaining water for irrigation.

With rainfall in Tikamgarh district this year 52 percent below average – the second dry year for the area – water is now available to city residents only sporadically, with fears even that may run out during the peak heat months of May and June, authorities say.

Forty-seven-year-old Suryakant Tiwari, one city resident, said his family and many others now have drinking and household water supplied only once every five days.

“I have not seen such a condition in my lifetime. Almost every water source in the area has dried up. We don’t know how we will survive,” Tiwari he said.

Farmers have been prohibited from drawing water from reservoirs to irrigate their crops. But Tikamgarh Municipal Corporation officials fear farmers from adjoining Uttar Pradesh state – whose farms border the Bari Ghat dam, fed by the Jumuniya River – are poaching water to try to keep their crops alive.

“If crops continue to be irrigated using the river water, it is not going to last long and there will be severe crisis during the summer season,” warned Laxmi Giri, the Tikamgahr municipal corporation president. “Our priority is to supply drinking water to the people.”

The Jamuniya River is the only source of drinking water for over 100,000 people in Tikamgarh, she said.

But “farmers of the neighboring state try to open the gates of the dam and draw water illegally using pipelines. We’re therefore compelled to deploy guards,” Giri said.

‘NEVER BEEN SO BAD’

Tikamgarh is hardly alone. The drought-ravaged Bundelkhand, a region in central India spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, is suffering some of the worst drought in memory.

Crops in the area have been badly hit, cattle are dying of thirst and lack of grazing, and there are growing fears that even drinking water could run dry before the monsoon is expected to begin in June.

“All the ponds, reservoirs and water bodies which earlier supplied water in areas of Tikamgarh have dried up. With no water available for irrigation, farmers have abandoned their crops and are migrating to nearby urban areas in search of livelihood and for sustenance. Life is really hard for them,” said Rajendra Adhvrayu, a local journalist who writes on water issues in the region.

“The situation has never been so bad,” he added. “This is for the first time that the tussle over water has degenerated into a battle of sorts.  We fear the situation will be grave during the coming months.”

The Jamuniya River separates Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh states along some of its length. A 1974 water sharing pact gives Madhya Pradesh 17 percent of the water stored in the Jamuniya Dam in Uttar Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh stores its share in five dams, including the Bari Ghat. But this year, water is available only in Bari Ghat dam. Water in the four other dams – Harpura, Charpuva, Madiya and Sudan – has run out.

Giri said authorities in Tikamgarh had shut off the electrical supply to farmers in neighboring Uttar Pradesh to try to prevent pumping of water from the dam for irrigation.

Farmers have instead turned to using diesel pumps to pull water from the reservoir, he said. “The administration has failed to convince them not to draw water illegally from the dam,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Met Department’s prediction that the entire country could be abnormally hot in May and June, with longer and more severe heat waves, has unnerved many people in the Bundelkhand.

India’s weather office has predicted that monsoon rains are likely to be above average this year, a potential source of relief. But the rains, normally due the second week of June, have been regularly delayed in recent years.

Jayant Verma, a resident of Tikamgarh, said moving elsewhere to find water, even temporarily, is not an option for many families.

“My children attend the school here. I have a job here. I can’t go to any other place along with my family. I don’t know what we shall do. The government has failed to provide any relief so far,” he said.

The search for water has become so intense that in many places – including Madhya Pradesh’s Dindori district – children are descending into deep, almost-dry wells to try to fetch what little water is available, residents said.

In some areas of the Bundelkhand, farmers have been unable to sow any crops this year, they said, and animals are at risk.

“Animals are dying without water. We can’t do anything,” said Kanta Prasad, a resident of the Jatara sub-district of Tikamgarh. “If we give water to animals, there’ll be none left for us. We’re feeling so helpless. Every drop of water counts.”

The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan has promised that drinking water will be made available to those who need it. He said the government has prepared a contingency plan to address the worsening drought, and announced a high-level review of the situation in the region.

Residents, meanwhile, can do little but wait for rain, and worry.

“What will happen if the monsoon is delayed?” asked Adhvrayu. “Or it plays truant, as in previous years?”

(Reporting by Shuriah Niazi; editing by Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)

Zimbabwe needs buyers to save animals from drought

A herd of elephants walk at a drinking hole in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe put its wild animals up for sale on Tuesday, saying it needed buyers to step in and save the beasts from a devastating drought.

Members of the public “with the capacity to acquire and manage wildlife” – and enough land to hold the animals – should get in touch to register an interest, the state Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said.

There were no details on the animals on offer or their cost, but the southern African country’s 10 national parks are famed for their huge populations of elephants, lions, rhinos, leopards and buffalos.

A drought across the region has left more than 4 million Zimbabweans needing aid and hit the crops they rely on for food and export earnings, from maize to tobacco.

It has also exacerbated an economic crisis in the cash-strapped country that has largely been deserted by foreign donors since 1999.

Selling the animals would give some of them a new home and ease financial pressure on the parks authority, which says it receives little government funding and struggles to get by on what it earns through hunting and tourism.

“In light of the drought … Parks and Wildlife Management Authority intends to destock its parks estates through selling some of the wildlife,” the authority said in a statement.

It asked interested Zimbabweans to get in touch and did not mention foreign buyers. Parks authority spokeswoman Caroline Washaya-Moyo would not say whether the animals could be exported or how many it wanted to sell.

“We do not have a target. The number of animals depends on the bids we receive,” she said.

There was no immediate comment from the wildlife groups that protested loudly last year when Zimbabwe exported 60 elephants, half of them to China, where the animals are prized for their tusks.

About 54,000 of Zimbabwe’s 80,000 elephants live in the western Hwange National Park, more than four times the number it is supposed to hold, the agency says.

The drought is expected to worsen an already critical water shortage in Hwange, which has no rivers and relies on donors to buy fuel to pump out underground wells.

The privately-owned Zimbabwe Independent newspaper reported in February that Bubye Conservancy, a private game park in southern Zimbabwe, could be forced to kill 200 lions to reduce over-population.

Many hunters have stayed away, the paper quoted Bubye general manager Blondie Leathem as saying, since the furor over the killing of Cecil, a rare black-maned lion, by a U.S. dentist last year.

(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by James Macharia and Andrew Heavens)

Hyenas attack hungry women as Somaliland’s drought deepens

Women pray as they wait for assistance at Hariirad town of Awdal region, Somaliland.

By Emma Batha

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Somaliland risks descending into famine amid a severe drought that has killed thousands of livestock, an international aid agency warned on Friday, adding there were reports of some women being set upon by hyenas after collapsing from hunger.

“Many people are saying it’s the worst drought in memory,” said Mary Griffin, spokeswoman for Islamic Relief, who visited the region this month.

She said malnourished mothers were unable to breastfeed their babies, and herders were feeding cardboard boxes to their surviving animals because there was no grass left for grazing.

Adan Shariff Gabow, Islamic Relief’s manager for Puntland, neighboring Somaliland, said there were cases in Somaliland of women attacked by starving hyenas.

“They fell down, malnourished, and we understand they were then set on by the animals,” he said.

The United Nations says 1.7 million people – many of them nomadic – need aid in Somaliland and Puntland, Somalia’s two semi-autonomous regions in the north.

Griffin said there was a “terrible sense of deja vu” in the Horn of Africa where a 2011 drought in southern Somalia killed more than a quarter of a million people.

Aid agencies were criticized then for responding too late to warning signs.

Hany El-Banna, chairman of the Muslim Charities Forum, who also visited the region, called on the world not to repeat the same mistakes.

“We cannot wait like we did in 2011 when we acted too late,” he said. “We need to deal with this today – if we don’t this drought will turn into a famine.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

The drought has been caused by successive poor rainy seasons made worse by El Nino conditions in the Horn of Africa.

Thousands of goats and cows have perished and even camels – which are more drought-resistant – are dying.

Britain’s shadow development secretary Diane Abbott, who accompanied aid agencies on the trip, plans to raise the issue in parliament next week.

“I spoke to families who had 500 or more animals three months ago, and now are left with 20 or fewer,” she said.

“For people who rely on their animals for meat, milk and trade, it’s the equivalent of losing your entire life savings.”

The United Nations says malnutrition-related deaths have been reported in Awdal region, bordering Ethiopia, where sprawling makeshift camps have sprung up as people wait for aid to arrive.

Griffin who visited a camp at Qol Ujeed, in Awdal, said 1,200 people were living there without a single toilet. Many of their dead animals are buried around the camp.

Nimo Mohamed Abdi, a mother of three, described how she had lost all her livestock – more than 180 animals including camels – in three months.

“We were living by the coast then and the animals died so quickly, one after another, that we could do nothing with their corpses but throw them into the sea,” Griffin quoted her as saying.

The United Nations has launched a $105 million appeal.

Abbott said conditions that pastoral communities would expect to see every seven to 10 years were becoming an annual occurrence.

“With the increasing effects of climate change we need to look at how to build more resilience; more boreholes, dams, ways to collect and store rainwater.”

(Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)

April Snow Showers Bring Groans

Photo - info The graphics on this page combine WPC forecasts of fronts, isobars and high/low pressure centers with the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) depiction of expected weather type.

April snow is in the forecast for a great deal of the Northeast along with a soggy cold rain as a series of storm systems move across the northern U.S. this weekend.  This will bring the potential for strong winds and wintry weather from the Great Lakes to New England through Friday and Saturday according the National Weather Service.   

The Weather Channel predicts that most areas will see less than 6 inches of snow through late Saturday night, though moderate snow accumulations are expected from the northern Great Lakes to parts of the mid-Atlantic states generally north and west of I-95.

Given the track of offshore low pressure, little or no accumulations are expected in most of New England.

The best chance for locally more than 6 inches of snow through Saturday will be across the higher terrain of West Virginia and far western Maryland.

Numerous showers and thunderstorms will bring welcomed drought relief over parts of California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico over the next few days.  The heaviest precipitation is expected over the Sierra Nevada mountains, where snow is likely at the highest elevations.

 

Venezuela Makes Fridays Holiday to Ease Energy Crisis

enezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (L) waves next to Diosdado Cabello, deputy of Venezuela's United Socialist Party (PSUV), during the broadcast of his weekly TV program "Hitting with the Sledge Hammer" in Caracas

By Alexandra Ulmer and Corina Pons

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has decreed that all Fridays for the next two months will be holidays, in a bid to save energy in the blackout-hit OPEC country.

“We’ll have long weekends,” Maduro said in an hours-long appearance on state television on Wednesday night, announcing the measure as part of a 60-day plan to fight a power crunch.

A severe drought, coupled with what critics say is a lack of investment and maintenance in energy infrastructure, has hit the South American nation, which depends on hydropower for 60 percent of its electricity.

Venezuela’s opposition slammed the new four-day work week as reckless in the face of a bitter recession, shortages of foods and medicines, and triple-digit inflation.

The measure comes on the heels of Maduro decreeing a week-long break over Easter, ordering some shopping malls to generate their own power, and shortening daily working hours.

“For Maduro the best way to resolve this crisis is to reduce the country’s productivity,” said Caracas city councillor Jesus Armas. “Fridays are free bread and circus.”

Some Venezuelans took to social media to express their surprise. “You must be kidding???,” one Twitter user said. Many others wondered how the measure would impact schools, bureaucratic procedures and supermarkets.

It was not immediately clear how the non-working Fridays would affect the public and private sector.

The 60-day plan’s fine print will be announced on Thursday, said Maduro during the television program, which included music, dancing and giant pictures of late leader Hugo Chavez.

“I think we can overcome this situation without increasing fares or rationing,” added Maduro.

(Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Tom Hogue)

Drought Protest Turns Violent

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine police opened fire as a protest by thousands of rice farmers who lost their crops turned violent on Friday, killing one and wounding about a dozen, a leader of a farming group said.

About 6,000 farmers blocked a portion of the main highway in North Cotabato province on the southern island of Mindanao, demanding government assistance after drought linked by some to El Nino hit hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland.

“Loud bursts of gunfire erupted,” Norma Capuyan, leader of a farmers’ group, told reporters. “There was heavy volume of fire. We ran to a church compound and the police surrounded us.”

A farmer died on the spot and about a dozen others were wounded in the legs and shoulders, Capuyan said, adding the police first tried to disperse them with water cannon but started shooting when they held their ground.

North Cotabato Governor Emmylou Mendoza said about 20 police were wounded when the farmers attacked them with sticks and stones. She said the first shot was fired by the protesters.

The police issued a statement saying it was investigating.

“Any violation of national police rules and regulations shall be meted (out) with the appropriate penalty,” national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor said in a statement.

The protest began on Wednesday when farmers barricaded the highway in Kidapawan, demanding a dialogue with the governor and the release of 15,000 sacks of rice she had promised to them as relief.

The agriculture ministry said more than 300,000 hectares of farmland had been affected by drought, causing loses of about 5.3 billion pesos ($115.09 million) in rice and corn. It said the effects of El Nino were minimal.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato and Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Aid agencies brace for devastating Mongolian ‘dzud’ this winter

ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) – Global aid agencies are responding to a call for assistance by Mongolia as harsh winter weather raises fears for the safety and livelihoods of the country’s traditional pastoralists, who have already been hit hard by a drought last year.

Dry weather has scorched most of Mongolia’s wheat crop and now mass animal deaths due to a freezing winter, locally known as “dzud”, are threatening more pain for the country, where farming accounts for about 13 percent of the economy. The last dzud in 2009-2010 killed 9.7 million of the country’s livestock, according to the National Emergency Agency of Mongolia.

While the government has not yet declared the current winter a natural disaster, it has warned the situation could get worse. So far, a drop in temperatures to minus minus 67 Fahrenheit has killed nearly 200,000 livestock.

The weather and grazing conditions are already worse than they were in the previous dzud, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a statement, citing the Mongolian Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

“Usually for the dzud, the most devastation is observed in March, April and May,” Garid Enkhjin, national program coordinator for the IFRC in Mongolia, told Reuters.

The IFRC said it has launched an emergency appeal for $835,000 to assist 25,500 Mongolian herders, who are at risk of losing their livestock and livelihoods due to the extreme winter.

Currently, 80 percent of Mongolia is under snow, making it difficult for nomadic families to travel along centuries-old pasture routes to find food for their livestock. Aggravating the situation is the fact that herders can live up to 31 miles from urban settlements and many are without cars.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has said it plans to provide trucks to get aid to families’ doorsteps at some of the most-difficult-to-reach areas.

“We want to relieve the burden of that last mile of distance to the most affected,” Ben Hemingway, USAID’s regional adviser, said on phone from Bangkok.

In the worst affected districts, sheep and other livestock have started dying. Many herders are trying to sell their animals while they are still alive, leading to an oversupply of livestock that has driven down market prices.

Although the death toll for animals so far is far less than in 2009, “the impact on the people is more or less the same”, said Enkhjin. “Livelihoods will be impacted immediately and have devastating effects.”

(Reporting by Terrence Edwards; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Weather-weary Indian farmers resort to selling blood for income

JHANSI, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Karna, a farmer from Badgaon village in northern India, has few options but to sell his blood for money, after persistent drought left him unable to live off his land.

The farmer, now 60, began commuting an hour and a half from his village to Jhansi town in Uttar Pradesh state for a job that paid little money.

“I was working as a labourer in Jhansi for survival,” said Karna, who goes by one name. “When my son fell ill, I had no other option but to sell my blood for his treatment.”

The hospital took almost two bottles of his blood and gave him 1,200 rupees ($17.50).

For many farmers in this part of Bundelkhand, blood is the new cash crop – a source of guaranteed income as they exhaust other ways of making ends meet.

In India, blood donors are not usually paid. But some hospitals buy blood, even though it is against the law.

Bundelkhand, a hilly region divided between the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, has struggled with extreme weather in the past few years.

Drought, hailstorms, unseasonal rainfall and most recently an unusually warm winter have played havoc with crop yields, making farming unviable for many.

Unemployment has soared, and locals are leaving the rural belt to work as unskilled labour in nearby urban areas.

Financial assistance provided by the authorities has failed to achieve much on the ground, as it is far lower than farmers’ losses.

Farmer Lakhan Ahirwar, 61, relies on intermittent labouring jobs to get through dry spells. But when work is scarce, selling his blood is the most reliable source of income.

“I could not find any work for almost five days,” he said. “What should I do? I had to feed my children.”

Rajendra Singh, a prominent water conservationist and winner of the Stockholm Water Prize, said it was “a matter of grave concern that farmers from many areas in Bundelkhand (have) sold their blood due to successive droughts”.

HIDDEN PLIGHT

Ahirwar, who once earned enough by selling tomatoes, potatoes and chillies grown on his 7 acres, is no longer in a position to provide two meals a day for his family.

His only son migrated to New Delhi with his pregnant wife.

“Even during the eighth month of her pregnancy she had to work as a labourer in Delhi, as they had no other source of income for survival,” said the farmer.

Tourists from all over the world who flock to Bundelkhand to visit Khajuraho, a world heritage site famous for its temples adorned with erotic carvings, are largely unaware of the plight of local farmers.

The region has received below-average rains since 2007, and is now facing its third successive year of drought. Agricultural production has declined substantially and livestock are suffering too.

Crops in nearly half the districts of Madhya Pradesh have been hit by insufficient rainfall, the state government says.

In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, the situation is even worse, with 69 out of 71 districts receiving below-average rains in 2015, according to the India Meteorological Department.

Last year, unseasonably heavy rains and hailstorms devastated crops at the ripening stage in April and May in Bundelkhand. That was followed by drought in August and September, and a warm winter.

The freak winter badly affected the rabi crop, sown during the winter months, on around 40 percent of India’s farmland.

TWO SUICIDES PER DAY

The negative effects have pushed some farmers to commit suicide, even as state governments scramble to ease the agrarian crisis.

More than 3,200 farmers in Bundelkhand alone have killed themselves in the last five years, according to official records. Crop losses and worries over debt are the main reasons.

Local leader Shivnarain Singh Parihar of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (Indian Farmers’ Union) said around two farmers per day, on average, are committing suicide in Bundelkhand.

Many farmers are forced to borrow money at exorbitant interest rates from private money lenders to buy seeds and fertiliser.

“They are in debt but can’t repay (it) and face harassment by lenders. So they are taking the extreme step of ending their lives,” said Parihar, who fights for local farmers’ rights.

He himself has given money to the families of farmers who committed suicide, because they had nothing left to prepare for a funeral.

BEGGING ON THE STREET

Parihar said Bundelkhand farmers were facing a hunger crisis, and state governments had failed to provide relief.

In late January, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said all possible help would be provided to farmers in areas with a rainfall deficit.

The state government said it had already deposited around $550 million in farmers’ accounts. But in Uttar Pradesh, little aid has been offered.

Those lucky enough to receive some money say it is not enough.

For the elderly who cannot find work in the cities, selling blood and begging are perhaps the only choices left.

“I have two children and both of them are now working as labourers. I am too old to do anything, so I am begging to survive,” said 80-year-old Moolchand, looking at passersby through sunken eyes. He gets little more than $1 a day.

Around 100 farmers from his village of Badgaon, home to 4,000 people, have resorted to begging amid the repeated droughts.

“Farming is a curse in Bundelkhand,” Moolchand said tearfully. “No one cares for us – we will die one day in the absence of any help from the government.”

(Reporting by Shuriah Niazi; editing by Megan Rowling)

Strong El Nino’s Impacts Expected to Stretch into 2016

This year’s El Niño remains on track to be one of the three strongest in the past 65 years, according to an update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

El Niño is a weather phenomenon that occurs when part of the Pacific Ocean is warmer than usual. It sets off a far-reaching ripple effect that brings atypical weather throughout the world.

El Niño is already being blamed for Ethiopia’s worst drought in 50 years, for amplifying seasonal rains that brought devastating floods to India and for multiple other cases of extreme weather.

The latest update, published Thursday, indicates that El Niño “has matured,” though its effects are expected to last throughout the winter before ultimately weakening in the summer of 2016.

That backs earlier findings from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which reported Tuesday that although water temperatures were still near record values, the weather pattern had shown some signs of easing. But the bureau also forecast El Niño’s impacts would be felt well into 2016.

Generally, NOAA meteorologists expect the South should receive more precipitation than usual, while the North should receive a less-than-normal amount of precipitation. It’s also generally expected to be hotter in the West and North while colder in the Southern Plains and Gulf Coast.

That’s not all-inclusive, though.

A barrage of rainstorms killed two people in Oregon and led the governor of Washington to declare a state of emergency this week. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, a climate scientist at Stanford University, Daniel Swain, said that the rainfall in that region was off to a record start.

“Of all the years in which there was a strong El Niño present in the tropical Pacific Ocean, this is the wettest start to any of those years that we’ve observed in the Pacific Northwest,” Swain told the newspaper.

The most potent El Niño on record occurred in 1997-98, and CNBC reported the weather pattern had a global economic impact of up to $45 billion that year. Beyond bringing unusual weather, strong El Niños have been known to impact agriculture, fish catches and public health.

The next three-month seasonal outlook for this year’s El Niño is due to be published on Dec. 17.