Word: droughts
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Although India has devoted $810 million to drought relief, all too often the assistance has been haphazardly administered. At one time 40% of the trucks used for transporting water into stricken areas were out of commission. Nor has there been much long-term planning. Although the state of Rajasthan has seen almost no water since 1978, the authorities have been slow in implementing schemes to distribute water. So far, says a Madras journalist, "man is the villain...
ETHIOPIA. The long lines of gaunt, potbellied children with matchstick limbs are dispiritingly familiar. During the 1973 drought, 200,000 Ethiopians died; this year's disaster is even more pervasive. Gondar province, once known as Ethiopia's grain basket, has become a shriveled wasteland. Where rain has fallen, there are no seeds to plant; where it has not, there is no wood for building, and nothing but straw and dung for fuel. In addition, the remoteness of the area makes communication difficult and the provision of supplies almost impossible. In some camps refugees must either wait 36 hours...
Reminded of the horrors of the 1973 drought, which helped to bring down Emperor Haile Selassie, the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam has succeeded in keeping casualties down by activating a relief commission that has already resettled some 10,000 victims and reforested remote, soil-eroded areas. But such efforts can create new problems: for example, after being uprooted, people without an inborn immunity to malaria often prove more vulnerable to the disease. Meanwhile, international relief agencies charge that supplies are falling into the hands of government troops instead of beleaguered civilians. The rains that finally began last month...
SOUTH AFRICA. Rural areas, constituting 70% of the nation, have for two years been weathering a drought that is in some areas the worst in more than two centuries. Homeowners in Johannesburg are not permitted to refill their swimming pools, while residents of Durban must now wash their clothes and nurse their flowers with bathwater. But the effects of drought are most urgent in the black tribal homelands. In Zululand, 200,000 cattle without grazing land are expected to die; 98% of the 68,000 wild donkeys in Bophuthatswana will be shot on government orders so that more pasture will...
Even as South Africa has been drained of $1 billion in foreign exchange, the consequences of drought are rippling out to its neighbors. The country has traditionally exported up to a million tons of corn each year to other African nations. This year, however, South Africa will have to import corn from the U.S., Argentina and Taiwan...