Литагент HarperCollins - How Can I Stop Climate Change - What is it and how to help

people in Kenya needed emergency food aid and millions of cattle perished following three consecutive years of failed rains. Lack of rain and grazing for animals is destroying the way of life for cattle-herders, fishermen and farmers, who find themselves competing and sometimes in conflict over a dwindling resource. Without food or crops to sell, people are struggling. Those with livestock or access to pasture have to defend it from those without. In northern Kenya, shepherds carry automatic rifles. Others survive only with the help of food aid. Some turn to the towns and cities in search of an alternative living, often leaving children with grandparents to work the land.

The early impacts of climate change are being felt by the people least responsible for bringing it on. The IPCC predicts mounting pressure on water resources, and a halving of yields from rain-fed agriculture for some African countries by 2020.

‘When I was young there were grazing fields, water, milk, blood and meat,’ says Lore Kapisa who heads a family of 20 in Turkana, Kenya. ‘But we have seen huge changes over the past ten years: our livestock have died, our grazing fields have shrunk and our water dried up.’ The people in Turkana have lived in the arid terrain in the north-west corner of Kenya by farming animals. Lore has struggled for the past ten years because of relentless drought. As water and pasture become scarcer, disputes between neighbouring groups are spiralling into violence and Lore now carries an automatic rifle to protect his herd. But rather than food aid Lore wants water, pasture and a vet. This, he says, would enable them to continue their traditional ways of life. ‘We have been sick and without food, but we are human beings capable of being productive. Food aid creates dependency and reduces us to lesser human beings.’

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