Some rain can stop a drought, too much can cause a mudslide

Yesterday we learned that the rain came back to Kenya to quench the country of it's drought. The rains might be coming too fast and hard, as we now see warnings of flooding and mudslides. Action Aid along with Kenya's Emergency Sector Response Plan say flooding could displace 100,000 people.

From this press release that we found at Reuters Alert net, we read more about the warning.

Thousands will be left homeless as floods in Kenya are predicted to follow the country’s worst-ever drought.

The rains have failed in Kenya since 2007 resulting in a prolonged drought with over 10 million people in need of food aid, according to the UN.

The heavy rains in Kenya have started falling and are expected to lead to flooding in different parts of the country, trigger landslides, and make access to some areas impossible. According to scenarios developed in Kenya’s Emergency Sector Response Plan, developed by the government in collaboration with UN and NGOs, the floods will displace 100,000 people and directly affect 1,000,000 people.

Urgent need

There will be urgent need of supplies such as food, shelter and clean water. Above normal rains will bring a sharp increase in child diseases, in particular respiratory infections and diarrhoea. Heavy rains could hurt pastoral livelihoods, especially through increased livestock deaths caused by sudden changes in temperature and grazing conditions. Urban slum areas risk being affected by flash flooding.

As further heavy rains are expected, ActionAid is also preparing for more severe flooding across a wider area by providing humanitarian assistance to those displaced by the floods, as well as those people who have no access to safe water and sanitation services because of the floods.

The effects of conflicts, droughts and floods continue to undermine communities, weakening their ability to cope, and putting lives and livelihoods at risk.

ActionAid's response

ActionAid Kenya Country Director Jean Kamau said: “We used to have regular droughts every 10 years or so. In the 1970s we started having droughts every seven years; in the 1980s they came about every five years and in the 1990s we were getting droughts every two or three years. Since 2000 we have had three major droughts and several dry spells. Now they are coming almost every year.”

She continued, “ActionAid is distributing food in two areas of Isiolo and Mwingi in the Eastern Province under the World Food Programme, where 258,000 people receive food monthly.”

ActionAid is also carrying out activities in Sericho in the North East by providing water to 6,000 drought stricken people, buying animals and providing the meat as relief and providing supplementary food for 2,000 children in the worst affected areas in the Rift Valley and Coast.

Increase in requests for Indian child sponsorships

It's not often we report on two press releases in a row, but those are the stories that just happen to strike out fancy today.

Child sponsoring agency Action Aid is reporting a spike in requests for giving money to children in India. This increase started with the award winning success of "Slumdog Millionaire"

In this press release from Action Aid that we found in Reuters Alert Net, the agency tells us about the flood of requests.

With Slumdog mania sweeping the country, the charity ActionAid is having to rush the contact details of scores of Indian children to its offices in the UK.

ActionAid’s fundraising director, Richard Turner confirmed that the unprecedented surge in demand to sponsor children from India had taken the charity by surprise. He said: “We’re calling it the slumdog effect. We haven’t seen such a high level of interest in one country for a long time.”

On average, ActionAid will field just over 500 enquiries a week for child sponsorship.

But the week following the film’s success at the BAFTAS saw the number of enquires rocket to a staggering 1,400 with many specifically asking about children in India.

And since sweeping the board at the Oscars, the film’s effect has continued with ActionAid receiving more and more enquiries about Indian children every day.

Richard Turner continued: “Child sponsorship has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and is one of the most rewarding ways of giving.

“Sponsors’ money helps towards securing a decent education, better health care and economic security for children and the communities in which they live.”

Open Markets push fishing communities into poverty

from Reuters Alert Net

Source: ActionAid - UK
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

Hundreds of local fishing communities are being pushed into poverty in Pakistan due to over fishing by international trawlers.

The warning comes in a report - Taking the Fish – claiming that poor fishing communities in developing countries worldwide could be devastated by moves to open up fishing markets as part of the latest WTO trade talks.

Pakistani fisher groups say trawlers from China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan encroach on their local waters and use giant fishing nets to scoop up and deplete fish stocks under Pakistan’s policy of opening up its waters to international fleets.

Coastal communities say their right to fish is being violated. They report dramatically reduced catches of local species and now face widespread debt, hunger and deprivation.

"The people are starving," says Tahira Ali, deputy general secretary of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum in Karachi. "They don’t have bread to eat and they weep when they come home without fish at night."

Rogue trawlers are accused of using damaging nets and of indiscriminately catching and dumping huge quantities of young, unwanted, or dead fish at sea – leaving less for locals to catch.

"The trawlers have nets one to three kilometres in length, and the mouth of the net is equal to three American 'Statues of Liberties'," says Mohammad Ali Shah, chair of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum. "They catch all types of fish, and when they sort them 90% is discarded."

Some 90,000 tonnes of fish caught off the coast of Pakistan were exported to China, Japan, the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Germany, the US and UK during 2004.

Aftab Alam Khan, head of ActionAid's trade campaign, says: "Pakistan's fisher folk go to bed hungry because of predatory trawlers moving in as a result of Pakistan’s drive for more trade and exports.

"This case highlights the appalling effects on poor people of unfairly opening up fishing markets. The government must urgently protect the rights of coastal communities."

As G33 trade ministers meet in Jakarta today (Wednesday), ActionAid warns there are moves to cut fish tariffs in the WTO talks, resulting in increased exports and further depletion of fish stocks.

"Rich nations must ditch their aggressive plans on fish tariffs at the WTO, otherwise the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of poor fisher folk could be jeopardised," said Alex Wijeratna, ActionAid campaigner and author of the report.

[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

Finance ministers urged to act on G8 poverty pledges

from Action Aid

Here is a link to a report from Action Aid of the UK. It examines the actions of the G8, with the upcoming meeting hosted in Germany. What follows is a press release from Action Aid....

Germany’s ambitions to help Africa at the G8 summit in June could be undermined by the inaction of the group’s finance ministers, ActionAid warns in a report released today (8 February 2007).

The report’s author Tom Sharman said: “The success of the Heiligendamm summit depends on preparatory work by the finance ministers. So far, they have done very little about this year’s Africa agenda. But an even bigger worry is the unfinished business from Gleneagles in 2005.”

A doubling of aid by 2010, and universal access to Aids treatment by the same date, are among the Gleneagles pledges that the charity says could still be achieved if finance ministers initiate the necessary planning when they meet in Essen, Germany this week.

At Gleneagles the EU nations, the US, Japan and Canada made commitments which, by 2010, would amount to an extra $50bn a year of aid.

ActionAid says that nearly two years on, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US have made no plans to meet the 2010 target, and on current trends will miss it by a wide margin.

In 2005 it was the finance ministers who agreed the goal of universal access to treatment for HIV by 2010, later adopted by the heads of government at Gleneagles. But poor countries are still waiting for the G8 to set a funding plan for reaching the goal. 1.6m people now receive treatment for Aids but a further 5.2m need it.

Aditi Sharma, coordinator of ActionAid’s international HIV and Aids campaign said: “Since G8 leaders made this pledge in 2005, Aids has claimed more than four million lives. 2007 is the G8’s final opportunity to make universal access by 2010 a reality. The finance ministers must now follow up their commitments with real money.”

ActionAid’s report ‘From poverty of ambition to ambition on poverty’ examines the G8’s performance on international development issues including HIV and Aids, aid and debt, trade, climate change, and reform of the IMF and World Bank.