Famine in Chad
El Nino in Africa - Famine in Chad. In Northern Chad, near the town of Oum Hadir (around 800 km from Chad’s Capital, N’Dejamena), there is a village of 120 people. Jumana, lives there. She is a mother with five children but lost one to hunger. She says,' Four years ago, due to hunger, I lost a child. And my Father also died of hunger. When I think of what that child went through before it died, it makes me feel very bad. I try not to think about it.' One of her daughters, Yasmin, aged 6, survives on a tiny amount of food each day. We asked her to place in a bowl all she would eat that day. It was a child's handful of rice which had been obtained by taking grain and seed from underground ant's nests. Jumana stressed that in such difficult times the people had to take extreme measures to survive. She explained that her children were always hungry because the rains were late coming and had then ended two weeks early. Then the local river had dried up for the first time in living memory. Also the temperature which was normally 36deg was around the 46-50degree mark. During October, the harvest should have been beginning bringing to an end a five month period of hunger . Instead, families were having to gather reeds to make bread baskets to sell at market - although the baskets take five days to weave and only sell for the equivalent of two family meals. Jumana also said that the villagers were planting crops out of season as this was their only hope with the normal harvest failing. The village chief reported,' If the rains don't come next year in the way they did not come this year it is total despair and hopelessness. All we can do is pray and face God. I have many people in my house - my own family and my father. I have only one bag of food at home. For the whole year I need fifeen bags.' When the village chief was told that scientists believe that the global climate is changing due to warming caused by carbon emissions he said,' I did not know this before- I thought it was coming from God! The pollution is too bad. We have no access to the people who are polluting the environment. If we had access to them we would go straight to them and tell them to stop the pollution.' He also explained how hunger made leading the community harder. ' A local proverb is - a hungry man doesn't have ears. This means when you are hungry you will not listen. It makes` people act bad. It makes people who are very good begin stealing.' Jumana confirmed,' I have seen so many meetings in the village - people trying hopelessly to save the situation, but they could not. But we have come to the end of our ideas. We even dreamed that our children could go to school. But now everybody has given up the dream in the village. Finally, Tedirksia Silas, Secretary of the National Office of Rural Development for the Ministry of Agriculture, Chad Government reported,' The drought this year is very alarming. We have physical indicators showing that things are very bad. First, we do not have enough rainfall. Up to the 10th of October we`had 384 mm of rain in 7 days, against 428mm in the same period last year. The rain started very late- it was the 2nd semester when the rain began fully. Normally it begins in June or early July and continue until the end of October. This year it did not begin until August and ended in September. The late arrival of the rain and the early stoppage have caused brutal problems. The negative effects and impact of this drought will not be felt fully until early 2016.
Over Fishing in Tanzania
Dar es Salaam at dawn one day last week. The 15 young men on the old dhow dropped anchor and heaved their catch over the side for others to run it across the beach to where hundreds of traders milled. Within an hour of landing in eastern Africa’s largest sh market, Home Boy’s sh, crabs, prawn, lobsters, tuna, squid and shark pups were being sold in impromptu auctions, along with the catches of several dozen other boats. But it was another disappointing voyage for skipper Peter Damasi and his crew. The heavy boat with a poor engine and no sail could not travel far. It spent most of its time in the shallow seas and reefs between Dar es Salaam and Maa island, six hours away. They caught a few large red snappers and an eel, but the catch was small. It commanded a good price but, says Damasi, it was close to the full moon, which traditionally makes it harder to sh, and Home Boy used 60 litres of diesel. The crew would have earned just a few dollars for their long days and nights’ work. Nasser Ismael, one of Kivukoni market’s six board members, says he is both pleased and fearful about the situation. “The market is thriving. Fish have never been more in demand. Ten years ago we had 10,000 people coming here every day. Now it’s 15,000. Over 150 boats come regularly and we are expanding. We export sh to Singapore. But the sh are disappearing, the catches are poor and the sh are much smaller than they used to be.” H is concerns are shared by Mapunda “Mr Star” Stamili, director of the nearby Star Fish food supply company. “We used to see 50kg tuna, and big kingsh, large sharks,” says Stamili. “We still get barracuda, dorado, red snapper, but they are not so big these days. The big sh are now only in the deep sea and small boats cannot go there.” According to global species database FishBase, Tanzania has some of the world’s richest shing grounds, with more than 1,700 species recorded in its waters. Of these, 47 are commercially important, 69 are found only in deep water and 171 are threatened. With such resources, Tanzania should not need to import sh, but overshing is depleting stocks, raising prices and threatening food security. “It is a disgrace for a country like Tanzania to import sh, while there are plenty of species that could meet sh demand in the country,” says Abduallah Ulega, deputy minister for livestock and sheries. Despite the number of shing boats increasing by nearly 20% in ve years to 66,000, the country recorded a sharp decline in catches, from 390,000 tonnes a year on average, to 360,000 tonnes in 2017, says the government. In 2016, Tanzania’s total demand was about 730,000 tonnes of sh, of which about 50% came from salt water and the rest from Lake Victoria and the growing number of sh farms. The shortfall is made up with sh from China and elsewhere. Il legal operations and overshing are taking a toll despite rich seas Tanzania caught in a spiral The Guardian Weekly · 21 Sep 2018 · John Vidal Dar es Salaam 1/7/2019 Tanzania caught in a spiral https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-guardian-weekly/20180921/281681140787404 2/2 Illegal, unreported and unregulated shing by artisan, commercial and deep-sea shing is thought to be taking as much as 20% of the country’s sh, costing the economy $400m a year, says the UN. The combination of booming demand, high prices and what should be abundant seas has encouraged illegal shing, says a Botswana-based NGO, Stop Illegal Fishing, funded by European and US donors. The easiest method used by illegal shers is “blast shing”, using dynamite or homemade bottle bombs made from fertiliser and kerosene. A single explosion can kill as much as 400kg of sh in a radius of 30.4 metres, worth up to $1,800, but will also destroy a reef. California-based conservation group Sea Shepherd Global is now working with Tanzanian government agencies to patrol Indian Ocean waters with a new 55km/h cutter-class ship, the Ocean Warrior. A three-month operation resulted in the arrest of the owners and operators of two trawlers for illegal shark nning, the conscation of 27 dhows for smuggling and the ning of 19 vessels. Fines of more than $8m were levied on foreign shing vessels. “It’s happening all over Africa,” says Damasi, in Kivukoni market. “As the big sh disappear, we are forced to catch smaller sh. But by wiping out the smaller sh, which have not had time to reproduce, we are threatening the species’ survival.” ‘The sh are disappearing. The catches are poor and the sh are much smaller’