Sizing up Kenya’s 2009 drought

Kenya’s worst drought in living memory has been overshadowed by political and economic crises and the destruction of the Mau Forest. Now, with 10 million people short of food, the drought has captured national attention.

Over half a million people have left their homes in Kenya’s rangelands in search of forage. Over 100,000 people have fled Wajir for Ethiopia and Somalia. The Uaso Nyiro River, lifeline for the pastoralists of Samburu and Isiolo Districts, has dried. Thousands of herders have moved onto highland pastures. Over 38,000 cattle have died of starvation, disease and cold on Mt Kenya alone. A quarter of the children in the worst hit areas are malnourished and schooling throughout the pastoral areas has been disrupted. Scores of pastoralists have died in clashes over pasture and water. Several security personnel have been killed battling rustlers and bandits. Scores of elephants, giraffe and zebra have been poached in Shaba National Reserve and tourist lodges have been closed due to the insecurity.

The mass migration has slowed the impact of drought by a few months, but cattle deaths are now rising fast. Based on current trends, if the drought continues until October, a quarter million cattle will die in Kajiado and 3 million cattle countrywide. That amounts to a staggering Ksh 75 billion ($1 billion) loss, based on pre-drought prices and excludes sheep and goat deaths.

The 2009 drought is a tragedy for millions of subsistence farmers, herders, the environment and wildlife in the rangelands that cover three quarters of Kenya,.

Loath to sell cattle if there is any hope of rains, pastoralists have been caught with large emaciated herds. Sale prices have plunged. A few weeks ago a cow sold for 12,000/=. Today the price has dropped below 2,000/= and is falling fast. Wealthier herders are buying grass and crop residues to spare their best milk cows and breeding bulls. The poorest herders are dumping animals for as little as 500/= to avoid being left with nothing.

The 2009 drought is worse than anything I’ve seen in 40 years of research in Kenya’s rangelands. The strong reciprocal bonds that held pastoral societies together in past droughts are breaking down. Members of families, clans and sections are moving individually, wherever they can find grazing and water. Herders are crowding into the Nairobi suburbs from Amboseli, Sultan Hamud, Kajiado, Magadi and as far as Narok. Most families will lose their animals far from home. The dislocation is harshest on women and children left behind by the men out searching for forage and jobs or selling emaciated animals.

The rains will bring no respite. Cold and damp, bloat and disease will kill thousands more animals. It will be months more before animals recover, give birth and produce milk for herders. By then public attention and emergency aid will have ebbed, leaving pastoralists harder pressed than before the drought. Most families will have to sell animals to survive the post-drought food gap, further depressing herd recovery. Families without sufficient animals to recover will be forced to sell their land and move to towns at a time when jobs are shrinking and food costs rising. With drought expected to slash Kenya’s maize harvest from 30 million bags to 15 million, food costs are sure to rise higher yet. The drought will also deepen Kenya’s poverty gap: rich herders, farmers and land speculators are already snapping up pastoral lands at bargain prices.

If it is still too early to weigh the full social and economic impact of drought, one thing is clear: Kenya’s 2009 drought is destroying any hope of pastoralists resuming a traditional way of life. Even the most conservative elders are talking of switching from subsistence milk herds to beef cattle that fetch triple the market price. But the switch will be long and hard even for progressive families. It will take years to build a commercial herd and restore depleted pastures.

The year 2009 will be as transformative for Kenya’s rangelands as the Dust Bowl was for the American prairies in the 1930s. Then, a similar combination of overworked land and drought scattered tens of tens of thousands of small-hold farmers and ranchers from two million acres of degraded prairie in search of jobs at the height of economic depression. Kenya faces drought with far more people on the land, a far higher growth rate and greater poverty. We also have a fraction of the government support President Franklin. Roosevelt marshaled though his New Deal rescue plan and the Civilian Conservation Corps he dispatched to help ailing farmers.

The impact of prolonged drought is also taking a toll of the land, natural resources and wildlife. The picture in southern Kajiado where I have monitored grasslands since 1967 is dire and repeated all across the rangelands. Here pastures are more denuded than I’ve ever seen them. Tall sedges in the permanent swamps--used in droughts by wildlife and livestock--have been grazed to a lawn. Buffalo, zebra and wildebeest are grazing belly-deep in search of forage and hundreds are dying of starvation and disease. Elephant calves, unable to follow their mothers into the swamps, are starving. Elephants are also dying in Laikipia, Tsavo and Samburu. Kenya Wildlife Service is having to feed emaciated hippos at Mzima Springs. Rangers are pushing cattle out of parks by day and herders are driving them ever deeper in at night.

The poverty and desperation among rangeland families is measured in wildlife poached for food and cash, and in a surge of trees felled for charcoal. Large acacias have been hacked down over much of the rangelands. Bushes once too small to be profitable are now being cut for charcoal. Sheet and gulley erosion is spreading down slopes across the rangelands where bush once protected the soils. The cost to Kenya as a whole is measured in the sedimentation of our rivers and lakes, the loss of fisheries and reduced hydroelectricity for our national grid.

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