Table of Contents

Introduction

Review of Past Interventions to Mitigate Drought

Drought Policy of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

The Need for an Integrated Drought Management Strategy

Programme to Mitigate and Prevent the Impact of Drought

Conclusion

Introduction

The farming systems common to the dryland environments of Africa are diverse, complex and changing and they usually have restricted agricultural potential. Their production environments are characterised by low water availability, nutrient-poor soils, and severe pest and disease problems coupled with poor availability of inputs that make food production an unpredictable enterprise. Despite these elements of risk, most of the people work in agriculture. They are committed to making the best of the resources at their disposal.

Over time, people living in these dryland areas have evolved complex production systems to minimise the risks posed by extreme climatic conditions such as drought. In spite of low returns to land, labour and capital, farmers in dryland areas have long maintained a suite of indigenous strategies and options to manage risk and to deal with poor overall productivity. Various forces, however, are contributing to the degradation of the natural resources in these areas. These include climatic variability, increasing population density, poor agricultural practices and the inappropriate use of land and water resources. Such forces heavily influence the susceptibility of peoples' livelihoods to future droughts.

Agricultural drought itself is a disaster-triggering agent that exacerbates drought-related social and economic problems, which reduce society's overall livelihood security. These problems are the most severe where the economy is least diversified and virtually everyone depends either directly or indirectly on agriculture. And, it is generally acknowledged that low-resource agriculture is no longer capable of meeting the livelihood demands of rising populations in these fragile dryland environments.

Because of these conditions, governments intervene frequently in the form of emergency food relief, often supported by large amounts of donated food aid. Drought preparedness by governments has generally taken the form of creating food reserves (mainly maize) at national level to compensate for the shortfalls in production and for possible emergency relief. While these costly relief efforts have been perceived as a necessity, such short-term interventions have generally precluded support for longer-term development processes, particularly in those areas with dry climatic conditions.

Since low and erratic precipitation is the key characteristic of drylands, recurring agricultural droughts are a typical feature of dryland areas that must be reflected in governments' development strategies. Although, various governments and development partners have undertaken substantial work on drought management (prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and rehabilitation); more comprehensive and practical field level interventions adopting self-reliant approaches in managing for climatic variability are needed to support longer-term drought mitigation and prevention at a larger scale. It is to towards this end, this paper seeks to inform member countries about FAO' attempts to propose, for the Southern Africa sub-region, an integrated drought management strategy,

Review of Past Interventions to Mitigate Drought

The 1986 FAO study, "African Agriculture: the next 25 years" stressed that Africa has considerable agricultural potential but that several constraints are preventing its realisation. This study led to the approval of The International Scheme for the Conservation and Rehabilitation of African Lands (ISCRAL), at the 16th FAO Regional Conference for Africa in June 1990. In essence, ISCRAL was designed to assist African countries to prevent and combat land degradation. Several FAO member countries of the southern and eastern Africa region at this Conference highlighted the seriousness and extent of the various kinds of resource degradation in their countries, and requested FAO to take appropriate action.

Later, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) defined desertification as "land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations and human activities". The UNCED estimated the areas degraded to be approximately 65 percent of the total land area of Africa. UNCED called for the adoption of an "international convention to combat desertification in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa ..... through effective action at all levels, supported by international co-operation and partnership arrangements, in the framework of an integrated approach which is consistent with Agenda 21 (Article 2, Part 1).

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) was signed in 1997. All parties to the CCD have an obligation to "adopt an integrated approach addressing the physical, biological, and socio-economic aspects of the process of desertification and drought". In addition, FAO activities in the follow-up to the World Food Summit (1997), whose Plan of Action includes multiple references to common objectives with UNCED, are in direct support of the objectives of this current initiative under Commitments Three and Five.

In November 1997, the (then) Southern African Development Community's (SADC) Food Security Technical and Administrative Unit (FSTAU) organised a High-Level Drought Policy Seminar in Botswana, in response to the threat of a serious regional drought following a strong El Ni�o phenomenon. The report of this seminar clearly recognised that drought in southern Africa is a normal and recurring event, and called for long-term action.

In the context of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR, 1990-2000), a Regional Meeting for Africa was held in May 1999 at the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, under the theme "Towards Disaster Reduction in the 21^st Century". Delegates at this meeting recognised in the Nairobi Declaration that "the African continent is subject to a wide range of natural hazards and suffers from natural and other disasters which have serious adverse effects on societies and national economies, as well as on critical human and material resources. In this context, communities at risk across Africa find themselves even more vulnerable because of several aggravating factors, including poverty, environmental degradation, inadequate exchange of data and information among African countries and inadequate co-ordination at the continental level."

For several decades, FAO has spearheaded agricultural improvement and rural development in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid zones ravaged by drought and desertification. These activities involved emergency and rehabilitation actions in the event of drought or other agricultural disasters, such as locust invasions; support in the formulation of policies and plans for development in the food, agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors; development of human resources particularly for rural women - and of national institutions and legislation; and the promotion of research and dissemination of appropriate technologies in the various sectors. These efforts have mostly taken the form of technical assistance projects in answer to specific requests by Member Nations.

They are also sometimes undertaken within programmes that group together projects with common priorities, such as the programme to relaunch African agriculture (involving 200 projects in 30 countries); the "fertilizer", "seed", "prevention of postharvest losses" and "food security" programmes; the action plan of the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD); the Tropical Forestry Action Plan; and many others. Numerous desertification control and drought control activities were implemented under these plans and projects, especially for soil conservation, pasture improvement, livestock improvement, small-scale irrigation, cereal storage, agroforestry, development of fuelwood resources, and also for nutrition improvement.

FAO serves as one of the main partner Organisations for the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD). Because most of the technical objectives of the CCD are directly related (if not identical) to FAO objectives for the conservation and development of dryland resources, a number of activities implemented by FAO are related to desertification and contribute to the implementation of the Convention. In 1998, over 100 FAO field projects were directly related to the assessment and control of desertification, covering a wide range of activities such as erosion control, improvement of water supply, forest and pasture management, local rural development through extension and participatory approach programmes, assistance in the implementation of national information systems and statistics and formulation of investment projects. Although the emphasis is on the African continent (half of the projects), work is in progress world-wide.

FAO's support to the CCD is technically co-ordinated by an ad hoc Interdepartmental Working Group (CCD IDWG) established in order to deal with this matter, and composed of representatives from several FAO technical divisions. A Memorandum of Co-operation (MOC) was signed in December 1998 between FAO and the Permanent Secretariat of the Convention, aimed at achieving the objectives of the Convention to Combat Desertification. This MOC comprises an extensive programme, covering: (i) support to national and regional action plans, and networks; (ii) compilation and dissemination of best practices; (iii) preparation and dissemination of awareness documents; (iv) establishment and implementation of information systems and data bases that cover technical variables related to desertification; and (v) technical support to the CCD bodies and international events.

Drought Policy of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

In the past, SADC governments intervened frequently in the form of emergency food relief, often supported by large amounts of donated food aid. Drought preparedness by governments has generally taken the form of creating food reserves at national level to compensate for the shortfalls in production and for possible emergency relief. While these costly relief efforts have been perceived as a necessity, such short-term interventions have generally precluded support for longer-term development processes, particularly in those areas with dry climatic conditions.

SADC has played a leading role in the development of drought policies and strategies in the sub-region. The recent Regional Drought Management Strategy for SADC (1999) is the result of a process of development and definition that has taken place over most of the nineties. The emphasis of drought strategies in the sub-region had been on short-term mitigation measures rather than on long term prevention programmes. However, more recently a new policy shift has emerged in which preparedness, rehabilitation, prevention and planning are key elements.

A new definition of drought, is currently proposed by SADC for distinguishing between the normal and disaster type of drought occurrence. This process forms the basis for the strategies being developed in the countries of the sub-region. Along with the acceptance that drought is a normal and recurrent natural phenomenon, new policies shift the responsibility to deal with effects of drought to the farmer or the user of the land. The policy principle is that the production system has to adapt to the occurrence of periodic drought.

As such, new policies are designed to ensure that drought relief assistance and programmes to support farmers are consistent with non-distortive market-based development policies. Compatibility between short and long term development is an important element in the new policies, in which alternative ways of supporting farmers are recommended, with the reduction of vulnerability to drought in the long term. Long term development programmes can be initiated to form part of drought relief measures, e.g. infrastructure projects, such as the building of roads, dams and other utilities, implemented during drought as food or cash for work.

However, explicit legal frameworks for managing drought are lacking or fragmented in most SADC countries. Decision making levels are often not well defined. Most countries have high level institutions providing a framework for co-ordination and implementation, but recent policies promote the creation of new and independent drought institutions and funds that are yet to be established. There seems some contradiction between the efforts of further institutionalisation of drought and the new accepted principle of increased farmers' responsibility to cope with drought.

While shortcomings of previous drought programmes are well known, the new SADC strategy paper maintains that reducing long term vulnerability to drought will require a fundamental shift in government approaches, especially towards a multidisciplinary approach in:

• promotion of drought mitigating technologies and practices;
• poverty alleviation;
• creation of an enabling policy environment; and
• adequate planning.

Progress in technology development has also been limited. Practices on the use of water resources, food and nutrition, seed multiplication, energy production, etc. need to be improved to enhance efficiency and reduce vulnerability. Although considerable progress has been achieved in poverty alleviation and policy development, there is still a lack of government capacity to achieve these goals. For instance, policies that need refinement to create an enabling environment include those that support sustainable management of natural resources, including land and water (SADC, 1999).

The Need for an Integrated Drought Management Strategy

Drought represents a serious risk to current land use and season-to-season variation in the amount and timing of rainfall and other climatic conditions is a major challenge to crop management and the applicability of new technologies. Therefore, managing for drought is about managing for the risks associated with dryland agriculture to reduce the impact of drought on household livelihoods. The increased exposure of the agricultural sector in southern Africa to drought conditions reflects the fact that current agricultural and livestock practices are out of equilibrium with the prevailing climatic conditions; farmers' strategies are chronically a step behind in responding to generally deteriorating internal and changing external conditions.