Turning the vicious cycle virtuous in the greater Horn of Africa

The people, who live in the arid and semi arid areas of the Horn of Africa are subjected and vulnerable to many risks, the most obvious one being drought. Whenever a drought occurs, emergency appeals will lead to a coordinated effort to respond to the situation to try and save lives. Conventional responses to drought are not always sufficiently effective though and it is often observed that development interventions and emergency responses in a certain area are treated as separate issues. Droughts are regarded as major disaster events that occur periodically and need to be responded to as they develop, until the next drought comes along. Using this approach, development activities are halted during the drought, while there are costly delays in putting the disaster responses in place.
This approach is reflected in the entire machinery and structures of Government Agencies and Aid Organizations, in which development and emergency aid are separated all the way from national to community level.
It would be more effective to combine development and relief and thus:
Plan for long term investment to reduce risks and
Protect people’s acute needs when necessary.
This is the essence of Drought Cycle Management, a toolkit, developed in 2004 for the dry lands of the Greater Horn of Africa by CORDAID, IIRR and Acacia Consultants Ltd. with the active participation of actors from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan and Tanzania. The toolkit helps people - and the governments and development agencies that serve them – to plan for drought. It aims at strengthening people’s livelihoods throughout the drought cycle, which is divided into four stages, i.e. normal, alert, emergency and recovery, although in reality it is difficult to strictly separate them. More often than not there are overlaps. The principle though remains to implement activities that match the realities on the ground, i.e. doing the right things at the right time.

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Ironically enough, the same people who suffer drought related disaster, may face the opposite kind of disaster just a short time later: floods. Floods occur more frequently and more intense now than before as the local effects of global climate change are becoming apparent. The Horn of Africa is particularly affected as more frequent periods of drought and changing patterns of rain, resulting in more irregular and serious floods are witnessed. And as the mean temperatures are expected to rise, people will migrate to cooler areas in the future, increasing the pressure on land and its resources. Poor people will suffer more as their options to deal with the changing environment are limited.
Like in the case of a drought emergency, floods will trigger emergency responses much in the same way as described above, separated from ongoing development efforts. When applied in isolation from ongoing development efforts, relief aid may save lives but may not necessarily save livelihoods. In fact, the opposite may happen:
People may become dependent on relief supplies.
Free handouts interfere with local market mechanisms.
Relief distorts traditional coping mechanisms and does not help reduce vulnerabilities.
Relief distribution centers encourage inappropriate settlement.
Relief is expensive, while money may be better spent on reducing people’s vulnerabilities.
Relief responses by external actors normally come late, while early warnings often do not trigger timely responses.
Relief operations are costly and it becomes increasingly difficult to raise the massive funds needed to distribute emergency supplies & food, treat severely malnourished people and carry out other relief interventions. And they will have to be repeated again during each successive emergency with no long term benefits for the communities.
Instead, preparing for and managing recurrent disasters makes more economic and humanitarian sense. It is much cheaper to prepare for a disaster and mitigate it, rather than to response to an emergency situation.
Studies by Acacia Consultants Ltd. during the period 1999 – 2001 in Turkana, Kenya, indicate for example that prompt responses to early warnings in combination with drought preparedness and appropriate relief could have reduced the costs by half, from $344 million to some $172 million.
Concepts like Community Based Drought Cycle Management and Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction will not only be cheaper than dealing with the ensuing emergencies. By supporting livelihoods, the effects of disaster may be reduced as well as the consequences of a next drought or flood.
Here follow principles of these concepts, which could indeed prove to be more efficient and effective in dealing with recurrent disasters:
They are participatory in process and content.
Activities are responsive to the community’s felt and real needs.
The approach is integrated and activities are not implemented in isolation from the community’s environment.
The approach is proactive and emphasizes on preparation and prevention.
The concepts are comprehensive and holistic and include “hardware” as well as “software” activities.
They are also multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary.
Communities are empowered as their capacity and control to response increase.
The concepts are developmental and reduce vulnerabilities, while contributing to long term development and poverty reduction.
It is important for donor organizations to invest in the capacities of local government, NGO’s and the communities they support to become effective in managing disaster at community level, which relies on:
Timely information and planning, including needs assessment.
Appropriate timing of response activities, including contingency planning.
Appropriate interventions: Doing the right thing at the right time.
Institutional framework and coordination structures.

The concepts of Drought Cycle Management and Disaster Risk Reduction are being accepted by a growing number of donor and development organizations, which is encouraging. Cordaid support to indigenous NGOs implementing Drought Cycle Management and Drought Preparedness activities in Kenya and Ethiopia for example has been made possible through substantial funding by the humanitarian affairs office of the European Union, ECHO and the Climate Fund of the Dutch Post Code Lottery.

This article appeals for a coordinated effort to relate recurring emergency responses to ongoing development efforts so that communities, NGO’s, donor organizations and Governments join hands and find solutions that work in order to be better prepared for a next emergency situation.

For more information:
www.cordaid.nl
Cordaid Programme Management Unit Ethiopia: # 251-11-6632410
Cordaid Programme Management Unit Kenya: # 254-722203095