Weather Alert!

Evidence of a hidden crisis for the world's poor

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Introduction

Millions of the world's poorest people are threatened by freak weather conditions. This year's unprecedented climatic extremes brought drought to the rich world hitting agriculture in Australia and South Africa particularly hard and substantially reducing the 1983 grain harvest in the USA. England experienced its hottest July on record. But in the poor world a chain of weather disasters has brought to crisis point many societies already struggling under serious economic and social problems and, in some cases, civil war.

More than 40 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are currently suffering from the effects of flood or drought:

• In Bolivia, reports the US Agency for International Development, over a quarter of the population - one and a half million people - are severely affected by drought. In Northern Peru 700,000 people have lost their livelihood or homes in the floods: one city which normally receives about an inch of rain a year has been inundated with 156 inches.
• In the Indian state of Gujarat, writes an Oxfam Field Director, "unprecedented floods" have affected almost four million people with heavy loss of life, cattle, property and crops. The floods follow hard on the heels of a devastating cyclone and the worst drought for ten years.
• Mozambique, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has been hit by the "worst drought in many decades." This has exacerbated an already precarious agricultural system and four million people are facing serious food shortages.
• South Africa normally exports 4.5 million tons of grain to its neighbours. This year in a dramatic reversal caused by drought South Africa will have to import 1.5 million tons of grain.

Oxfam, Britain's largest overseas charity, is confronted with more requests for emergency aid than at any time in its entire 40 year history. Other international agencies report a similar experience. Aid officials cannot recall a period when so many people were faced by disasters over such a large area of the globe.

This year's extraordinary level of demands for assistance is the result of the havoc caused by abnormal weather on Third World agriculture. These come on top of heavy commitments to help refugees and victims of previous disasters.

Last year saw severe drought in many parts of the world - in some cases it was the second or third year of rain failure - but the situation is far worse this year with devastating floods compounding the problems in many areas.

The sheer scale of the effects of the global weather extremes has yet to be widely recognised. Only the more dramatic aspects of specific weather disasters have attracted international attention; widespread hardship and suffering goes unnoticed. As a leading development journalist has put it: "We are not looking at a run-of-the-mill single disaster requiring disaster relief but at the collapse of development across a whole sweep of countries so economically depressed that they cannot possibly cope themselves."

In Oxfam's view, the crisis provoked by the weather highlights the need for a fundamental reappraisal of disaster relief work - recovery in many areas could take up to five years even to return people to previous subsistence levels. Guy Stringer, Oxfam's Deputy Director General, says, "It is no longer possible to think in terms of a few months' relief work: in many countries our whole development effort must now be linked to rebuilding people's lives after these extraordinary natural disasters which have made the grinding poverty of millions even more unbearable."

Oxfam is calling on international bodies and governments to place far greater emphasis on helping the victims of disaster. While much can be done by private agencies such as Oxfam, only a concerted international effort can respond adequately to the present emergency.

Date of original publication: September 1983