Read "The Cost of War" report.
]]>While the team was at the mayor’s office, news arrived that two more bodies had been found—one of them, a 5-year old girl--which brought the number of dead to 16. Ten people remain missing.
“Seeing the devastation to the town caused by the enormous boulders, rivers of mud, and rubble that swept through I was surprised—and grateful—that the human cost wasn’t higher,” said one team member.
Living through the disaster was clearly a nightmare—the story of Emerita Rivas, 26, made that clear. The Oxfam team met her that day at the mayor’s office where she had been working for just two months when the disaster struck. Smiling and intelligent, she seemed already to be a crucial part of the local administration. She was meeting delegations, coordinating with the mayor and the secretary, and keeping tabs on where to send humanitarian aid.
Here is her account of the early morning hours of November 8 when the landslide hit:
“It was one in the morning and we heard a noise that sounded like heavy machinery that was getting close to us. But it was the mud and the rocks that were coming. We left quickly to knock on doors so that people would leave. Soon, we also heard the whistles, the sign that everyone had to get out. Ever since the earthquakes in 2001, people have been organized into eight sectors, and every sector has a leader.
“At around two in the morning, police cars and private cars started to arrive in order to bring people to the shelters, but there wasn’t anything there—the mats didn’t come until Monday. Thank God, the area where we live was not affected and we could help out during the emergency. We spent all day Sunday evacuating people. There were many injured people. People had to go up on the roofs or hang onto the walls, and those walls have broken glass in order to prevent robberies.
“Even though our neighborhood wasn’t affected, I am also sleeping in the shelter, because I am still afraid. Many people have suffered nervous breakdowns. One neighborhood and the town center ended up completely destroyed and the authorities have said that it’s not a good idea to rebuild the town.”
]]>Torrential rains the previous weekend triggered the landslide and spread devastation across El Salvador. The disaster has left 184 people dead, and in Verapaz alone, more than 800 people have sought refuge in shelters.
Oxfam has been responding to the disaster by providing hygiene kits, water tanks, stoves, and kitchen utensils. The organization is now helping about 4,200 people and assessing the damage to determine how best to provide support as communities work to recover.
]]>Cars lie twisted and half-buried in the mud.
White-capped waves appear in the torrent of water that sweeps past a gas station.
The scenes from the floods and landslides that struck El Salvador last weekend reflect a storm of almost unbelievable intensity.
“In San Vincente, more than a foot of rain fell in just four hours,” says Carolina Castrillo, regional director for Oxfam America.
These have been the deadliest rains since Central America’s storm of the century - Hurricane Mitch - struck El Salvador in 1998. More than 200 people are dead or missing, more than 2,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed, and crops that the rural population depends on for food have been obliterated.
“Where are we going to live, now that we have lost everything?” asked a woman in Verapaz, a town nearly destroyed by a landslide. “Where are we going to plant, what is going to happen to our lives?”
In the wake of Hurricane Mitch, many Salvadoran communities have joined forces with aid providers to reduce the deadly outcomes of violent storms and earthquakes. Over the past four years, Oxfam has supported local organizations to help form and train committees within the villages to operate early warning systems, develop evacuation plans, and administer first aid. This week, more than 70 Oxfam-supported community-protection committees were mobilized to help survivors reach the safety of shelters.
“Although this week’s storm was destructive, the partnership between aid providers and communities has made people less vulnerable than they were eleven years ago,” says Castrillo.
“Hurricanes, earthquakes, and landslides are all hazards in El Salvador, but the risks they pose to communities can be reduced,” she says. “That’s what we’re aiming for."
In the meantime, the needs on the ground are real and urgent, as survivors struggle to recover. Among their countless losses is peace of mind, as they live and relive the disaster. Days after the landslide, a boy from Verapaz describes his gripping fear: “I can’t speak because I feel my heart beating.”
Oxfam has built a warehouse stocked with emergency provisions in a disaster-prone area of El Salvador. In the November flood emergency, we were able to rush food, clean water, shelter materials, mattresses, first aid kits, and other essentials to shelters for displaced people, while making plans to help ensure longer-term food security when people return to their homes.
Donate now to Oxfam’s Global Emergency Response.
]]>In a survey of the area in mid-October, Oxfam staff reported that many families had lost 80 to 100 percent of their harvest this year.
“There’s no food in this community,” Francisca’s aunt Margarita Rosales, 54, says.
Lack of rain in Guatemala has reduced harvests this year, pushing up food prices in stores and creating a crisis in poor communities. The government declared a food emergency in September.
Malnutrition and chronic food shortages are not unusual in Guatemala. Lack of investment in small-scale agriculture has reduced food production over the years, and the country now has the highest rate of malnutrition among children under five in Latin America: nearly 50 percent, according to the World Food Programme. The malnutrition rate for indigenous children is higher; close to 70 percent. The Famine Early Warning System warns that 350,000 families in Guatemala are at risk this year, especially in the south, east, and central regions of Guatemala’s “dry corridor."
Many men will finish their harvest and migrate to coffee- or sugar-cane producing parts of the country to work on large plantations to earn extra money. This year such income will be more crucial than ever, for farmers in Baja Verpaz, in central Guatemala.
“We would like people to have more options than just migration,” says Gloria Gonzalez, who works with the Association of Community Health Services, known by its Spanish initials ASECSA. Oxfam is working with ASECSA and the Training Institute for Sustainable Development (IEPADES) to help farmers in Baja Verapaz survive the coming winter. Oxfam is helping these organizations in the following areas.
Oxfam is committing $269,000 to the project, which will assist nearly one thousand families in Baja Verapaz.
]]>But that’s not their only problem.
Ironically, drought can be as big a concern as the water-logged plains. If the belg rains fail between January and mid-March, nothing will grow—neither pasture for the animals nor grain for the people.
“Drought is becoming an annual problem,” said Mulugeta Kechema, executive director of the Organization for Development in Action, or ODA, an Oxfam America partner. And many families in the Jida district face an inability to obtain enough food.
That’s where sheep restocking and women’s self-help groups come in—both initiatives launched by ODA aimed at providing sustainable solutions to some of the rural poverty.
Through ODA’s program, 250 women each received five sheep and as they produce lambs, that next generation will be given to another 250 women—thereby increasing the assets of 500 women-headed households. In this region, the major source of income for families is livestock.
“The happiest thing: after one month, the sheep started giving birth. Currently there are 70 offspring,” said Kuchema, one day in August, noting that if all goes according to plan up to 90 percent of the women will each wind up with small herds of eight to 10 sheep. “This is highly sustainable.”
The reason the program is targeting women is because they are most vulnerable to the hardship erratic weather brings: They are responsible for their children and can’t easily move to new locations in search of food or work.
Tige Balcha, a 51-year-old mother from the Siba Daga locality, said it has been almost four years since there was an adequate belg rain. In the past, droughts would come every three or five years she said. Now, the main rain seems as if it’s failing almost annually.
For Birhani Demissie, ODA’s restocking of the sheep, and the chance to build a herd, has meant she can help secure her children a better future. “Because of lack of money, I’m sending my children to be hired by the well-to-do and they dropped out of school,” she said.
“Now, we’ll stop this. By selling the sheep, we purchase food. We purchase clothing. We send our children to school.”
There’s another advantage to having a small herd, too: status.
“A person with property is respected, “says Yeshi Senyi, who’s 42 and has seven children. “And he is believed. And he can get a loan. Otherwise, no one gives money to a poor person. A person with property has hope for the future—and confidence.”
In the past, women might borrow money from local lenders—up to 100 birr at a time—to cover some of their immediate need for things such as food. But the price of that loan was steep: They would have to pay interest of 20 percent. If they were late by even one day in repaying the small loans, the interest would jump to 40 percent.
Now, with the savings-and-loan groups the women are forming with ODA’s help, some of that pressure will be off. The goal of these self-help groups is to build more secure futures. Starting with some funding from ODA, the women will make regular contributions to their groups, and eventually they will have enough money to start making loans to members.
“The association we created is for development purposes, not for daily bread,” said Mulu Wodajo, 29. “This is for growth and development.”
The women are still deciding how much interest to charge their members. But one thing is clear: It will be a lot less than what they have been paying to date.
“Be strong. Work hard. Plan for the future. That’s what we say to the women,” said Kechema.
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Restocking community herds using a traditional model known as “hirbaa-dabaree” is part of that initiative. The system is based on sharing: In times of crisis, when a herding family’s animals die because of drought or disease, others in the community who are better off give the destitute family animals from their own herds, helping that family recover their losses.
DUBAF’s program, designed to help an initial 220 households, works in the same way. The first round of beneficiaries each received seven goats. When those goats produce offspring, families will give those kids to their needy neighbors, thereby helping to build up the assets of the village’s poorest residents.
“A person who does not have assets can have an opportunity to build assets,”said Boka Gababa, who also received a small herd from DUBAF. “He can raise goats and get milk. And he can meet his household needs after selling the offspring.”
For Sirba, the chance to create some security for her family followed a long string of severe challenges. Both she and two children became sick with tuberculosis. Then her husband fell into a ditch and became paralyzed, leaving Sirba as the sole bread-winner. And then, the drought and food crisis of 2008 struck—forcing the family to survive on just one meal a day.
“If I raise the goats—and God help me on this—I will get out of this problem,” Sirba said.
In Kanbi, life has become much more difficult than when Godana Gollota, 75, was a child.
“When I was a very young boy, before I got married, people depended on livestock,” he said. “Nobody farmed. They had enough milk—and food in general. When we compare the current period—even the last three years—the rain failed. It was drought. And crops failed as well.”
Added Damise Jilo, 39, “Before, we were pastoralists. Gradually we lost our livestock and started farming—and practicing farming and animal breeding side by side. But then, the crops started to fail, too. It’s very difficult.”
Determination is what drives Roba Gababa, a 70-year-old man.
“We cannot discuss about the rain. It is out of our control—only God can decide that,” he said. “But we don’t keep quiet. We have tried farming. We’ve invested in grain and we’ve seen we can get something out of the land—so we keep on trying, even though the rain is not reliable.”
Some families are irrigating, said Jilo, but it’s backbreaking work: They’re doing it by hand, lugging water to their fields in jerry cans, without the aid of pumps or pipes.
“If we can get support in this, we can do better,” said Jilo.
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A five-year drought is stretching across East Africa, pushing millions toward hunger and taking a particularly severe human toll in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Uganda.
In Ethiopia, 6.2 million people are in need of immediate food assistance.
For families of herders and part-time farmers in the Oromiya and Tigray regions, the need is acute. Malnutrition levels among the poorest of them have climbed above emergency thresholds set by the World Health Organization. In addition to those needing this emergency assistance, the Ethiopian government is helping 7.5 million other people with food and cash through its Productive Safety Net Program.
Oxfam America is responding to the new crisis with a multi-part relief plan that aims to help about 350,000 people in Tigray and Oromiya. The initiative, which needs the financial support of donors to reach all the intended beneficiaries, includes supplemental feeding for mothers and children, meals for school children, a cash-for-work program that provides families with money to buy food in exchange for labor on community projects, and veterinary care for livestock. The latter will help to ensure cattle, goats, and sheep can weather the drought and continue to provide critical food and income for herding families.
“If we are able to respond in a timely way, we can reach these people, save lives, save livelihoods, and help people to be resilient to future shocks,” said Abera Tola, Oxfam America’s regional director for the Horn of Africa.
In parts of Oromiya’s Borena Zone, the pressure on dwindling resources has increased as migrating herders and their livestock have swept in from Kenya in search of pasture and water. An Oxfam assessment team, sent to the region in early August, reported an estimated 100,000 extra animals, mostly cattle, were severely straining the water supply around in the Moyale, Dillo, Dirre, Teltelle and Arrero districts. In Dillo, the situation was so dire that families in five different areas evacuated their villages.
“The ponds are dry. The land is barren. There is nothing green,” said Tola. “People are desperate.”
In the dry, rural parts of Ethiopia people have long lived with periodic drought, and they have found ways to cope, such as by selling a few heads of healthy livestock and using the cash to buy food. But with droughts becoming increasingly frequent, there is little time—or no time—between them for families to recover their assets and build a new buffer against hardship. Instead, each bout of dry weather pushes many people deeper into poverty, making them more vulnerable to the next round of trouble.
“Drought is like fire,” said an Oromiya elder looking back on last year’s severe shortage of rain. “It just destroyed every household.”
In the Liben district of Oromiya’s Guji Zone, the changes in weather patterns are pushing some herders to give up part of their old way of life—and turn to farming as a solution. Along the banks of the chocolaty Dawa River, Huka Balambal is growing onions and corn with the help of a small irrigation system he devised himself: A noisy pump connected to a long line of hose sucks water from the Dawa and spills it through a maze of muddy channels that Balambal has dug.
Tending solely to animals is what he had done all his life—until now. At 64, with no education and a large family to support, Balambal knew he had to do something different: the days of abundant milk from his cattle and plentiful grasses for them to feed on are gone. In the decades since he was a boy, the pastureland, and consequently the livestock, have declined, he said.
“I think, how can I survive this way?” Balambal asked. “How can I manage my family and care for my children. I look around and see the only solution is change of livelihood.”
Along another stretch of the Dawa, where Oxfam America is working with the Liben Pastoralist Development Association, or LPDA, to build a full-scale irrigation system for 200 families, Edo Godana voiced some of the same worry.
“During our father’s time it was very nice rain and a lot of milk and grass,” he said. “Now, things have totally changed. I’ve been trying to cultivate land by rain, and it frequently collapses. We have fear for our children. What’s going on?”
It’s a question that’s weighing on countless herders and rain-dependent farmers across Ethiopia as one difficult season gives way to the next. In the face of a changing climate, Oxfam has been working with people like Balmbal and Godana on longer-term solutions to the problems erratic weather creates. Pasture restoration, road construction, and helping people build small herds of milking goats are just some of the answers.
“Drought is a part of our lives,” said Kote Ibrahim, LPDA’s director. “How can we get out from it? We’ve reached consensus. We need sustainable development interventions.”
And, added Tola, the underlying causes of poverty, which make people so susceptible to drought, must also be addressed.
“Poor people need a voice,” said Tola. “Marginalized groups, like herders, need to be included in the development policies of the country. And women need an active role in development also.”
]]>Oxfam organized the event as part of the global climate change campaign, Tck Tck Tck, which has seen similar grassroots events around the world in the last few weeks, including the formation of a human hour glass outside of the UN General Assembly in New York City and a climate hearing attended by 10,000 people in Ethiopia last month. Each event has been designed to build momentum and attract attention to the needs of poor communities in the remaining weeks before the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (or CoP 15) to be held in Copenhagen this December.
"We're doing this because we want the public to pay more attention to climate change," said Brian Lund, regional director of Oxfam America's East Asia office in Phnom Penh, when speaking to the Cambodia Daily, the country's leading newspaper. "The developing world is taking the lead in discussing what should be negotiated in Copenhagen, and Cambodia has positioned itself extremely well as a leader in that discussion."
Lund explained that climate change contributes to the growing number of natural disasters in Southeast Asia -- such as the typhoons in the Philippines and Vietnam, also last month, which have displaced hundreds of thousands. Predictions forecast that weather-related natural disasters will only multiply and worsen in the future.
"As developing countries move to cope with climate change, they are drawing on their limited resources; they really do need the commitment of the rich countries. We need to see them put some money on the table now," Lund said.
]]>Many gave up on farming, but others, like Yacouba Savadogo, chose to stay and fight, slowly reclaiming land from the encroaching desert. Thirty years later, their work—which has secured 13 million acres of farmland and fed three million people—offers some hope for tackling world hunger.
How did Savadogo and others restore the land? By rediscovering and improving simple, low-cost methods for managing soil, water, and trees.
In 1979, Savadogo, a farmer and community leader from the village of Gourma, Burkina Faso, observed fellow farmers using innovative growing techniques as part of an Oxfam project. He began to experiment with using planting pits and stone embankments to produce more sorghum and millet on his degraded land.
These efforts yielded surprising results when trees began to grow spontaneously in the planting pits he’d dug for his crops. By digging deeper pits and adding manure, Savadogo found that he could bring dry land back into production. As the trees grew, he began to protect them, turning his barren land into a diverse forest of useful tree species.
In the years since, Savadogo has organized events to exchange seeds and ideas and to train other farmers in these techniques. He’s worked with experts like Mathieu Ouedraogo, a Yatenga-born technician who later became the director of Oxfam’s project in the region, to improve methods, conserve water, and reduce erosion.
Once-barren landscapes in the Sahel are today home to farmland, wells, and livestock. Millions of acres of restored farmland reveal a complex landscape of crops and trees, interlaced with stone embankments and terraces.
These changes have stimulated local markets, supported an ever-growing population, and diversified people’s ways of earning a living. And despite growing populations and the threats of climate change, food security has actually improved in the Sahel region.
This week, Oxfam is hosting Savadogo, Ouedraogo, and other innovators from the Sahel in Washington, DC, for discussions with US legislators about local solutions to food insecurity and climate change.
“With over one billion people worldwide now facing chronic hunger—and climate change further threatening the global food supply—our leaders and aid providers can learn a lot from the efforts of farmers like Savadogo,” says Oxfam trade policy advisor Emily Alpert.
“Africa’s agricultural future rests on broad partnerships and alliances, catalyzed by farmers,” says Alpert. “US Congress can help replicate these successes by passing the 2009 Global Food Security Act (HR 3077), which calls for a coordinated and comprehensive US global food security strategy that leverages partnerships with the private sector, NGOs, and universities. If we’re going to build people’s resilience to poverty, climate change, and conflict, we must work together to invest in agriculture and to conserve our natural resources.”
You can help: Join our online community and tell legislators to stand up for the millions of people around the world who face hunger on a daily basis.
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Coston admits that co-leading a group of local volunteers takes time and effort. But it’s worth it, she says, because of the great people she’s met—and the feeling of shaping world events as they happen.
“I believe so strongly in the fact that people en masse can make a change, so why not let it be us?” she says. “That’s what keeps me going every day.”
Meet the Oxfam Action Corps: grassroots activists, based in 13 US cities, who play an increasingly crucial role in Oxfam’s climate change campaign. With climate legislation in Congress and the Copenhagen UN talks fast approaching, these volunteers are calling on leaders to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and help vulnerable communities here and abroad respond to the catastrophic effects of climate change.
I first met New York Oxfam Action Corps co-leader Winnie Lee, a Manhattan-based legal clerk, during the Human Countdown event in Central Park. “It’s amazing that over 1,000 people were willing to give up their Sunday to be here,” says Lee of that day’s turnout. “We proved that there are a lot of people out there who actually care about this issue and want to learn more about it.”
Lee says that many New Yorkers already feel connected to the human side of the climate crisis. “We have lots of immigrant communities here, so people can tie the effects back to Bangladesh or the Dominican Republic, to rising sea levels or hurricanes. They realize it’s their family, or other people they know, who are living in affected communities.”
To get people mobilized, the Oxfam Action Corps taps into the city’s vibrant music scene, organizing benefit concerts and setting up tables at events like the All Points West music festival.
“If a band [supporting Oxfam] plays four shows in a week, we can get 500 signatures for a petition,” says Lee, who first encountered Oxfam at a concert by the band Bell X1. “Or we have people at the tables call or write their member of Congress. That’s democracy in action … empowering people to contact their elected officials, who are supposed to represent them.”
The volunteers also reach out to elected officials in person at legislative meetings. Thanks to their efforts, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand recently signed on as the first US senator to become a Sisters on the Planet ambassador.
Next up? An Oxfam America Hunger Banquet® on the New York University campus, which they hope will bring in 150 to 200 participants.
The day after the Human Countdown, the Austin Oxfam Action Corps organized a “Climate Wake-up Call” on the local University of Texas (UT) campus. For the attention-grabbing stunt—which coincided with similar events worldwide—25 volunteers, students, and residents set their cell phone alarms to go off simultaneously. Amid the din, participants formed the shape of ticking clocks with their arms, symbolizing that time is running out to negotiate a global climate deal at Copenhagen.
“We held the Wake-Up Call in between classes in the middle of campus, so we got a lot of traffic,” explains Coston, who coordinated the event with the UT-Austin Oxfam Club and Oxfam CHANGE Leaders. The high-profile location led to dialogue with students and an article in the daily campus paper.
Meanwhile, the Oxfam Action Corps is working with environmental groups to organize a climate change rally in Austin later this month, where over 200 people will walk a half-mile from the UT-Austin campus to the state capitol building.
“We definitely want our negotiators [at Copenhagen] and President Obama to know that there are a lot of people in Texas supporting a global deal. It’s important for them to know that people in our state have gathered together for this purpose,” says Coston.
She adds that in an eco-conscious community like Austin, people respond to Oxfam’s message about the human cost of the crisis.
“We’re trying to help people adapt to climate change: something that is really necessary. We’re getting [poor communities] the resources they need,” she says. “People grasp that fact—instead of going in after a disaster and spending millions of dollars, you can go in before.”
]]>Like most of the 47 families in Toul Char, a village 143 miles north of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, Thach’s family left their house to escape the danger and since mid-July they have taken refuge on higher ground. This was especially warranted after two near- fatal incidents with her two-year-old daughter who fell into the flood waters.
Conditions grew worse for Thach’s family on September 29 after typhoon Ketsana, which coincided with the annual floods, dumped heavy rains on the region. The family’s temporary shelter, made of palm leaves and tree branches, was no match for the onslaught.
“On the night of the typhoon, the wind was so strong that the roof could not stand it anymore,” said Thach. The wind tore it off. “The downpour of rain was frightening. I used sleeping mats to cover my four children and a blanket to cover my then two-week-old daughter while my husband and I were trembling in the rainwater praying for the storm to end.”
The same storm devastated parts of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Laos.
Across Cambodia, the storm affected an estimated 100,000 people. Floods and heavy rain hit eight provinces in central and northern Cambodia. Oxfam’s reports show 10,867 families being affected with 19 deaths in Kampong Thom province alone. Oxfam is now focusing relief efforts on three hard-hit provinces: Kampong Thom, Kratie, and Stueng Treng. About 97,000 people in the three provinces are affected with 40,000 hectares of rice fields destroyed. Public infrastructure and private property, including houses and livestock, were damaged or lost, causing major disruption to people’s livelihoods.
After the typhoon destroyed her roof, Thach had to find palm leaves to rebuild it—while the rain kept pouring, sometimes non-stop for days. Every day, the family looked for food and hoped that the rain would stop.
When Thach’s village finally became accessible, she received an Oxfam relief kit containing one plastic sheet, one water filter, two sleeping mats, one mosquito net, one krawma (a traditional multi-purpose scarf in Cambodia), one sarong, one kettle, two 16-liter buckets, one 80-liter bucket, and a bar of soap. These items have helped her to make the living conditions a little better and to ensure that the family has clean drinking water which will help fend off some waterborne diseases.
Thach told Oxfam that finding enough food for her family has been a challenge. A month earlier, she had received 60 kilograms of rice from a relief organization, but that food was long gone because she had to feed the family and return some of the rice she had borrowed from others. To get by, Thach and her husband skip meals so that their children can have more. But malnutrition is already visible.
“Now, it’s extremely difficult to borrow rice from others because everybody is in urgent need of rice,” Thach said. “Today I could only borrow four kilograms of cassavas and this will keep my children full for only two days.”
Oxfam is working to assist 5,000 other hard-hit households by distributing relief items. It has reached 75 percent of them, but the challenges are growing.
“More efforts by humanitarian agencies are needed as receding waters become shallow, disrupting delivery of aid by boat,” said Francis Perez, country lead of Oxfam International in Cambodia. “Oxfam will consider giving cash for food if that is the only resort to avoid hunger.”
Food isn’t the only worry for Thach’s family. Health is also an issue—one that Oxfam is concerned about, too, as water-related diseases are increasing and access to medical care for many people is difficult.
In Thach’s village, Chief Houen Chea said only four families in his community went to a health center within the last three months. The nearest one is nearly five miles away and now a boat is necessary to reach it.
Thach’s husband, Lun Peang, can hardly walk as his foot was cut with a bamboo thorn. The foot continues to swell and he cannot perform even the basic daily chores. But Lun never sought medical help.
“Even if the public health center does not charge me fees, I will not go because I do not have the $1 I need to pay for the boat to the center,” Lun said.
Oxfam plans to reach an additional 5,000 families in the recovery phase in the next three to six months to help provide sanitation, rehabilitate safe water sources, and ensure food and livelihood security for the affected communities.
]]>More than 6 million farmers across the country grow teff, but it’s here, in rugged Adi Ha, where rocks litter the fields like confetti, that this new kind of insurance may take root and spread. An initiative coordinated by Oxfam America and supported by more than a dozen partners, its goal is to help some of the world’s poorest farmers bounce back when drought destroys their crops. And the payout isn’t only in cash. It’s in confidence—the kind that may help propel people out of poverty.
“Without insurance, poor farmers who experience drought might run through all their savings, fall into debt, or sell their livestock and other valuables—often to ruinous results,” says Mengesha Gebremichael, the micro-insurance officer at the Relief Society of Tigray and one of the project’s managers. “In contrast, insured farmers will be more resilient to those shocks. They’ll be in a better position to take out small loans that could help them make big improvements in their next harvest—loans for things like high-yield seeds. They’ll be more confident that they can pay the money back knowing they have insurance to support them if trouble strikes.”
June to October marks the main rainy season in Adi Ha, a critical time for local farmers who depend on the skies to water their teff fields. For poor families living close to the edge, where even a $20 or $30 loss can push them over, there is no room for mishap. Without rain, they face disaster. That’s where the weather insurance comes in. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time, farmers who have purchased the insurance can receive a payout to help cover their losses.
In Ethiopia, families have always had traditional ways of coping with extraordinary expenses. If they lose their livestock in a disaster, such as drought, those who are better off will contribute an animal or two to help them rebuild their herds, for instance. Families may also share seeds for planting, or food when it’s in terribly short supply.
But with climate change—and the erratic weather that it brings—the traditional means of surviving bad times may no longer be enough.
“Climate change is dramatically increasing agricultural risk across the planet,” says Marjorie Victor Brans, a senior policy advisor at Oxfam America. “The frequency of droughts and other shocks in Adi Ha is likely to increase, and poor farmers will be among the hardest hit. It’s a hugely challenging phenomenon.”
With 85 percent of Ethiopians employed in farming, much of it rain-fed, the need for new tools to manage the risks is huge. But the market for insurance is miniscule: only about 300,000 people in a country of nearly 80 million now have it. Extending the option to rural areas is loaded with challenges, not the least of them being the concern that poor farmers simply don’t have the money to pay for premiums—even the smallest one.
This new program has solved that problem with a simple solution: It has arranged for the poorest farmers to use their labor to buy insurance, tapping into a new social security initiative the Ethiopian government launched a few years ago. Called the Productive Safety Net Program, or PSNP, it helps about 8 million of the country’s most vulnerable residents by providing them with food or cash in exchange for work. Through the PSNP, 130 Adi Ha farmers are now working extra days on community projects, such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation, to pay for their premiums. In this pilot year, Oxfam provided funds to the PSNP to cover this part of the project.
The option to trade labor for insurance has substantially boosted the number of farmers able to participate in the program, nearly doubling the enrollment that was expected.
“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Medhin Reda, a single mother who will be working 24 days for her premium. “That is the only asset I have.”
For Selas Samson Biru, who is spending 192 birr on insurance, it will help address the uncertainties that have always been part of farming, especially now that global warming may be altering familiar weather patterns.
“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” she says. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”
And the insurance may be extra helpful because it was tailored specifically for farmers like Biru. In fact, she was one of five community members chosen by villagers to join the insurance design team. Twenty-one other farmers participated in a series of test workshops on climate change and financial literacy. Focus group discussions and economic risk simulations carried out in the community helped the design team understand what kind of insurance product would work best in Adi Ha. And on the day of enrollment, about 600 farmers showed up for a host of activities explaining the offerings, including musical performances, a play, peer-to-peer outreach, and financial training.
“Today is a historic day for the farmers of Adi Ha,” said Brans as the activities wound to a close that day and organizers counted the final tally of takers. Among the 200 were 75 women, which represents about 22 percent of all female-headed households in Adi Ha—one of the most vulnerable groups the project is aiming to help. On average, farmers are paying 138 birr for their premiums—or a little more than $12 each. Some chose packages that allowed them to pay as little as 76 birr, or about $6.75. The maximum premium was 288 birr, or just over $23.
“We are experimenting,” said Gebru Kahsay a few months after investing 192 birr into an insurance package. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”
Lots of learning has already taken place during the 18 months Oxfam and its partners spent in preparation for the launch of this project. And each of those partners has been contributing its own expertise. Besides the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST, one of the largest aid groups in Africa which has worked closely with the people of Adi Ha, other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company, an Ethiopian firm that is providing the insurance; Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurers which has helped fund the launch and is providing technical expertise; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which is providing research on climate data. Additionally, the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI, the primary provider of loans to families in Adi Ha, helped both to design the pilot and to educate farmers about the pros and cons of insurance.
“We had to work very hard to design a risk management package that was affordable and attractive to farmers, while still being potentially profitable to the insurance industry,” says Bekabil Fufa, an agricultural expert in Oxfam America’s Horn of Africa regional office. “And we had to make it compelling to government and donors who feel it will address the threat of climate change.”
With a solid model now in place, Oxfam is planning in the coming year to expand the initiative into four new villages in Tigray--the region where Adi Ha is located—and into one village in Amhara, another drought-prone region to the south. Eventually, the project partners would like to see weather insurance offered to poor farmers throughout Ethiopia.
It will require a leap of faith by farmers across the country as well as support from the government, donors, NGOs, and the private sector,” says Gebremichael. “But given the long lead times required to build resiliency to climate change, we can’t afford to wait until tomorrow to try.”
]]>Reda, 45, is a farmer in Adi Ha, a collection of small villages in Tigray, a rocky region of northern Ethiopia. Here, rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable, and for the farmers who depend on its regularity to ensure their fields will produce food for their families, the change in weather patterns is deeply troubling. Without rain, the crops of hundreds of farmers in Adi Ha won’t grow.
Already this year the rains were six weeks late, coming in mid July instead of early June. That meant the corn got a late start and some farmers didn’t bother with sorghum at all. Still, hopes were high for teff, the tiny grain that is a staple for people here—and across Ethiopia where 6 million farmers grow the nutrient-rich cereal. Reda is one of them.
But this year, she and 199 other small farmers in Adi Ha weren’t taking any chances. When Oxfam and its partners suggested a way to buffer the hardships Mother Nature might bring, the farmers embraced it—even if few had ever heard of such a thing. The proposal? Weather insurance designed for their teff. If the rain failed to fall in certain amounts at certain times, farmers who bought the insurance would receive a payout to cover some of their losses. The insurance is being offered by the Nyala Insurance Company and Swiss Re. Other organizations partnering on the project include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DESCI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
“Because of repeated drought, which really affected me, I joined the insurance with the understanding it might solve my problems,” said Reda.
For a long time, most people in the insurance business thought that poor farmers, like many of those in Adi Ha, were uninsurable. Where would they get the cash to buy the insurance? This pilot program has answered that with a simple, and ingenious, solution. Reda is paying for her premium—like she does for other important things in her life—with her labor.
Reda, along with 65 percent of all those who have signed up for the insurance, is a participant in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program, an initiative that provides cash and food for some of the country’s poorest people in exchange for their work on community improvements. She’ll work 24 extra days this year on projects that benefit Adi Ha—such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation—to cover the cost of her premium.
“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Reda. “That is the only asset I have.”
A single mother and head of an all-girl household at the moment—she lives with three of her daughters; a fourth daughter lives in a nearby town; and a son is away studying—Reda works hard to keep together all the pieces of a difficult life. With one of her daughters, Abbadit Girmay, who is now 19, Reda hauled to their hillside site every stone of the hut they now live in. And to build it, she hired a mason to mortar the rocks together—paying him with a summer’s worth of weeding in his fields.
To get her own fields plowed—she has two, totaling a half hectare of land--Reda hires herself out each planting season, working three full days for the man who owns the oxen, in exchange for one day of his plowing.
Work is Reda’s currency.
"That’s why I’m thin," she says, with a wry smile.
In the corn patch just below her house, Reda stands bent at the waist , her hands flying over the weeds as she yanks and clumps them swiftly into small piles. Close behind, and weeding nearly as fast, Tekleweini Girmay, 7, follows her mother through the stalks. Reda—and necessity—have taught her well.
But a farmer’s life is not what Reda envisions for her youngest child—or any of her daughters. She wants them to have what she never had: an education.
“The season is not good enough for agriculture. Our soil has become poor and they need fertilizer,” she says. “I don’t want my children to be farmers. Those who have started their education I want them to continue and have jobs. And those who haven’t started, I want them to start.” Tekleweini will be among those newly enrolled when the next session of school begins.
And Reda will be, too.
She has signed up for an adult literacy program that REST is offering.
And though Reda can’t read, her mind is filled with news of the world beyond Adi Ha that she absorbs from a small radio she keeps tucked on a shelf in her hut. Voice of America in Tigrinya and Dmitsi Woyane or the voice of the ruling party are among her favorite stations. Sometimes, Reda will stay up until 11 p.m. listening—when there are working batteries, that is. They are expensive, about 10 birr each, or about most of what she would earn for a day’s labor.
There’s no electricity in this stone-walled compound, and few creature comforts. At night, light in Reda’s cramped hut comes from a hanging bulb hooked to a flashlight battery. She also has two small oil lamps. Household wares hang from the ceiling beamed with logs and storage vessels stand in the shadows in the corners. Two mud seats built into the walls near the door serve as beds.
In early August, green washes the hills that stretch below Reda’s hut, a sign that the rain—now that it has finally come—is ample enough for the moment. Her corn is doing well, she says with satisfaction.
And her teff?
The seeds have been in the ground for just a week and years of experience have left her circumspect.
“It’s too early to say if it’s good or bad,” says Reda.
]]>In a pilot program coordinated by Oxfam America along with a host of local partners, these farmers have bought weather insurance designed for their teff, a staple grain here and across Ethiopia. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time—and their teff does poorly—the insurance will cover some of their losses. Partners in the initiative include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Nyala Insurance Company; Swiss Re; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
The rain gauges, like the one in Biru’s yard, measure the precipitation in different spots across Adi Ha where rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it ever harder for farmers to eke a living from this rocky part of the world.
“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” says Biru. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”
Biru, who has bought 192 birr—or about $15—worth of insurance has become an expert at managing the vicissitudes of life in Adi Ha and together with her husband and six children, they have built a measure of security for themselves.
Now 48, Biru was married at 15. But unlike some of her peers at the time, she had managed to attend school through the fourth grade, and when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, took control of the area, Biru stood out. Perhaps it was because of all the questions she asked, she says.
She joined the organization in about 1979 and soon assumed a leadership role among other women—a twist of fate that allowed her to develop the confidence that continues to feed her successes today. Biru is not afraid to try new things—including insurance, a concept few in her community knew much about before this pilot was launched. Biru became a member of the local team that helped design the project.
But before that, she had other experiences that allowed her to see the advantages of managing household money in different ways. Through a local microfinance institution, Biru has taken out a series of loans that have helped her to build a herd of livestock that now includes goats, oxen, and donkeys. She has used the proceeds from the sale of some of those goats to support two of her children as they make their way through university.
Income from the goats, which at one point numbered about 70, also helped the family finance the construction of a new house with a metal roof a few years ago. It consists of a long, rectangular room with perimeter seats built into the walls, two beds at the far end, and a high ceiling that helps the interior stay cool on hot days.
And though the hungry season is inching closer—the time before the harvests when the food supply of many families runs low—Biru still has a supply a grain. In a shed separate from her house, tall vessels stand against the back wall. As she uncorks the bottom of one of them, the grain makes a satisfying rush as it streams out Baskets on the floor brim with corn, finger millet, and teff.
Biru’s family has another source of bounty as well: the Tsalet River, which feeds an irrigation system constructed about 10 years ago by the Relief Society of Tigray with funding from Oxfam. More than 400 households now benefit from it. Water funneled through a series of channels connected to a dam across the river irrigates a quarter hectare of land from which Biru harvests green peppers, bananas, melons, guava, and coffee beans. That regular supply of water may free her from some of the worry about rain.
But the irrigation system doesn’t water her teff. Across Adi Ha, farmers depend on the rainy season for that job. The main one, the kiremt, stretches from June into September. A shorter rainy season, the belg, runs from February to May. This year, the kiremt started late: the rain didn’t really begin to fall in substantial amounts until mid July, making it hard for farmers who plant sorghum and corn.
“For maize, the rain is not good. There was no rain early,” says Biru.
With her rain gauge, Biru keeps careful count of exactly how much rain falls, recording the precipitation on a small chart. Pulling it out to show some visitors one day in early August, she notes the range from half a millimeter the day before—barely a sprinkle—to 40 millimeters in a downpour on July 3.
Her crops aren’t the only thing Biru worries about when it comes to water. Her family also needs a steady supply for drinking and cooking. And often, the job of fetching it falls to her. Potable water is about an hour’s walk away, and someone in the household makes that trip once a day, sometimes with a donkey to haul the heavy load home. But a less reliable source that the family uses just for cooking, is a good deal closer—a 15-minute hike from Biru’s home.
Grabbing a jug, Biru heads down the path from her house, slowing her pace so the city slickers who are visiting can keep up. She’s going to show them what’s required to keep a family hydrated in Adi Ha, where there’s no municipal system pumping water through every household tap.
The walk includes a scramble down a steep ledge—and the knowledge of a return hike up, lugging the jug heavy with water. On the way, Biru stops at a mound of stones, bending to kiss one reverentially: below them, in an oasis of trees and thick bushes—one of the few forest-like spots still standing in the area—sits a local church. Tradition demands that the woods around the church be left alone. They’re sacred. And that may account for the small spring that still gurgles at their base.
It’s here that Biru stops to fill her jug, scooping cupfuls of water from the shallows while trying to leave the silt behind. Ten minutes later, she stands and heads home under a gray sky full of the promise of rain.
Will it be ample enough to guarantee a harvest?
“For teff, currently it’s good,” says Biru. But if it doesn’t last, she now has insurance to fall back on.
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