Early warning system for pastoralists in Ethiopia
A new early warning system (EWS) may prove a lifesaver for pastoralists
living in Ethiopia's Somali region. When famine struck in 2000, tragically it
was the rapidly escalating death toll that finally alerted the world to the
crisis.
But a British aid agency is now at the forefront of a system that will act as
the eyes and ears of the international community and raise the alarm to any
future crisis. For the first time ever an EWS has been devised to address the
individual needs of up to 3.8 million nomadic pastoralists living in the
drought-prone Somali region.
The project - set up by Save the Children UK (SCUK) - will provide accurate
details of potential famines in the harsh, arid climate of southeastern
Ethiopia. "This early warning system will save lives and will prevent
famines as long as there is a donor response," said John Graham, head of
SCUK in Ethiopia. "This is the way to head off what happened in early
2000."
System geared towards Pastoralist way of life
Although an EWS already exists in Ethiopia, it is focused towards
agriculturalists living primarily in the north of the country. But under the new
scheme - which is expected to be fully up and running within two years - highly
detailed information has been gleaned about the lives of pastoralists.
Even at this early stage it is already winning plaudits. The UN's Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) both used its
inputs to establish 2002 quotas on food aid needed for Ethiopia. The FAO said
its development had "strengthened substantially" needs assessments in
pastoral areas like the Somali region. As a result of the system, this year an
estimated 900,000 people will need emergency food aid in the region.
The key to any effective EWS are accurate baselines - statistics that reveal
how people live and can be used as a starting point for any assessments. The
baselines - which have taken almost a year to compile - provide the starting
point for all the information gleaned from the EWS. Within the EWS there are key
indicators to alert organisations to potential droughts or famines.
For instance, if the price of livestock drops and grain prices rise, it is an
indication that people are selling their livestock - an asset - in order to meet
their immediate hunger needs through grain. Other examples are communities
selling milk - a sign that they may be facing shortages.
Credibility of information
But the critical factor of the EWS in the Somali region is the interaction
with rainfall. The system will answer questions about the impact on the
pastoralists of late rains or if the rains fail.
A team from SCUK, and other organisations, has spent a year building up the
baseline data and ensuring their accuracy. "It is about having really
credible information, and so if you don't need something, we say no," added
Graham. "You avoid crying wolf. We can make sure we get credible
information, but we can't guarantee that donors will respond."
His organisation - the largest SCUK programme anywhere in the world - says if
the EWS had been up and running in 2000, the famine that year would have been
averted.
Cassandra Chapman, who heads Emergency and Food Security for SCUK in
Ethiopia, pointed out that it was not until April 2000, when the first
television pictures emerged from the region, that the international community
started to react. For many pastoralists, it was too late.
But under the EWS, donors were more likely to respond, because they had
"bought into" the system and trusted it, she said. Furthermore, donors
did not want to make the same mistakes as in 2000.
Attractive to donors
The attraction for donor organisations is that the system can accurately
pinpoint areas in need and the amount of assistance required. Like the crisis of
2000, many famines are extremely localised. The system can also save millions of
dollars by providing a true picture of the needs.
The scheme has also brought in numerous other nongovernmental organisations
and the United Nations, and has been undertaken with the full partnership of the
Ethiopian government. "By involving other organisations, the scheme has
been strengthened, because everyone has a part to play," Chapman added.
"The Ethiopian government already has its own early warning system - one
of the best in the Horn of Africa - to flag potential disasters and
famines," she said. "But the difficulty has always been tracking and
gaining an insight into the lives of the pastoralists... You have to have an
early warning system that is focused on conditions in the Somali region, which
are pastoral conditions and insecurity.
"We also plan that whatever lessons we learn from the Somali region
system are fed into other areas of the country where there are very large
pastoral and agro-pastoral populations," she said.
Without the EWS, aid organisations are often fumbling in the dark and will
over-react when they do not need to and under-react when food is needed. Graham,
who has worked in the country for the last five years, added: "No-one
really understands how these people survive, nor what is their basis for
livelihood.
"That fundamental lack of understanding of how people make their living
has been the biggest block to responding when you need to respond, and to
understanding when you don't need to respond in a massive way," he said.
"This system avoids all that. It will allow donor organisations to make
the right decisions that ultimately will save people's lives."
Article Courtesy of IRIN-CEA
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of the United Nations. Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2002
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