Ignored devastating disasters and Hazards: The case of the Horn of Africa

Abstract

The eastern Africa sub-region is an expansive land-mass, more than 6 million km2 comprising about 9 countries. Ecologically and environmentally the area is highly precarious, more than 65% of the sub-region being classifiable as semi-arid or arid. Some of the countries in the sub-region experience real desert like conditions with less than 250 mm annual rainfall. The sub-region experiences very frequent droughts, while rainfall distribution and intensity vary considerably, spatially and temporally. Frequent drought-related disasters include famines as a result of crop failures and lack of grazing and browse. The famines often result into human calamities such as hunger, starvation, malnutrition, mass migration of populations and in many cases death. These negative impacts of famine, resulting from environmental factors, are often compounded by several socio-economic and political factors that have over the years impacted negatively on the general production of the area. Many of these calamities due to their slow onset are ignored and often realised late, many times when their negative impacts and toll on the population have reached devastating levels. Part of the reason is lack of or inadequate Early Warning Systems (EWS) for monitoring environmental conditions as well as crop yields. This paper gives an overview of some the often ignored disasters suggesting some disaster management mechanisms that need to put into consideration in addressing and managing such calamities. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.