Each time I update one of our briefings I suffer an anxiety attack over the appropriate description of the effects of global warming. I refuse to play into the sceptics’ hands by attributing hunger unequivocally to climate change.
Kenya is about as tricky as it gets. Most of the non-specialist media attributes the East African food crisis to an exceptional La Nina event. The smarter NGOs blame government policies for their neglect of impoverished regions. And scientists appear increasingly emboldened to blame climate change outright, the warming Indian Ocean creating havoc with rainfall.
The drought will surely be bracketed with last year’s Russian heatwave and Pakistan floods as frightening examples of what lies in store. As for our briefing, well, I played cautious and blamed “years of mismanagement of the agriculture sector and its associated climate risk.”
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this post was first published by OneWorld UK