‘This is a very big disaster’

Every year when seasonal flooding begins the Lozi king — the Litunga — calls on his people to leave the lowlands of western Zambia and join him in a spectacular ceremony, celebrating the flooding that will fertilise their farmlands.

But in the past two years there were no celebrations. Rains arrived earlier than usual, leading to devastating floods.

The floodwaters rose and covered the high ground to which the villagers usually retreat, resulting in hunger, disease and the loss of possessions.

The Lozi blame climate change. ‘The seasons have changed,” Bennet Imutongo Sondo (74), the second induna of Liyoyelo village in Zambia’s Mongu district, told researchers from international aid agency Oxfam. ‘This is a very big disaster.”

An authoritative report on the human tragedy of climate change has warned that Liyoyelo is not unique. Farmers from Bangladesh to Uganda and Nicaragua, no longer able to rely on generations of farming experience, are faced with endless failing harvests.

Climate-related hunger could be the defining human tragedy of this century, said the report, released this week by Oxfam.

The agency timed its release to coincide with the G8 summit in Rome to put pressure on heads of state to reduce emissions and take action on climate change.

Researchers involved in the report said developed countries are sitting pretty while farmers and communities in developing countries face the brunt of climate change.

It is a bitter irony that in temperate zones the effects of climate change will be milder, at least initially. But in the tropics, where the bulk of humanity lives, many of them in poverty, climate change is beginning to play out more erratically and harmfully.

Oxfam interviewed thousands of farmers in 15 countries to hear how their lives are being changed by climate change.

Because seasons are shifting and rains are disappearing, communities face hunger because they can no longer rely on crops to feed their families, researchers found.

Alarmingly rice and maize, two crops that millions depend on, face significant drops in yields even under mild climate change scenarios, the report warned.

Maize yields are forecast to drop by 15% or more by 2020 in much of sub-Saharan Africa and in most of India. Africa could lose $2-billion a year in agricultural output because of climate change.

Already an estimated 26-million people have been displaced and each year a million more are moved by weather-related events.

In Zambia’s Liyoyelo village families such as the Liywalis were able return to their family home only after four years. But there wasn’t much to return to. The floodwater had sloughed away the clay walls of their house, leaving just the bare ribs of reeds and wooden poles.

‘In December the rains came very fast. Within 12 hours the whole yard was flooded. This is the first time we have seen that. Our house was completely destroyed. Our maize crop is gone and we lost our blankets and clothes because we had to leave so quickly,” 29-year-old Liywali Liywali told Oxfam.

His wife, Mukelabai, is struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives. ‘We put all our children in the canoe and paddled about 25km. We could not save our crops, so we have no food. We’re eating nothing.”

The floods not only destroyed their crops but also their seed, leaving them without the means to plant again. They survive on the tiger fish Liywali catches each day, but it is not enough to feed their three children.

This is the second year in a row that the water has risen so high. The family fears that they will be flooded again next year, but moving away permanently is not an option. ‘This is our land, this is our ancestral village,” said Mukelabai.

Disease is also spreading on the wings of the changing climate.

‘Diseases such as malaria and dengue fever that were once geographically bound are creeping to new areas where populations lack immunity or the knowledge and healthcare infrastructure to cope with them,” said Oxfam.

In Zambia malaria is a real threat to flood victims. Oxfam estimates that climate change has contributed to an average of 15 000 more deaths from disease annually since the 1970s.

The aid agency also warns that disasters including fires and storms are on the rise and could triple by 2030. The poor, who normally have no access to insurance, will be hardest hit.

Oxfam has published a survey by top climate scientists who warn that farmers, poor people living in low-lying coastal areas, island atolls and mega-deltas are most at risk from climate change because of flooding and prolonged drought.  

The scientists, all contributors to the International Panel on Climate Change, named South Asia and Africa as climate change hotspots.