Drought-stricken areas are growing worldwide
As our climate changes, causing more rain to fall in some regions, in other areas it is causing less rain to fall, leading to drought.
Since the 1970’s, dry areas of the world have more than doubled !
Africa has been particularly hard hit already:
The water basins of Niger, Lake Chad and Senegal have seen a 40 – 60% decrease in water.
In South Africa, the 2003 and 2004 drought affected a total of 27 million people.
Yet, in southern Africa’s dry areas, rainfall is expected to further decrease as climate change takes hold.
By 2050, 400 million more African people are likely to suffer increased water shortages.
400 million!
Drought causes famine
The 2010 to 2012 Somalia drought and famine killed almost 260,000 people including over 130,000 children under the age of 5.
People sought to escape the crisis and walked for weeks across the desert to get to the Kenyan Dadaab refugee camp.
Many died on the way. Others perished shortly after they arrived at the camp.
Above, a young girl can be seen standing amongst the freshly made graves of 70 children, many of whom died of malnutrition.
By 2050, however, the African population is forecast to double from 1.3 billion to 2.5 billion people.
1.2 billion more people added to Africa’s population but with much less water in many regions than today.
Droughts also kills livestock and destroy harvests
In the 2017 Somalia drought an estimated 9 million livestock died.
“3 months ago we had 150 goats, 20 cows, 10 camels and 3 donkeys. Now nothing remains.
Everything died.”
Mother-of-three, Nimo Mohamed Abdi, Awdal, Horn of Africa
With high emissions this century, areas of drought could increase from 1% of the Earth’s total land area in the 20th century to 30% of all land areas in the world stricken by drought by 2100!
Could we really do this – make 30% of our world drought-stricken ?
And do this in just 100 years ?
Billions of people would live in this 30% of the world sentenced to drought…..where crops would not grow, where livestock would perish and where there would be barely any water!