tagged w/ monsoons
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Cambodia's worst floods in over a decade have killed 167 people, a disaster official said Wednesday, as efforts intensified to provide aid to tens of thousands of families.
Sixty-eight children were among those who died in nearly two months of flooding caused by heavy rainfall that has also seen the Mekong River overflow, said Keo Vy, spokesman for the National Committee for Disaster Management.
Some 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) of rice paddies have been inundated and more than 23,000 families had to be evacuated to higher ground in provinces across the country, he added.
"The government and the Red Cross are giving the necessary help to those affected," Keo Vy said, adding that aid, including food deliveries, had so far reached 40,000 families.
He estimated that nearly 230,000 families across the impoverished nation had been affected by the unusually severe floods but he indicated the situation was under control.
"As Prime Minister Hun Sen has said, we are not appealing for aid but we welcome any assistance," he said.
International relief organisation Oxfam, which has started handing out hygiene kits in some areas, has urged all relevant agencies in Cambodia "to urgently deliver food, clean water, sanitation supplies and shelters".
In neighbouring Thailand, the worst monsoon floods in decades have left more than 220 people dead.Cambodia's worst floods in over a decade have killed 167 people, a disaster... more
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- The United Nations appealed for $357 million for flood-ravaged southern Pakistan.
An estimated 5.4 million people have been affected by the floods stemming from heavy monsoon rains. Nearly 1 million homes have been destroyed and 72 percent of crops lost in the worst affected areas in Sindh and Balochistan.
In launching its Rapid Response Plan on Sunday, the United Nations says it aims to provide food, water, sanitation, health and emergency shelter to those worst hit for six months.
The United Nations and its humanitarian partners have distributed more than 20,000 shelters and 530,000 plastic sheets and more than 650,000 people have received medicine and medical care.
The United Nations says it aims to provide access to safe drinking water for 400,000 people in the coming days and it expects 500,000 people will receive food aid by the end of the month.
"More than 5 million people are struggling to survive massive flooding across southern Pakistan and the rains continue to fall," Valerie Amos, undersecretary-general for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in a statement.
"They have lost their homes, their possessions and their livelihoods. The next few days will be crucial, as the U.N. and partners help the government to get food, safe water and shelter to the most vulnerable. One year after the largest floods in recent history, the people of Pakistan are in desperate need again. We cannot let them down."
Pakistan's floods last year directly affected about 20 million people with a death toll of nearly 2,000. In that disaster, about one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area -- more than 307,000 square miles -- was underwater.
The amount of rainfall hitting the otherwise arid region this monsoon season was close to what it normally gets in five years, said Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, climate affairs adviser and vice president of the World Meteorological Organization, Asia Region.
"If we look at the frequency and the trend of the extreme weather events happening in Pakistan during the last two decades, it is easy to find its connection with climate change," Chaudhry told Pakistan's The News International.
In Sindh the rainfall is 270 percent and 1,170 percent above average for monsoon rains, respectively, for August and September, he said.
Chaudhry said that due to climate change, Pakistan could expect an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and more erratic monsoon rains, causing more frequent flooding and droughts.ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- The United Nations appealed for $357 million... more
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In eastern Orissa state’s tribal hinterlands about 200 ‘seed-mothers’ are on mission mode - identifying, collecting and conserving traditional seed varieties and motivating farming families to use them.
The seed-mothers (bihana-maa in the local dialect) from the Koya and Kondh tribal communities have reached 1,500 families in the Malkangiri and Kandhamal districts and are still counting. These women are formidable storehouses of knowledge on indigenous seeds and biodiversity conservation.
Collecting, multiplying and distributing through exchange local varieties of paddy, millet, legume, vegetables and leafy green seeds, the seed-mothers already have a solid base of 80 converted villages.
As they spread their message through the hinterland, targeting another 140 villages, the women also promote zero dependence on chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
Considering that Malkangiri is Orissa’s least developed district, with literacy at a low 50 percent and isolated by rivers, forests, undulating topography and poor connectivity, the achievement of the seed-mothers is admirable.
The struggles of Malkangiri farmers with climate change is visible in the Gudumpadar village where seed-mothers are passionately reviving agricultural heritage and convincing the community to stay with local seeds and bio-fertilisers and pesticides.
"This is the best way to cope with erratic rainfall, ensure the children are fed and avoid the clutches of moneylenders," says 65-year-old seed-mother Kanamma Madkami of Kanjeli village, who has multiplied 29 varieties of local millet and paddy seeds.
Mangu Adari, 35, who owns less than two hectares of rain-fed land, some of it on a hill slope, is one of the new converts to local seeds. Last monsoon he could cultivate paddy, millet, beans and pulses on only half his land due to late and heavy rains. This year he hopes to have a surplus to take to the market to sell for badly needed cash.
"Local plants are products of centuries of adaptation to local climate and soil characteristics, hence, indigenous paddy holds out to drought for 30 days compared to 15 days by high-yield hybrid varieties," explains Kusum Misra, coordinator in Orissa for Navdanya, a network of seed-keepers spread over 16 Indian states and supported by 54 community seed banks.
Similarly paddy grown traditionally in the lowland can survive two weeks of water logging while highland paddy varieties yield quick harvests in just 60 days, compared to the 125 days for hybrid paddy, Misra said.
Based in rice-rich Balasore district, Misra has collected and propagated more than 65- varieties of traditional paddy, including strains of aromatic rice, those with resistance to salinity (for coastal farming), floods and droughts and some with medicinal properties.
The traditional varieties respond to natural fertilisers and pesticides; and if seeds are preserved properly the farmer actually has access to no-cost farming. "When they own the seeds farmers can time the sowing or even resort to a second round of sowing if needed," says Kanamma.
snip
Seed-mothers need little more than a backyard patch to propagate seeds and supplement family nutrition. Kausalya Madakami of Malkangiri’s Manga village developed 57 varieties of food plants and exchanged them too.
Annual community seed fairs, organised right after the monsoon harvest, help promote and exchange traditional seeds and knowledge. Here the seed-mothers cook and showcase various traditional items made from indigenous paddy and millet.
Tribal women are re-learning the traditional ways of seed preservation from the seed-mothers. Vegetable seeds are smeared with wood ash, bitter begonia or neem leaf powder and stored in hollow bamboo poles while paddy and millet are safe in jute bags hung from rafters. Pre-sowing treatment may involve cow-dung and cow urine or the use of ivy gum as anti-fungal and pest repellant.
Poor seed quality marketed by the government is a real worry. The government’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in a status report on seed development released in March carried data showing falling rice production in six eastern states, including Orissa - the rice bowl of the country.
In Orissa, the seed germination rate for regular paddy is just 55 percent and may drop as low as 25 percent. According to the NABARD report, land under cultivation in the state is shrinking and poor quality seeds and increasing floods and droughts are making farming increasingly un-remunerative.
Well-known environmental activist and founder of Navdanya, Vandana Shiva, told IPS that "climate resilient seeds in women's hands are vital to climate security and corporations that have taken out some 1,600 patents on climate resilient seeds are biopirates".
"Allowing corporations to hijack and monopolise seed supply is a recipe for food insecurity and climate insecurity," Shiva averred.In eastern Orissa state’s tribal hinterlands about 200... more
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The people of Bangladesh have much to teach us about how a crowded planet can best adapt to rising sea levels. For them, that future is now.
We may be seven billion specks on the surface of Earth, but when you're in Bangladesh, it sometimes feels as if half the human race were crammed into a space the size of Louisiana. Dhaka, its capital, is so crowded that every park and footpath has been colonized by the homeless. To stroll here in the mists of early morning is to navigate an obstacle course of makeshift beds and sleeping children. Later the city's steamy roads and alleyways clog with the chaos of some 15 million people, most of them stuck in traffic. Amid this clatter and hubbub moves a small army of Bengali beggars, vegetable sellers, popcorn vendors, rickshaw drivers, and trinket salesmen, all surging through the city like particles in a flash flood. The countryside beyond is a vast watery floodplain with intermittent stretches of land that are lush, green, flat as a parking lot—and wall-to-wall with human beings. In places you might expect to find solitude, there is none. There are no lonesome highways in Bangladesh.
We should not be surprised. Bangladesh is, after all, one of the most densely populated nations on Earth. It has more people than geographically massive Russia. It is a place where one person, in a nation of 164 million, is mathematically incapable of being truly alone. That takes some getting used to.
So imagine Bangladesh in the year 2050, when its population will likely have zoomed to 220 million, and a good chunk of its current landmass could be permanently underwater. That scenario is based on two converging projections: population growth that, despite a sharp decline in fertility, will continue to produce millions more Bangladeshis in the coming decades, and a possible multifoot rise in sea level by 2100 as a result of climate change. Such a scenario could mean that 10 to 30 million people along the southern coast would be displaced, forcing Bangladeshis to crowd even closer together or else flee the country as climate refugees—a group predicted to swell to some 250 million worldwide by the middle of the century, many from poor, low-lying countries.
"Globally, we're talking about the largest mass migration in human history," says Maj. Gen. Muniruzzaman, a charismatic retired army officer who presides over the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies in Dhaka. "By 2050 millions of displaced people will overwhelm not just our limited land and resources but our government, our institutions, and our borders." Muniruzzaman cites a recent war game run by the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., which forecast the geopolitical chaos that such a mass migration of Bangladeshis might cause in South Asia. In that exercise millions of refugees fled to neighboring India, leading to disease, religious conflict, chronic shortages of food and fresh water, and heightened tensions between the nuclear-armed adversaries India and Pakistan.
Such a catastrophe, even imaginary, fits right in with Bangladesh's crisis-driven story line, which, since the country's independence in 1971, has included war, famine, disease, killer cyclones, massive floods, military coups, political assassinations, and pitiable rates of poverty and deprivation—a list of woes that inspired some to label it an international basket case. Yet if despair is in order, plenty of people in Bangladesh didn't read the script. In fact, many here are pitching another ending altogether, one in which the hardships of their past give rise to a powerful hope.
For all its troubles, Bangladesh is a place where adapting to a changing climate actually seems possible, and where every low-tech adaptation imaginable is now being tried. Supported by governments of the industrialized countries—whose greenhouse emissions are largely responsible for the climate change that is causing seas to rise—and implemented by a long list of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), these innovations are gaining credence, thanks to the one commodity that Bangladesh has in profusion: human resilience. Before this century is over, the world, rather than pitying Bangladesh, may wind up learning from her example.
cont.The people of Bangladesh have much to teach us about how a crowded planet can best... more
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Army Sgt. Jesus Ramos quickly dismisses concerns back home that he and other U.S. forces participating in flood relief operations in Pakistan are facing hostility in what is frequently depicted as an anti-American nation.
"When we're downloading, they come up to you, shake your hand, smiles on their faces," he explains while resting before another full day of relief flights to the rugged north.
Some 12 weeks since the onset of devastating flash floods left a half-million Pakistanis stranded, U.S. forces are still actively assisting the Pakistani military with delivering aid to populations in need. They are flying food and materials to northern areas cut off after flash flooding washed out roads and bridges.
Though they are here at the invitation of Pakistan and can be forced to leave as soon as the government orders them out, U.S. embassy officials say they expect troops to be here doing this work until at least November.
The troops involved say they have all trained heavily in disaster relief work since enlisting, but many also admit that they never expected to actually be putting the training to work, expecting instead to be engaged in combat. Some service members with 20 years of experience say their Pakistan deployment is their first-ever experience with humanitarian operations.
But Pentagon officials believe that future service in the U.S. armed forces could be characterized more by the type of all-day back-and-forth airlifts to flood-stricken parts of Pakistan than by the counterinsurgency battles winding down in Iraq but still raging in nearby Afghanistan.
A tryout for future climate-related missions
In February, the U.S. Department of Defense released a quadrennial defense review report that for the first time linked global warming directly to national security hazards. The report calls climate change an "accelerant of instability" that could increase the frequency and severity of natural disasters, taxing civilian disaster relief capabilities and requiring more regular military support.
DOD has been among the first on scene responding to a string of mass-casualty disasters caused by earthquakes, including the devastating quake in northern Pakistan in 2005. But many believe the Pakistan super-floods of 2010 represents the first time U.S. forces have been called into action in response to a major climate change disaster.
"We helped out with the [2004 Indian Ocean] tsunami a couple years ago, Haiti just this year," recalled Capt. Clark Noble, a helicopter pilot in an expeditionary unit of the Marine Corps. "It's now a regular part of our duties."
Riding with and interviewing the men and women engaged in efforts here shows that, for most enlisted personnel, relief work in foreign lands is among the most welcome and rewarding parts of their service. It's also almost as exhausting and stressful as combat, and not without its own levels of danger and deadly threats, especially in northern Pakistan.
"I wouldn't say that you're any more or less nervous; I'd just say that it's different," explained U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer William French, a helicopter pilot comparing his service here to a tour in Iraq. "I'm not nearly as concerned about someone shooting at me, but I'm still always thinking of that."
U.S. military assistance in Pakistan's north consists of two main operations. The Marine Corps was flying C-130 airplanes from Chaklala Air Base near Islamabad to Gilgit and Skardu in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. This area finds itself isolated after the flood destroyed parts of the famous Karakoram Highway. The cities are world-renowned as launching pads for trekking expeditions into the scenic mountains and are used to hosting foreigners.
The C-130 missions to the north have since ended, but Marine and now Army Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters have also been flying in food and other aid to inaccessible parts of the Swat Valley and Kohistan from an air base in Ghazi. Swat was the scene of a massive Pakistan Army campaign against Taliban insurgents last year, and Kohistan is famous as an inaccessible, deeply impoverished and conservative mountainous corner that rarely sees foreign visitors.
cont.Army Sgt. Jesus Ramos quickly dismisses concerns back home that he and other U.S.... more
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The worst monsoon floods in living memory have killed at least 800 people and affected one million in north-west Pakistan, a local official has said.
Rescuers are struggling to reach inundated areas where transport and communication are down.
Peshawar, the area's largest city with a 3m-strong population, is cut off.
At least 60 people have died across the border in Afghanistan where floods affected four provinces.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier) province, announced the latest death toll. Earlier, he described the floods as the province's worst ever.
Manuel Bessler, the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) in Pakistan, told the BBC about 1m people's lives had been disrupted.
He could not say with certainty the full scale of the emergency in Pakistan, as he was having trouble reaching his own offices in some of the worst-affected areas.
UN aid workers were helping to co-ordinate efforts to provide shelter, health care, drinking water and ready-to-eat food rations, he said.
There was concern, he added, that swollen rivers running south would carry the floods to provinces like Sindh where heavy rain was forecast in coming days.
Washed away
The government declared a state of emergency as Pakistan's meteorological department said 312mm (12in) of rain had fallen over the last 36 hours in the north-west - the largest amount for decades.
This is the proverbial end of the road: what was once the traditional trunk highway running south is now a massive lake.
Further back, it's clogged up with traders and families who've been stranded on the road for days. They are trying, hoping against hope, that they can still move south, but a lot of them are turning back. The road simply isn't passable.
We've seen whole families passing on foot, grandparents and parents carrying children and possessions on their heads.
So many Pakistanis here say they haven't had any help from the government or relief agencies. And yet we see the military helicopters going overhead occasionally.
The Pakistani army and rescue services say they're trying to reach people, but the scale of this disaster is such they simple don't have the resources.
NW Pakistan 'a massive lake'
The districts of Swat and Shangla have been inaccessible with people left homeless and helpless after several rivers burst their banks, washing away villages, roads and bridges. Some 45 bridges were washed away in Swat alone.
The BBC's Lyse Doucet, who is travelling through some of the worst-hit areas, says at least half a million people remain marooned on islands of high ground, while others have taken refuge in mosques and schools.
TV footage taken from helicopters flying over the flooded landscape showed people clinging to roof-tops as raging torrents swept through the streets.
Military and rescue workers have been using helicopters to deliver essential supplies to areas that have had transport and communication links cut off.
Some 17 helicopters were in action to airlift people out of the worst affected areas on Friday and more were being deployed over the weekend.
Swathes of farmland have been inundated, and some power supplies have been cut after people were electrocuted by the water-borne current.
Many of those hit hardest by the flooding are the rural poor who live in flood-prone areas because they cannot afford safer land.
Pakistan has not made a formal request for international aid, but it is understood that it has appealed to donors to help it respond to this disaster.The worst monsoon floods in living memory have killed at least 800 people and affected... more
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