Poorest pay highest price for warming

Poorest pay highest price for warming

By Wangari Maathai

The Calgary Herald

September 18, 2009

In my home country of Kenya, a major drought is wreaking havoc on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Crops are shrivelled, cattle are dying--and there is an imminent threat of widespread hunger and starvation.

The situation is desperate and heartbreaking--but unfortunately, not completely surprising.

Decades of environmental mismanagement, coupled with global warming, is making extreme weather like droughts, hurricanes, floods, cyclones and erratic rainfalls a more regular occurrence everywhere. However, scientists say that 'developing countries,' especially those in Africa, whose economies are already precarious and where so many people, especially women, depend directly on the natural world for food, water and fuel, are being hardest hit. Mother Nature is, for much of the world's population, a rapidly diminishing source of human security.

In Darfur, for example, the lack of water is fuelling conflict as different groups fight over access to limited farm and pasture land, and deal with rapid desertification. Last summer, when I visited refugee camps in Eastern Chad, next to door to Darfur, I met an overwhelming number of women who had been raped while gathering firewood. Deforestation obliges women to walk farther and farther from the camps--and thus put themselves at risk of sexual violence.