Sahel seen as another Ethiopia —only worse

Press, 2 April 1985, Page 17

Sahel seen as another Ethiopia —only worse

the London

GEOFFREY LEAN,

From

“Observer” environment correspondent, in Youvarou, near Timbuktu.

When Prince Philip arrived at this dirt-poor, mud-built village of Youvarou, near Timbuktu, on his African tour, he climbed on to the flat roof of the house in which he was staying to get a breath of air. As he gazed to the north, as from the bridge of a ship, all he could see was a sea of sand, speakled with the occasional wrecks of trees. Once this was fertile land, now it is submerged by the steadily advancing Sahara Desert. The mayor of the village recalled, as he stood waiting for the Prince to come, that only 10 years ago the desert had started 125 miles away at Timbuktu. Now the village is about to be overwhelmed by the advancing tide. The plight of Youvarou, in the middle of what was once one of the most fertile areas in West Africa, symbolises the silent emergency gripping this part of the continent while the world’s attention is focused far to the east, in Ethiopia and the Sudan. Close to seven million people are facing famine in the countries of the Sahel, the 3000-mile-long swathe of land on the southern fringe of the Sahara. Almost all these countries expect appalling harvests again this year, after three years of drought, and an Ethiopian-style disaster looks only months away. Prince Philip, president of the World Wildlife Fund, bumped out to this village by Land-Rover, a three-hour journey along rough

tracks in desolate landscape. At one point, to general consternation,he was lost in the desert for 20 minutes, when the driver took a wrong turning. He slept on a rudimentary wooden bed, sprung with millet stalks, knocked together by a local craftsman in a malodorous sidestreet in Mopti, the nearest town, and carried out on the roof of a Land-Rover the day before. He stayed in a house with no running water, and only a hole in the ground in the corner of its yard for a lavatory. His hostess, to his amusement, provided a small Union Jack to fly on the doorless latrine to show it was occupied. It was a pretty unceremonious introduction to what is one of the most fascinating — and tragic — places on earth, the vast “inland delta” of the Niger in Mali. Some 2560 kilometres from the sea, the broad Niger spills into a flat 320-kilometre plain. Slowed in its progress, it branches out into an intricate network of channels and lagoons. When the rains come, the waters burst their banks and spread out over the whole plain, submerging it up to 2.7 metres deep in some places. They bring astonishing fertility in the midst of the dry Sahel.

Experts say the delta could feed the whole of West Africa.

Now there is little sign either of the waters or the riches they bring. Prince Philip drove over dry land that should be under water, even in the rainless time of year, under the lee of villages built high on manmade mounds to avoid the floods that have long gone. There is hardly any green to be seen, and the few islands of grass that remain are being rapidly eaten by the 2,100,000 cattle in the delta —2% times as many as it can sustain in a drought. Sixty thousand families have already lost all their cattle. Fish catches are half their normal level of the past decade, and people in this village are now eating waterlily seeds to keep alive. The farmers have eaten their seed corn, in their desperation. So even if the rains and the floods return this year, there will be no harvest, for there is nothing to plant. Yet this area is better off than some. It is drawing both people and cattle from the drier areas to the north and east. These are now almost entirely depopulated. The cattle have died, and the people are in refugee camps. The story is much the same

throughout the Sahel. In Chad, 1000 children are already dying of hunger every month, and the numbers are rising. Lake Chad covers only one-tenth of the area it did in 1960, and the United Nations estimates that this year’s harvest will be “practically non-existent.” In Mauritania, each of the last three harvests has produced less

than a third of its normal, inadequate crop. In Burkina Fasso, formerly Upper Volta, “complete crop failures” have been reported to the United Nations in several areas. In Niger, last year’s rainfall was less than half the average. The skies of the whole region are clouded by dust. Prince Philip was unable to land on the coast of

Senegal, nearly 1000 miles to the west, because the dust reduced visibility to 200 yards. In Prince Philip’s words: “The drought is a natural catastrophe, but its length and force are aggravated by the exploitation of the environment.” He has been carrying this message, often with characteristic bluntness, to Heads of State and local officials throughout the region. Has the message got through? “It is not for lack of trying,” he said. “But getting it across to people is difficult.” Over the years since the last great Sahelian drought, which ended in 1973, populations and cattle numbers have steadily built up. Governments and aid agencies have also made things worse by forcing previously nomadic populations to settle down, overtaxing areas which they had once only passed briefly. Virtually nothing has been done

to try to halt the growth of the deserts. Throughout the Sahel, plus Sudan and Ethiopia, up to $lO billion a year has been spent in aid; less than 3.5 per cent has been devoted to attempts to conserve the soil. U.S.A.I.D. has spent $340 million in Mali over the last 10 years, but less than $1.5 million on fighting the desert spread. The E.E.C. is spending $l5O million a year in the same country, and has only just started a $900,000 a year programme to try to save the soil. Much of what has been spent to fight the desert has been wasted. Millions of trees have been planted in the Sahel over the last decade, but experts believe that less than 1 per cent are still alive, because the local people were not made responsible for them. The scheme replaces an intricate system of privately-owned peasant plots, which were cultivated at different levels, to produce some

food even in bad years. Just about the only signs of hope are provided by voluntary bodies like Environment and Development Action, an African body based in Senegal, and the World Wildlife Fund itself. C.A.R.E., the American voluntary aid agency, has succeeded in protecting the soil of over 6000 acres in Niger’s Maggia Valley, with the result that food production has increased by 23 per cent despite the drought. The World Wildlife Fund project which Prince Philip came to see in this village is beginning a long process of working out with local people how the area can best be managed to produce enough food and conserve its resources. When a plan has been worked out it will be presented first to the local people, and then to the Government, in the hopes of creating an example of what can be done.