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THE PARAMOUNT QUESTION IS THIS: ?? Will continuing 'knee-jerk' food aid and the relief methodology of "The Aid Age" (see below) make the situation, in increasingly population dense areas of Africa, better or WORSE.? A correspondent, in an email discussion, said recently" If you conclude that growth that overwhelms the earth *necessarily* accompanies agriculture, and only agriculture, well, then you'd have an open and shut case." I think that the argument that Jared Diamond makes in his essay entitled 'The worst mistake in the history of the human race': http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html <http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html> gives a good indication "that growth that overwhelms the Earth" happened as a result of the advent of agriculture ---- and that agriculture was a response to the inability of some population groups to control their numbers. Diamond makes the case that no group would have chosen agriculture over BIRTH CONTROL if they had realized how much work agriculture required and how their wellbeing would suffer as a result. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Another colleague has provided the following treatise which I have edited for the sake of brevity: Jared Diamond's argument about agriculture not being progress, is correct as can be seen so starkly today in East Africa. A good example is the Hadza tribe near lake Eyasi in Tanzania. They are one of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers. Now, although their life is not as easy as some (esp. the Noble Savage proponents) would make out, esp. when they get seriously ill, they spend relatively little time and energy on finding food - about 3 hours a day. Even though they live in a relatively dry area, the land is (or rather, was, because it has been poached out) actually bountiful with plenty of game and rich diversity of nutritional foods. See this New Scientist article from 1991: http://snipurl.com/1p4fb <BLOCKED::http://snipurl.com/1p4fb> Compare that with the rest of the East African landscape (such as the Hazda's maize growing neighbours), which in the last 20 or 30 years has been turned over to grim maize "shambas" (fields, smallholdings) and shanty towns. The people on these tiny smallholdings are now locked into backbreaking work hoeing the land to plant maize (a diet which is bad for brain and body). Much of the land is now dependent on permanent food handouts - even in areas like Machakos/Makueni that have benefited from population growth (Mortimore and Tiffen "More People, Less Erosion"). Today, viewed from the air, the land in Makueni district (which at the beginning of the 20th C. was wilderness teeming with game), looks like it has been flayed alive. If you have Google Earth or Panoramio you can starkly see how unbelievably grim this landscape of small barren shambas is at the boundary between the verdant baobab and acacia scrub of Tsavo National Park and barren Makueni at this location: 2º 41' 6.01" S 38º 10' 16.10" E. Zoom in to see how barren the land is to the North of the river boundary. Zoom out to see how extensive this grim landscape of tiny farms is now. Twenty five years ago, you could drive from Nairobi to Mombasa though an empty wilderness and occasional productive cattle and game ranches. Now the land is bare and the roads lined with grim shanty towns. How are these millions of people on these bare smallholdings ever going to have electricity, clean water, schooling, roads, hospitals etc? -- there are now millions upon millions of acres of this vile, denuded agricultural landscape in E.Africa now. If you fly north to Ethiopia or Somalia that is all you see, for hour after hour - when twenty years ago, you saw a beautiful landscape of acacia grassland and cinder cones. Global warming (which is real enough) has nothing to do this "drought" and famine. It is disappointing that even Tim Flannery has fallen for the idea that pastoralists in Northern Kenya are global warming's "canaries". Where the landscape has not been destroyed by the explosion in livestock numbers, such as in conservation pockets or well-run ranches, there are few "droughts", no famines and the vegetation is perfectly healthy -- and Namibian ranchers do pretty well on half the rainfall and bioproductivity of northern Kenya! Unlike Northern Kenya's pastoralists, they don't (on the whole) overstock. In Somalia and Northern Kenya, the exponential growth of cattle and goat herds means that now when there is a rainshower, they load up their cattle and goats into trucks to be the first to get to what meager grass springs up. Statistics from the government aid agencies like the WFP, ICRC, Oxfam etc. (and local newspaper reports) show just how dependent on on food aid this land (which was very productive ranchland in colonial times) is - even during good years. See: http://www.reliefweb.int <BLOCKED::http://www.reliefweb.int/> for continuous updates on the grim food situations in most African countries. I think people generally don't realize how many vast refugee camps, dependent on food aid, there are now across Northern Kenya. This is the same across Africa. Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger and Chad are in a far worse situation. For example Ethiopia, which is far more dependent on food aid than it was during the famine of 1984. In the 1998 edition of "The Mountains of Rasselas" the historian Thomas Packenham laments how population growth has destroyed the land and society since he first visited in the 1950s. And as the author Philip Marsden pointed out: "....Every year now, about five million of Ethiopia's 70 million people need food aid just to survive. Famine is averted only because the distribution of emergency food is effective. Yet such aid is no more than palliative. Behind it, conditions are becoming worse. Only about half of the population receives sufficient nourishment Malnutrition and stunting in children, which hampers mental, as well as physical, development, has reached such levels that it's affecting productivity. Child mortality is growing: 18 per cent of Ethiopian children never reach their fifth birthday. It's estimated that food production must increase by 6.5 per cent a year if Ethiopia is ever to be able to feed itself. But food production is falling. Holdings are diminishing, increasingly divided up into 'starvation plots' of half a hectare or less. The average holding today is a quarter of what it was during the 1960s. And the land is exhausted. Without trees, soil is stripped to the bare rock. Droughts - previously estimated at about one per decade - now come around every few years........ Most critical of all, overall population is rising. Every week, the number of mouths to feed in Ethiopia increases by an estimated 36,000. In 25 years, there will be another 60 million Ethiopians. According to one economist, the opposition politician Dr Berhanu Nega, Ethiopia is facing the prospect of a "Malthusian catastrophe". It won't be this year, nor the next. The relief aid programme can contain deficits for now, but unless the correct development policies are initiated at once, such a catastrophe will be difficult to avert...." It is the same in Darfur. Global warming or Khartoum-backed Islamists are not the cause of the conflict. The explosion in livestock and human numbers, and resulting conflict over land, is. The disgusting, sprawling refugee cities today like El Fasher, or Kutum, are unrecognizable from the empty wilderness it was in the 1930s, when Wilfred Thesiger was based there ( http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ThesigerWeb/LifeTimes/71.13.htm <BLOCKED::http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ThesigerWeb/LifeTimes/71.13.htm> ). Today there are more people in just one Darfur refugee camp, than there were people in all of Darfur and Kordofan in the 1930s! It is also the same in areas that are not drylands. Even the wet, fertile highlands in East Africa (in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Kenya) have been subdivided to almost unbelievably small farms, so that they are no longer viable As a recent Economist article pointed out: ".....Kenya often feels like a country that cannot cope. Driving around, in country or town, the sheer burgeoning mass of people hits the eye. The population has exploded out of controlwith nothing like the rate of economic growth to sustain it. From around 1m people in 1900, the number of Kenyans had climbed to 4m after the second world war; though fewer than 8m at independence in 1963, Kenyans number more than 35m today. Recent projections suggest that, even taking account of the continuing ravages of AIDS, the population will exceed 40m in 2010, rising to 57m by 2025. Life expectancy went up from 44 years at independence to 62 in 1984, then slumped again, to 49 in 2000 and 52 today..........In the western province of Nyanza, one of the most populous parts of the country, edging Lake Victoria, a family's average landholding is 0.8 hectares (less than two acres) and the average number of children between seven and eight;.......Equally striking is the new urban sprawl-and the spread of slums. Nairobi is one of the world's fastest-growing cities: at independence it embraced a little over 500,000 people; now it may have more than 6m, three-quarters of whom are reckoned to be squashed into about 2% of its metropolitan area...." In the 1970s you could travel across Nyanza (see above) through thick Afrocarpus forest. By the 1990s they had been razed and replaced by burning stumps and grim little smallholdings: http://snipurl.com/1p72e <BLOCKED::http://snipurl.com/1p72e> http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143951476 <BLOCKED::http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143951476> There is now millions of tons of silt and nutrients from this deforestation, that the sediment plume (that is killing Lake Victoria) can be seen from space. If you have Google Earth, have a look at this location> 0º 21' 45.17" S 34º 39' 22.94" E Where once there were large, productive, profitable farms in the 1970s in East Africa, there are now millions living on tiny farms in abject poverty, on permanent food handouts from simpering bien-pensants and development NGOs (who blame the poverty on things like globalisation - or conversely, unfair trade!). It has become the land become the land of the Cargo Cult. <BLOCKED::http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=39&newsid=14300> The botanist Colin Trapnell did extensive surveys of Zambia in the 1930s and then Kenya later (when the population was a fraction of what it is today). He also found NOT poverty or malnutrition, but thriving and diverse agricultural systems -- before the maize monocultures of today. Agricultural intensification has facilitated population growth, which in turn has necessitated further agricultural intensification to cope with that elevated population level. But that most certainly has not been progress. Population growth has more than destroyed all the advances in agricultural yields. The 100s of millions living in slums, rural squalor, or the 10s of millions in refugee cities dependent on food aid, across Africa are testament to the fact that much of Africa now has a standard of living not lower than that of hunter-gatherers, not lower than that of the stone-age, but lower than that of the pre-hominin era. (even non-hominid primates in Africa today have a better, less socially stressful life and a more nutritional diet - and they don't die in their millions of starvation like humans do). The 10s of millions in refugee cities, or dependent on food aid are testament to the fact much of Africa has descended into what I call "The Aid Age". And it is going to get much worse. Just watch Niger (with its explosive population growth) in the coming years to see how famines and land conflicts are going to surpass those of Darfur. Some critics of Diamond's point of view might point out that hunter-gatherers like Hadza do not have access to the benefits of the modern world, like hospitals. But nor to the impoverished people on the grim maize shambas, as they cannot afford to! I suspect if the Hadza's "economy" were to be quantified in dollar terms (e.g. the value of the food they gather), they would be able to afford things like basic healthcare. The following essay from the ECONOMIST may also be of interest: http://www.economist.com/world/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=7270000 <http://www.economist.com/world/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=7270000> ---- in its conclusion that it is time to stop turning a blind eye to the continuing population growth that 'simple food aid' makes possible. Peter Salonius Research Scientist, Canadian Wood Fibre Centre Natural Resources Canada - Canadian Forest Service P. O. Box 4000, 1350 Regent Street South, Fredericton, New Brunswick, E3B 5P7, Canada Tel.:(506) 452-3548, Fax: (506) 452-3525 Email: [log in to unmask] Chercheur scientifique, Centre canadien sur la fibre de bois Ressources naturelles Canada - Service canadien des forêts C. P. 4000, 1350, rue Regent sud, Fredericton (Nouveau-Brunswick) E3B 5P7, Canada Tél. :(506) 452-3548, Téléc. : (506) 452-3525 Courriel : [log in to unmask] http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/directory/psaloniu <http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/directory/psaloniu> ________________________________ From: About research and teaching in demography and population studies [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Daniel Kasarama Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 9:58 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Save Africa from global warming Save Africa from global warming Please sign our petition to UK Prime Minister to take concrete action and measures to help African poor communities address the impact of climate change and global warming on their lives. http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ConserveAfrica/CNDdKhCObdzEDiJHvNAna2c <http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ConserveAfrica/CNDdKhCObdzEDiJHvNAna2c> Africa is the continent that will suffer most under climate change. Temperature rise will trigger "sharp declines in crop yield in tropical regions", estimated at 5 to 10 % in Africa with an associated increase in undernourishment, malnutrition, malaria and related deaths. 50 % of all malnutrition-related deaths (4 million annually worldwide) occur in Africa, while a 2°C rise in temperature will increase the people affected by hunger, potentially by 30 to 200 million worldwide. Globally, Africa and Western Asia will suffer the largest crop losses, while these regions are highly dependent on agriculture and have the largest limits in purchasing power. Conflict and violence triggered by scarce resources and famine will likely bring West Africa to socio-political instability. Even prosperous regions like the Cape will be touched, as millions of people will be displaced by drought and water shortages in the poorer areas. More: http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Effects-of-Global-Warming-in-Africa-41077.shtml <http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Effects-of-Global-Warming-in-Africa-41077.shtml> Internship and volunteer opportunities in Africa: http://www.conserveafrica.org.uk/volunteer.html <http://www.conserveafrica.org.uk/volunteer.html> E-forums http://www.conserveafrica.org.uk/forum.html <http://www.conserveafrica.org.uk/forum.html> =-=-=-= Daniel Kasarama Conserve Africa Foundation 1st Floor, 36 The Market Square London N9 0TZ Tel: +442088036161 Web: http://www.conserveafrica.org.uk/ ________________________________ Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=48246/*http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/;_ylc=X3oDMTE5cDF2bXZzBF9TAzk3MTA3MDc2BHNlYwNtYWlsdGFncwRzbGsDZ3JlZW4tY2VudGVy>