Truly, there is a correlation between poverty, hunger, and water stress. The UN millennium development project has identified the ‘hot spot’ countries in the world suffering from the largest prevalence of malnutrition. Of the 850 million undernourished people in the world, essentially all live in poor, developing countries, which predominantly are located in tropical regions.
Levels of productivity, particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa including Tanzania are low due to degraded soils, high levels of evaporation, droughts, floods and a general lack of effective water management. A major study into water use by agriculture, known as the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, coordinated by the International Water Management Institute, noted a close correlation between hunger, poverty, and water. However, it concluded that there was much opportunity to raise productivity from rainfed farming. Managing rainwater and soil moisture more effectively and using supplemental and small-scale irrigation is believed to hold the key to helping the greatest number of poor people. It called for a new era of water investments and policies for upgrading rainfed agriculture that would go beyond controlling field-level soil and water to bring new freshwater sources through better local management of rainfall and runoff.
Dependence on rain-fed crops has made southern Africa vulnerable to drought and other unfavourable climatic conditions Namibian Minister for Agriculture, Alpheus Naruseb said this when he last year addressed a meeting of SADC ministers responsible for agriculture and food security in Windhoek.
About 70 per cent of the region depends on agriculture for livelihood, which in turn directly depends on adequate, timely and well-distributed rainfall.
We are of the opinion that such a situation requires policies and strategies that have mitigation measures in place for droughts and floods, which will make the agriculture and fisheries sector more resilient to these adverse climatic conditions.
Decisions taken at the ministers' gathering are practically implementable. It is imperative that SADC states should devise and implement strategies that will enhance preparedness to respond timeously and effectively to the increasingly volatile climatic conditions.
The ministers' deliberations and policies should focus on rural investment, infrastructure development and appropriate technologies to reduce the long-term effect of climate variability on food production.
Incentives that motivate farmers to adopt better agricultural techniques and practices, will also help to develop aquaculture. The implementation of decisions and policies is only possible if all SADC member states commit to honouring obligations in implementing regional programmes.
Also the timely implementation will enable the region to feed its estimated 30 million people who are currently food insecure. Available data on the regional food security was not encouraging as 23,3 million people from six of the 11 member states are food insecure.
These are vital warning signs, given that some SADC states have declared drought disaster emergency. Five SADC members: Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe, have declared a state of drought disaster and started the mobilisation of response plans.
However we express confidence that collectively the region can address the climate-induced challenges. SADC secretariat ought to come up with a reporting mechanism that keeps track, at a technical levels of the and status of their implementation at national level.
We also call on the secretariat to improve follow-ups with member states on the decisions taken at SADC ministerial level in order to address current delays on implementation. The region to seek developing their own sustainable blue economy opportunities as one of the means to address food insecurity among our people.
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