Hard-hit environment fuels havoc

THE floods that have created havoc in the Sudanese capital and across a wide belt of Africa for the first time in 20 years have highlighted the perilous state of the region’s ecology.

After two decades of drought, the land and its inhabitants no longer seem to be able to cope with heavy rains and are suffering the consequences of decades of damage to the environment.

Last month, northern Nigeria’s biggest dam gave way under the weight of millions of litres of water after the heaviest rainfall in 50 years swelled the reservoir to unprecedented levels.

Storms in the region have also caused severe damage in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Cameron, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Some meteorologists and environmentalists believe population growth and the consequent destruction of forests for living space, agriculture and firewood have contributed as much to the disaster in Sudan as the heavy rainfall of the past few weeks.

However, most are agreed that the immediate cause of the tragedy is the combination of a freak two-day storm, so heavy that it should occur only once every 1000 years, with unusually persistent rainfall in the catchment areas of the Blue and White Nile rivers in northern EtMopia and in central eastern Africa.

Water that has fallen on Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire in recent weeks is now rushing through Sudan along the two rivers and filling the old flood plains. Khartoum, at the point where the rivers converge to form the Nile proper, has taken the force of the deluge.

The disaster is aggravated by the deforestation that has occurred over the past 20 years in all the countries of the Nile basin, but particularly northern Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile.

A century ago about 40 per cent of Ethiopia was covered by dense forests. Today forest cover is down to 4 per cent, with more land in western Ethiopia disappearing everyday.

The effect is that during dry periods the land is prone to erosion of topsoil. During wet periods it is no longer able to act as a sponge. The water erodes soil, building up silt in the river and dams so that they are more prone to flood, and destroys crops.

British experts fear much of Sudan’s crops have perished. Much of what is left is now threatened by Africa’s worst plague of locusts, boosted by ideal breeding conditions, in 30 years.

In the long term there is some comfort, for Sudan’s farmers may find their land more fertile from the silt and clay deposited by the floods.

Egypt is already benefiting from the Sudan floods, which are refilling the massive lake behind the Aswan dam. This had run dangerously low, menacing Egypt with crop failures and power shortages.

Source : Sunday Times Of London

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