McCartney Divorce Millions Good for Drought in Africa
If I were to lay my hands on $48.6 million, I would probably go bonkers trying to figure out what to do with it. But I am no Sir Paul McCartney, neither can I guess what Heather Mills does for a living. However, now that I know this figure separates the two on their divorce, I also know what $48.6 million can do for drought in Africa.
It is ironic if not a coincidence that on the same pay day in a London courtroom, the European Union was also announcing a grant of a similar sum to fight drought in Africa. The European Union package of Euro 30 million (US$47 million) will help African countries in the northeast of the continent fight the effects of drought.
Drought fighting initiatives in countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and even Sudan, always face funding shortfalls, affecting emergency relief for millions facing acute food shortages in the drought-hit Horn of Africa, in turn threatening to exacerbate already dire conditions. The effects of drought on people’s lives are devastating and not always visible to the rest of the world.
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Last year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that an estimated 11 million people in the Horn of Africa were on “the brink of starvation.” The UN special envoy to the Horn of Africa, Kjell Bondevik, had also warned that the world was in danger of allowing a drought in East Africa to become a humanitarian catastrophe.
Yet the drought problem is not confined to the Horn of Africa alone. The Sahel, that runs 2,400 miles from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east, has had its fair share of the catastrophe. It is a transitional eco-region of semi-arid grasslands, savannas, and thorn shrub lands lying between the wooded Sudanian savanna to the south and the Sahara desert to the north. It includes Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, and Eritrea.
Climate change is generally agreed as the cause of droughts in Africa. Years of alternating droughts and floods, mismanagement of land and food supplies, political instability, and regional conflicts are being blamed in many parts of Africa.
But a 2001 research finding suggested that dust played an integral part. It was found that dust actually amplifies the process of creating deserts. Activities that expose and disrupt topsoil, such as grazing and agricultural cultivation, can increase the amount of dust blown into the air. More dust reaching rain clouds produces less rainfall, which exacerbates the drought conditions and contributes to the desertification of the landscape.
In a 2005, New York Times article, some climate experts blamed ocean warmth and predicted a grim 50-year-long drying trend that was likely to continue and which appeared linked to substantial warming of the Indian Ocean.
CARE, the international charity fighting global poverty, has some projects in the Horn of Africa and says the difference between life and death can be decided by the weather which can lead to widespread crop failure.
So while $48.6 million is almost nothing - well, divorce change - to some people in other parts of the world and who would write a check without much batting an eyelid, it can mean a whole world of difference to impoverished, drought stricken millions in Africa.
Photo credit: CARE (Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Inc. All rights reserved)
Sam — Boy, do we need this kind of perspective in the developed world… Maybe Bono can have a talk with Mills about using some of that “divorce change” in a manner like this!
Surely this amount of money will contribute toward preservation of life and livelihood for all those millions of people at risk of humanitarian catastrophe… the population masses in the dozen plus countries in drought stricken regions of Africa.
Meanwhile, poor Ms. Mills was heard to whine that this same amount of money, as part of her overall divorce settlement, will limit her one daughter to a B-class lifestyle.
Thank you Sam, for pointing out this hideous contradiction. If only all the other media… the tabloids etc. would run with such a reality check as this.