CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER REDUCTION IN NIGERIA
By
E A Olofin (PhD)Professor of GeographyBayero University, Kano
Text of a Paper for the 53rd Annual Conference of theAssociation of Nigerian Geographers (ANG) Organized by theDepartment of Geography, Lagos State University for the ANG
21st – 25th November, 2011
ABSTRACT
Based on literature context analysis and personal experience,this paper investigates the expected effects of climate changeon environmental hazards in Nigeria and reviewed the disasterreduction strategies available or in practice to amelioratethe impacts of such hazards and prevent them from developinginto disasters. It is shown that the climate-driven hazardsaffecting Nigeria currently include drought, desertification,floods, rainstorms, sea surges, some of which have assumedenvironmental disasters, particularly for the most vulnerablegroups such as the rural poor, women and children. It isargued that these hazards would be intensified under climatechange platform result in disasters for more people ifdisaster reduction strategies are pursued. Mitigating andadaptation policies and strategies recommended, formulatedand/or in practice in Nigeria are listed to include droughtand desertification policy, drought preparedness action plan,food security and poverty alleviation programmes, greening theenvironment through tree-planting programmes, reduction in gasemission through anti-gas-flaring policies and renewableenergy utilization programmes, and a lot more. The problem isthat the publication and implementations of these policies andstrategies have suffered serious setbacks. It is recommendedthat these policy and action plan documents that are currentlygathering dust on government and Non-government organizationshelves should be dusted, upgraded, published, given wide
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publicity and implemented to save the poor of the country fromthe imminent disasters that are waiting to occur under climatechange conditions.
Key words: climate, environment, disasters, policies,
strategies
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1. Introduction
Climate Change is the variation in climatic conditions
that is showing some irreversible characteristics. In other
words, it is a condition that shows a trend towards a
particular condition of more or less. Thus, the issue of
climate change today is seen as a situation that is pointing
to a change in the contemporary climate in an irreversible
manner to a new type of climate in all parts of the earth. The
forcing mechanisms are believed to have become intensified
since 1997, or so (Gershunov, et al., 1999) and increases in
the atmospheric greenhouse gases have emerged as the dominant
forcing mechanism (Oldfield, 1998). Mann et al. (1998) have
shown that three of the years between 1991 and 1998 were
warmest across the Northern Hemisphere since at least 1400 AD.
What the new type of climate will be for specific areas
of the world is one of the pre-occupations of the scientists
tackling the Climate Change phenomenon. Specifically, the
change is towards a warming globe, popularly referred to as
“Global Warming”, with a chain of associated environmental
reactions, some of them negative. Thus, contemporary climatic
conditions are becoming highly hazardous or risky, especially
to the more vulnerable – women, children and the poor.
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Such climate-driven hazards include drought, aridity and
extreme variability in rainfall. The increasing and
widespread incidence of drought in recent decades has always
been cited in explaining the apparent concomitant incidence of
land degradation in the drylands of the country. Also, the
increasing aridity – decline in mean rainfall without
necessarily ushering in drought – is believed to enhance the
desiccation of the environment by reducing the effectiveness
of rainfall. Storms of various types including sea storms,
rainstorms, dust and sand storms; hurricanes, and tornadoes
are intensifying in the tropical world. Such storms lead to
floods, soil erosion, destruction of physical and human
infrastructure, and other socioeconomic problems, often
reaching disastrous proportions. It is believed that the
climate change phenomenon would steepen these hazards
(Adebayo, 2010) and put many more people at risk of the
resultant disasters if the capacity of the more vulnerable is
not improved through disaster reduction strategies.
This paper examines, through literature context analysis
and personal experience, the climate-driven hazards affecting
Nigeria, projects their intensification under a climate change
scenario, identifies the more vulnerable groups and explains
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how to prevent the hazards from resulting in disasters through
disaster reduction strategies.
2. Climate-Driven Hazards in Nigeria
As mentioned above, the climate-driven hazards in Nigeria
include drought, intensified sea surges and coastal erosion
traceable to the effect of sea level rise as well as
rainstorms, floods and windstorms. The sea surges could well
be the result of a slight increase in the mean level of the
Atlantic Ocean brought about by ice-cap melting under the
global warming phenomenon. For example, Sinclair (1991) has
observed that since the 1980s there has been a sharp decrease
in the amount of snow cover on the Earth's land surface and
that scientists have recorded a decrease of 15 percent, or
more, in the thickness of the sea ice over a large area north
of Greenland.
Under current climatic conditions, aridity increases
northward in Nigeria in terms of total annual rainfall and
number of rainy days. In recent years, the aridity has been
compounded. For example, Ibrahim (1998) has shown that where
the rainy days used to be 120, they have reduced to 90 days
and, in the extreme north, where there used to be 90 rainy
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days there are only 60 in recent years. Drought occurrences
are more devastating. For example, drought and associated
famine had occurred in Nigeria in the last 60 years in
1954/1956, 1972/1973, 1982/1983 stretching to 1984 and
1995/96. The major droughts, which are regional and are
believed to have a 30-year cycle in the last 100 years, are
known to have occurred in 1913/1915, 1942/1944 and 1972/1973.
There are also 10-year cycle droughts which are usually
localized, even in areas lying along the same latitude (Draft
of Drought Preparedness Document, FMEnv, 2006).
The Drought Preparedness document indicates that the
impacts of drought are usually disastrous and often dramatic
particularly for the most vulnerable groups – women and
children. Drought forces the inhabitants of the Nigerian
drylands to resort to survival strategies, which further
exacerbate the desertification problems, with associated
reduction in land productivity and worsening poverty problem.
The effects of the 1972/73 drought in the worst hit parts of
northern Nigeria reduced the yields of some main crops to less
than one-tenth of those of good years. Losses of Livestock
during the same period ranged from 50 – 100 percent. Mortimore
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(1989) has described the magnitude of crop failure, starvation
and loss of human and animal life that occurred in the
drylands of Nigeria during the 1972/73 drought. The expected
conditions under the emerging climate change scenario would be
worse than those under the 1972/73 drought.
The greatest irony, of course, is that the same areas
that suffer droughts during one season are likely to go under
floods in the next or parts of the same season because the
rains, even when less in amount, often come in high intensity
that results in flash flows and floods. Indeed, all over
Nigeria, the rainy season commences with rain and windstorms
portending great hazards wherever they occur.
3. Intensification of Climate-Driven Hazards under Climate
Change
It is envisaged that the current climate-driven hazards
affecting Nigeria will intensify under the emerging climate
change scenario. In general, most climate change models
predict an increase of extreme events associated with
increased irregularity and decreased predictability. Overall,
major effects could be classified according to Nori et al.
(2008) as:
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Changing rainfall patterns, with increased variabilityexpected and declining water balances;
Biodiversity shifts in both time and space; Changes in wind patterns; More frequent and intensified floods and droughts; and Changes in oscillations of recurrent events such as El
Nino, heat waves and tropical cyclones.
These effects indicate a worsening of the current
climate-driven hazards which may easily attain disastrous
proportions. The inter-play of rainfall and high temperature
poses serious threats to water availability that could result
in more severe agricultural drought and greater crop failure
as well as deficient and inferior water availability for human
and animal consumption. Thus, Olofin (2004) observed that one
of the expected results of climate change in Nigeria would be
a further drying up of the semiarid belt through increasing
and intensified occurrence of drought and desertification and
dry-and-wet conditions in the currently humid regions.
Although West Africa is one of the regions of the world that
presents the most uncertainty, and the most disagreement among
models, as regards future trends in precipitation (Anderson
2008), nonetheless, Ouan (2008) believes that Africa's
drylands face the prospect of increasing aridity and climate
variability, undermining the sustainability of rain-fed
agriculture. However, an average of the major models suggests
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a modest increase in rainfall for the Sahel with little change
on the Guinean coast, although there are models which project
either strong drying or strong moistening. Thus, it is wise to
prepare communities in the drylands of Nigeria for both
droughts and floods events, so that whichever comes, they will
be in a position to minimize the risk and use opportunities
presented to avoid disaster.
4. The Most Vulnerable Groups to Climate Change Phenomenon
Worldwide it is believed that the most vulnerable groups
consist of the rural poor, especially their women and
children. Poverty makes human beings more vulnerable to the
effects of natural hazards and the poor persons’ coping
strategies are seriously jeopardized and compromised, such
that a small hazard soon becomes a major disaster. It is for
this and other reasons that poverty reduction (or eradication
if possible) has been at the core of sustainable development
worldwide. Unfortunately, despite such international efforts,
poverty has become more widespread in many countries in recent
years making poverty reduction a crucial tool for coping with
the effects of climate change and progress towards the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). A
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Consortium of international forum (undated) commenting on
poverty and climate change stated emphatically that: “climate
change is happening and will increasingly affect the poor”.
Nigeria and other less developed countries are the worst
for the proportion of poor inhabitants. In Nigeria about 70%
of the inhabitants are feared to be living below the poverty
threshold of about US$1 per day (Olofin 2008). A more graphic
comment on poverty in Nigeria was the 1996 publication of the
Federal Office of statistics which shows that a multiple
indicator cluster survey indicates that
Only one in every ten Nigerian can be described as non-poor. The other90 percent are described as either "core poor" or "moderately poor”.
It was emphasized that in the context of 1996 population
estimates, the harsh reality is that less than 11 million
people in Nigeria could be described as "living people", while
the remaining 99 million people could best be described as the
"living dead". Today, based on the 2006 population figure, it
means that only 14 million of the 140 million Nigerians are
“living people” and the remaining 126 million are “living
dead”. It is not difficult to see what will happen when the
already “living dead” is hit by a disaster fueled by climate
change.
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5. An Overview of Disaster Reduction Strategies in the Face of
Climate Change
DFID (2006:4) quoted the UNDP’s definition of disaster
reduction as:
“The systematic development and application of policies, strategiesand practices to minimize vulnerability, hazards and the unfolding ofdisaster impacts throughout a society, in the broad context ofsustainable development.”
In essence, this means preventing hazards or ameliorating
their impacts from becoming disasters because it is argued
that environmental hazards are environmental risks but when
they occur in magnitudes beyond the affected people’s
capacity, leading to the loss of life and property, they
become disasters. Worldwide, efforts continue to be geared
towards the formulation and implementation of strategic
policies that can help reduce the risk posed by the impacts of
climate change as currently known, among other risks. A
publication of the UN Strategy for Disaster Reduction
formulated a general Disaster Risk Reduction Frame Work
(Figure 1) which includes risks related to climate change with
guidelines specifying what nations are expected to do (ISDR
2007). Many countries have started to follow this framework
and adopting the guidelines and prioritization recommended.
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For example, a Japanese Subcommittee on Climate Change
Adaptation (2008) argues that there are two approaches (what
it calls two wheels) to disaster risk reduction: mitigation
and adaptation with adaptation taken as the immediate
priority. It sees mitigation as strategies put in place to
reduce or absorb greenhouse gases while adaptation is
explained as strategies put in place to reduce possible damage
or disaster by developing systems to cope with expected
impacts of climate change.
For mitigation, the establishment of a low-carbon society
should be pursued by introducing carbon-dioxide reduction
measures such as establishment of carbon sinks (vegetation) to
prevent urban “heat islands”, the use of alternative energy
sources rather than the burning of fossil and carbon fuels,
particularly increasing reliance on solar energy, wind and
small scale hydraulic power generation.
In the case of adaptation, it is imperative that all
nations must put in place coping strategies that would reduce
the impact of climate change related disasters that have been
enumerated earlier. Many countries are already putting in
place coping strategies such as those for effective management
and assessment of flood risks as the EU is doing, establishing
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early warning systems for droughts as is the case in Canada
and formulating policies on other adaptation strategies with
functional implementation guidelines.
One common adaptation strategy is poverty eradication or
reduction. Indeed, it is generally believed that one of the
most important strategies for disaster reduction is poverty
eradication, or alleviation. Yet, in the last decade or so,
poverty has become more widespread in spite of international
efforts to the contrary, thereby making poverty reduction the
core challenge for development in the 21st century, as well as
a serious challenge to the reduction of climate change related
disasters. The poor are already very vulnerable as things are.
The impacts of climate change and the vulnerability of poor
communities to these impacts would be superimposed on the
existing vulnerability unless the poor is empowered
financially and materially.
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SOURE: International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2007)
A list of adaptation strategies for climate-change
related risks being pursued by the international communities
include:
Adaptation strategies for floods and storm surges which
involve the assessment of flood risks based on available
knowledge and the predictions of the impact of climate
change; preparation of flood hazard and flood risk maps
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and the formulation of risk management plans based on
results of the studies.
Adaptation strategies for droughts which involve climate-
change impact assessment on water resources, promotion of
water-saving enhancement, ground- and underground-water
storage, water transfer facilities, water saving by users
through prioritization and monitoring climatic trend.
In all these, the place of effective national policy that
gives clear directives and implementation action plans is
clearly emphasized.
6. Strategic Policies towards Disaster Reduction in Nigeriaand Means of Implementation
The hazards of climate change that can affect Nigeria
have already been enumerated above to include drought and
desertification in the drylands of the country, sea level
rising that will lead to increased and intensified sea surges
and coastal erosion at the marine fringes and floods all over
the country. There is the mitigating policy towards stopping
gas-flaring to reduce Nigeria’s contribution to global carbon
emission and achieve a low-carbon society. However, its
implementation has suffered deadline postponement over and
over again. Concerning drought and desertification, the
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Federal Ministry of Environment had in 2006 drafted a drought
and desertification policy for Nigeria which is yet to see the
light of day. Based on that policy, a drought preparedness
action plan document (FMEnv 2006) was also formulated,
containing strategies for adapting to drought that spell out
appropriate responses to drought events. These are set out in
Boxes 1, 2 and 3, with minimal modifications
BOX 1DROUGHT EMERGENCE RESPONSE
Rapid Response MeasuresDrought preparedness plans are very useful in the
development of rapid response system for drought occurrencesand their impacts. A drought rapid response system willinclude: - Identifying the vulnerable areas, population and economicand environmental sectors. The function shall be carried outby the Risk Assessment Committee.- Mobilising the people and different levels of government andauthorities into action. It is expected that the DroughtMitigation Committee shall play this role.- Response action to meet the food, water, Medicare, shelterand other basic necessities of life of the vulnerable peopleand communities to be carried out by the Drought MitigationCommittee.- The various subcommittees of the Drought Task Force at bothFederal and State levels will need to work in harmony torespond to the situations that may arise. The goal of thesystem is to reduce drought impact on the people.
The specific emergency Response programmes should include:- Establishment of alert procedures for water quality problems- Augmentation of water supplies/identify alternative sources- Provision of emergency food relief- Provision of emergency funding (loans, grants, credits, etc)
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- Prevention of wild fires to safeguard the limited vegetation- Provision of livestock feed and watering pointsSOURCE: Fed. Ministry of Environment (2006)
BOX 2DROUGHT EMERGENCE RESPONSE
Indigenous Coping SystemAlthough Local, State and Federal Governments will usuallyrespond to drought and other hazards due cognisance musthowever be given to the time-tested indigenous coping systemsof the communities of the affected areas, which include thefollowing:- Multi-cropping and intercropping systems- Use of drought resistant crop varieties e. g. millet andsorghum- Soil and water conservation measures- Storage of grains (by means of local silos- Reduction of livestock numbers by culling- Consumption of famine foodstuff such as fruits etc- Sale of assets- Migration to safer areas The indigenous coping system should be integrated withgovernment and other responses from international donors. Inthis regard, Universities and the FME on behalf of theResearch and Development subcommittee of the Drought TaskForce should carry out a survey of the Indigenous CopingStrategies of the drought vulnerable communities with the viewto document and integrate them into the drought responsesystem.SOURCE: Fed. Ministry of Environment (2006)
Box 3DROUGHT EMERGENCE RESPONSE
Emergency Relief ArrangementWhen situation of drought occurs in different states, the
Federal and State Government undertake relief measures byproviding drinking water, food grain, and fodder and foodsubsidies to special and vulnerable groups. The work plan forthe emergency relief arrangement is as follows: -
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a) Alert on drought (based on early warning system): Thedrought monitoring team gives alert on drought.b) Instruction to act (i.e. triggering the plan):i) Long-term warning - 3 months minimumii) Short-term warning - 2 weeks minimumThe emergency relief arrangement is a short-term arrangementto mitigate the effect of drought.c) Rapid Assessment- First, there should be a tour to the affected zones toobtain all possible information about the situation (i.e.determine the extent of damage). Decide on the type ofassistance including relief materials to be rendered anddistributed to the zones. Prior to the deployment ofresources, the following questions must be answered: -i) Who needs the resources?ii) What is needed?iii) When is the resource required?iv) Where is the resource needed?vi) Why is the specific resource required? vii) Are there other options?vii) Why this is the most appropriate resource for themission? viii) How will the resource be delivered?Secondly, prepare, store move and distribute the reliefmaterials to the affected zones.SOURCE; Fed. Ministry of Environment (2006)
In the case of floods, the Hadejia-Komadudgu-Yobe
Committee has fashioned out some coping strategies for
adapting to floods in the basin, which can be adopted for all
states prone to flooding. A summary of the provisions is
contained in Article 19 of the Water Charter formulated by the
committee for the basin and this is presented in Box 4. There
are also poverty reduction, food security, gas-flaring and
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renewable energy policies formulated to address other
environmental risks.
It is clear then that Nigeria has in place policies and
disaster reduction strategies that can prevent the
intensification of environmental hazards under the climate
change scenario from developing into disasters and ameliorate
their impacts to remain within the coping ability of the
citizens. What remains is the political will and prioritizing
ability to make the policies and strategies work.
Box 4ARTICLE 19 – Flooding
1. Each Basin State shall develop and maintain datainventory on flood prone areas and establish a functionalflood data bank.
2. Liaise with relevant Ministries/Agencies to promote andstrengthen the establishment of meteorological and rivergauging stations to generate adequate data for floodforecasting.
3. Develop emergency preparedness plan for monitoring,evaluating and mitigating flood disasters incollaboration with the National Emergency ManagementAgency (NEMA).
4. During actual flood situations, the Basin statesshall:a) Liaise with operators of dams to minimize the adverseimpacts of released flood water;
b) Put in place appropriate mechanism and structuresfor flood control and water conservation;
i) Device strategies for informing and managing the populationduring flood in collaboration with NEMA; and
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ii) Monitor all activities that could increase runoff and/orblock water channels.
Source HKYB Trust Fund (2007)
7. Conclusion
It has been demonstrated that climate change would usher
in into this country extreme weather conditions that portent
intensified environmental hazards that would be beyond the
coping capacities of the majority of Nigerians except disaster
reduction policies and strategies are put in place to
ameliorate the impacts of the intensified hazards. The
greatest activity at risk is agriculture and the most
vulnerable people are the rural peasant farmers, the poor,
women and children, particularly since agriculture is still
largely dependent on the vagaries of weather in the country.
Some of the climate-driven hazards that have assumed disaster
proportions under the contemporary drought conditions have
been used to project how severe the disasters under climate
change scenario could be. Thus, it is imperative that both
mitigating and adaptation measures should be embedded in the
policies and strategies of governance in order to lessen the
impact of the envisaged disaster. Fortunately, mitigating and
adaptation policies and strategies have been formulated to
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reduce environmental disaster related to drought,
desertification and flood as well as policies to alleviate
poverty in Nigeria and to evolve a low-carbon society, except
that their publication and implementation have not fared well.
There is also the mitigating policy geared towards stopping
gas-flaring in order to reduce Nigeria’s contribution to
carbon emission suffering the same lukewarm fate. It is
recommended that these policy and action plan documents that
are currently gathering dust on government and organization
shelves should be dusted, upgraded, published, given wide
publicity and implemented to save the poor of the country from
the imminent disasters that are waiting to occur under climate
change conditions.
8. References
Adebayo, A. A. (2010) Climate: Resource and Resistance toAgriculture, 8th Professorial Inaugural Lecture, FederalUniversity of Technology, Yola, LAPC, FUTY, May 2010
Anderson, S (2008) Climate change – how will it affect thedrylands? Haramata Bulletin of the Drylands, 53: 14 – 15
Consortium of Ten International Organizations (undated) Povertyand Climate Change: Reducing Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation
DFID (2006) Reducing the Risk of Disasters – Helping to Achieve SustainablePoverty Reduction in a Vulnerable World, A DFID Policy Paper 30pp,http://www.unisdr.org/news,DFID-reducing-risk-of-disasters.pdf
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Federal Ministry of Environment (2006) National Drought PreparednessPlan, Draft, Unpublished, Abuja
Gershunov, A.; T. P Barnett & D. R. Cayan (1999) North Pacificinterdecadal oscillation seen as factor in ENSO-relatedNorth American climate anomalies. EOS, Transactions, AmericanGeophysical Union, 80(3): 25- 30.
HKYB Trust Fund (2007) Water Charter, Unpublished TechnicalReport
Ibrahim, A. M. (1998) Livelihood Options Under Intensifying Aridity inNortheastern Nigeria. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, Dept. ofGeog. Bayero University, Kano.
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR, 2007)Adapting to Climate Change and Reducing Disaster Risk,www.unisdrafrica.org/...
Japanese Subcommittee on Climate Change Adaptation (2008)Climate Change Adaptation Strategies to Cope with Water-related Disastersdue to Global Warming (Draft Policy Report) Panel on InfrastructureDevelopment, 61pp
Mann, M.; R. S. Bradley & M. K. Hughes (1998) Global scaletemperature patterns and climate forcing over the pastsix centuries. Nature, 382: 779 -788
Mortimore, M. (1989) Adapting to Drought: Farmers, Famine andDesertification in West Africa. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press.
Nori, M, Taylor M., & Sensi, A (2008) Browsing the Fences: PastoralLand Rights, Livelihoods and Adaptation to Climate Change. Issue PaperNo. 148, International Institute for Environment andDevelopment (IIED)
Oldfield, Frank (1998) For research on Climate Change, past isthe key to future. EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union,80(3): 493- 494.
Olofin, E. A. (2004) Climate Change and Water ResourcesManagement: Implications for Food Security in Nigeria;Paper for the Nigerian Meteorological Society’s (NMS)Conference on “Climate and Water Resources in the 21st
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Century: Challenges for Food Security and Health”,Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta
Olofin, E. A. (2008) Towards a viable policy for povertyalleviation by the year 2015 in Kiyawa, I et al. (2008)Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria
Olofin, E. A. (2011) Dryland Agriculture Potentials andChallenges; Invited Paper Presented at the SensitizingWorkshop Organized by the Implementation Committee on theEstablishment of a Centre for Dry Land Agriculture inBUK, March 2011
Ouan, J (2008) Drought or deluge – or a bit of both? HaramataBulletin of the Drylands, 53: 16
Sinclair, J. 1991. Global climatic change has already begun.Our Planet, UNEP, 3(2): 14-15.
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