A DRY LAND OF MANY WATERS

Feb 10, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Global warming has had a significant impact on Guyana during the past two
decades. In several cases, the weather pattern has moved from one extreme to the next; that is, from floods to droughts.
Guyana is now faced with another severe drought which is also affecting several countries in the Caribbean. It is expected to worsen, despite a few sparse light showers here and there. The drought has severely affected residents and especially farmers everywhere, as Guyana—the land of many waters—runs dry.
This is not the first time Guyana has experienced such a phenomenon; the most severe drought experienced in our recent history took place in 1997-1998. That El Niño event affected more than 80 percent of the population and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage to the agriculture sector. It led to water rationing countrywide. Farmers and residents in the rural areas suffered immensely. The President had to declare a state of emergency and dispatched hundreds of trucks with water to the rural areas to help residents cope.
The current drought is due largely to a paucity of precipitation by a particularly harsh El Niño. The situation was further aggravated by the presence of an abnormal amount of dust and dry air over the Southern Atlantic region. It has been exacerbated by a lack of maintenance of the infrastructure, whereby almost half of the water supply is lost during distribution.
Guyana, like most of its Caribbean neighbours, usually has just two ‘seasons’ rainy and sunny or dry weather, with some regions having more rainfall or drier weather than others. With its main sources of water being rainfall, the ground water is stored and conserved in rivers, creeks and in irrigation canals such as the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC). Also, most of the wells which provide the bulk of the country’s potable water are running dry.
Most of the fresh water ponds, lakes and streams are drying up.
Even more ominous is the fact that forecasters at the $550 million Doppler Radar facility at Cheddi Jagan International Airport have cautioned that the worst is yet to come because the El Niño phenomenon is gathering strength which will make the drought even more severe. It means that there will be sparse rainfall for an already largely parched land.
Many are opining that this drought came at the worst time for the country, especially for rice farmers and sugar workers who are facing a bleak future due to lower prices for commodities on the world market. Agriculture crops, poultry and dairy farming are severely affected both for domestic consumption and exports, which will obviously result in less earnings in foreign and local currency. Several economists have posited that the budget deficit will increase as a result of the shortfall in revenue from agriculture due to the drought.
The prolonged drought has hit farmers and ordinary householders, particularly in Regions One, Three, Six and Nine, the hardest. Prior to the drought, residents in those regions hardly had access to adequate water supplies for domestic and agriculture use. Today, the conditions and necessary rationing has made it even worse.
The present drought must be of great concern to the government from a public health and agricultural perspective, since it could attract a slew of serious diseases, cause widespread death of animals, and the destruction of crops by various species of pests that survive in dry conditions. The Ministry of Health has to be on alert for those diseases and will perhaps have to spend tens of millions of dollars to manage the additional cost to health services to prevent them.
We are in the midst of a potential crisis.

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A DRY LAND OF MANY WATERS

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