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Guyana is running dry

Feb 29, 2016 Editorial

It seems that global warming has taken its toll on Guyana, especially during the past fifteen or more years. In many cases, the weather pattern in the country seems to be moving from one extreme to the next; that is from floods to droughts. Guyana is now faced with one of the most severe droughts. This condition is also affecting several countries in the Caribbean from Cuba to Trinidad and Tobago.
It is expected to worsen despite a few sparse light showers here and there. The drought has severely affected residents and 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 Guyana’s recent history took place in 1997-1998. That El Nino event had affected more than 80 percent of the population and had caused tens of millions of dollars in damages to the agriculture sector, especially sugar, rice and cash crops and poultry and dairy farming.
The drought was so severe that it led to water rationing throughout the country. 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 intensified by a lack of maintenance of the infrastructure, whereby almost half of the water supply is lost through distribution.
Guyana, like most of its Caribbean neighbours, usually has two weather seasons that occur each year–rainfall and what is known as the dry weather season, with some regions having more rainfall or dry weather than others.
With its main sources of water being rainfall, theground water is stored and conserved in rivers, creeks and in irrigation canals such as the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC).
Most of its fresh water ponds, lakes and streams have dried-up.And to make matters worse, forecasters at Guyana’s $550 million Doppler Radar facility at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport has cautioned the nation that the worst is yet to come because the El Nino phenomenon is gathering strength which will make the drought more severe as the country goes into the dry season. It means that there will be sparse rainfall for this largely parched country for another few weeks.
However, many believe 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 and poultry and dairy farming are severely affected both for domestic consumption and exports, which will result in fewer earnings in foreign and local currency.
Several Economists including Dr. Tarron Khemraj and Dr. Fitzroy Kirkpatrick have posited that the budget deficit will increase as a result ofthe shortfall in revenue from agriculture due to the drought.
The prolonged drought has not only affected the entire country, but it has hit farmers and ordinary householders in Regions One, Three, Six and Nine the hardest.
The present drought should be of great concern to the government from a public health and agricultural perspective since it could bring cholera, dengue, death of animals and destruction of crops by various species of pests that thrive in dry conditions.
The Ministry of Health has to be on alert for those diseases and will perhaps have to spend millions of dollars to manage the additional cost to health services to prevent them. People, livestock and agriculture are at risk.

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