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Abstract
Drought is a recurrent and often devastating threat to the welfare of countries in
the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) where three-quarters of the arable land has
less than 400 mm of annual rainfall, and the natural grazings, which support a majority of
the 290 million ruminant livestock, have less than 200 mm. Its impact has been
exacerbated in the last half century by the human population increasing yearly at over
3%, while livestock numbers have risen by 50% over the quinquennium.
Virtually no scope exists for further expansion of rainfed farming and very little
for irrigation, hence there is competition between mechanized cereal production and
grazing in the low rainfall areas, and traditional nomadic systems of drought management
through mobility are becoming difficult to maintain. Moreover droughts seem to be
increasing in frequency, and their high social, economic, and environmental costs have
led governments to intervene with various forms of assistance to farmers and herders,
including distribution of subsidized animal feed, rescheduling of loans, investments in
water development, and in animal health.
In this paper we examine the nature and significance of these measures, both with
respect to their immediate benefits and costs to the recipients and to governments, and to
their longer term impact on poverty and the environment. We conclude that while they
have been valuable in reducing catastrophic losses of livestock and thus alleviating
poverty, especially in the low rainfall areas where they are the predominant source of
income, continued dependence on these programs has sent inappropriate signals to
farmers and herders, leading to moral hazards, unsustainable farming practices, and
environmental degradation, while generally benefiting the affluent recipients most.
Moreover, they have tended to escalate and become an administrative and financial
burden to their governments.
Alternative approaches to drought management need to be explored, and
possibilities discussed here include area-based rainfall insurance against catastrophic
droughts, and the development of more accurate timely, and accessible early warning
drought forecasts. While we envisage the insurance as an unsubsidized private sector
initiative with a number of attractive features, it would require strong support from the
government in its formative stages. Improved weather forecasts are likely to remain a
government responsibility in the immediate future and would help administrators and
relief agencies position themselves for more efficient drought interventions, as well as
farmers to adjust their plans to rainfall outcomes.