Jennifer Abrahamson reports for Oxfam from southern Tajikistan on the erratic weather patterns that have devastated an agricultural industry relied upon by some of Central Asia’s poorest farmers.
Sainam Ganieva, a young mother of four living in the dusty hills of Temurmalik in rural Tajikistan, has contributed very little to global green house gas emissions. Yet her country’s glaciers are in retreat – threatening the availability of precious water – and she has seen repeated dry spells and drought sweep across Tajikistan’s farmlands. As I spoke with Sainam on a barren plot next to her house that once sprouted wheat, it became clear that the emergence of extreme weather conditions in recent years had turned her already dire situation into a desperate one.
Bearing the brunt
Tajikistan is currently ranked 109th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions and 129th in emissions per capita. Its people emit less than one tonne of carbon dioxide per head per year as compared to the nearly 20 tonnes per person in North America. But it’s people in the developing world like Sainam who are bearing the brunt of climate change.
“A few years ago I could at least cultivate a small amount of wheat, so I had something. It was just enough for my family, but at least it was something,” Sainam explains.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the projected decrease in mean precipitation in Central Asia will be accompanied by an increase in the frequency of very dry spring, summer and autumn seasons while changes in the amount of water flows from river systems are likely to occur. That could mean many more extremely difficult years ahead for poor farmers here in southern Tajikistan, who are already struggling to support their families.
In this inhospitable landscape, Oxfam is helping poor farmers in the region to adapt by providing new varieties of seeds and building greenhouses and water cisterns. Nearly 1.5 million people are already food insecure here and it is they who are the most vulnerable to additional, unforeseen threats like drought, flooding or the sort of bitterly cold winters that freeze crops. The number of those facing such hardship is likely to rise sharply without swift action to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
The symptoms have been sharply felt in the rural parts of the country where 70% of the population live. 20% of the country’s glaciers have already retreated and up to 30% more are likely to retreat or disappear in its majestic Pamir Mountains by 2050 while droughts are expected to increase in frequency. This relates to data highlighted in a new Oxfam report, Reaching Tipping Point? Climate Change and Poverty in Tajikistan, published on 17 February 2010. Much of the report was based on interviews conducted in rural areas, including Sainam’s Temurmalik district.
Dependent on the rain
Like many other people in rural Tajikistan, Sainam’s sustenance and that of her children depends on the rain. And in recent years the skies above Tajikistan have proved temperamental and unreliable. Three years of consecutive drought culminated in 2008, leaving her almost completely dependent on charitable handouts.
Sainam only owns a very small plot of land, like most rural farmers, but hers is particularly small and inhospitable. It resembled sandstone in the autumn of 2008 when I visited her. She showed me an old wooden well in front of her dried-out mud home but the pail only contained chalky dirt when she drew it up for me to observe. She must walk eight kms to fetch water.
Beyond the sun-bleached hills of Temurmalik lie verdant, irrigated cotton fields that spread out across this southern part of Tajikistan, known under Soviet times – and subsidies – as the “bread basket” of the country. While cotton is a significant source of hard currency today, the rural population does not benefit much beyond a small amount of money earned as labourers during the cotton picking season.
Sainum lives too far away from the cotton fields to earn a few Somonis to help feed her family or buy window glass for the freezing winters. Things were better before the droughts began and before her husband died in a fire six years ago in Russia, where hundreds of thousands of Tajik men migrate each year to work as labourers. Not only did she lose her husband – and her children their father – in tragic circumstances but the whole family also lost their only source of income in a region blighted by lack of viable employment opportunities and widespread poverty.
Living on a widow’s pension
Sainum told me when we spoke on that October day in 2008 that a 50kg sack of wheat, which would keep her family in bread for a few weeks, cost around 115 Somonis, about $35. The only money she had to live on was a $15 monthly widow’s pension.
“Now I have this much flour left,” she said, raising her hand a few inches above the dirt floor of her home. “I ration each day the amount I can give my children. But even then, all we have is poor quality bread. We don’t eat meat or even vegetables or fruit… I don’t remember the last time we ate anything but bread… I am all alone here. All alone.”
While Sainam has faced particularly trying circumstances, many poor farmers I met also said they had very little else during meals except bread, tea and the occasional fruit or vegetable. It is clear that if climate change takes further root, as is expected in the coming decades without ambitious adaptation and mitigation efforts, Sainam may no longer be alone in her desperate predicament.
Read more about Oxfam’s work on climate change.