Victims Of Drought Research Articles

Doubting Thomas Joad

John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) tapped a long tradition of biblical symbolism or biblical typology in American literature. As early as 1651 in his history of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford implicitly compared himself with Moses viewing the Promised Land from the crest of Mount Pisgah. Nathaniel Hawthorne reimagined the Fall in Puritan New England in The Scarlet Letter (1850), casting Hester Prynne in the role of Eve, Arthur Dimmesdale as Adam, and Roger Chillingworth as Satan. Both James Fenimore Cooper in The Prairie (1827) and Herman Melville in Moby-Dick depicted wanderers named Ishmael. Abraham Lincoln described Americans in a February 1861 speech as an “almost chosen people.” Stephen Crane portrayed a Christ-figure named Jim Conklin (J.C.) in The Red Badge of Courage (1895). And so on.Similarly, as Peter Lisca observes, Steinbeck stages in his novel the captivity of the oppressed in Egypt, their exodus, and arrival in Canaan/California, in this case an ironic land of milk and honey.1 Or as H. Kelly Crockett concludes, California “becomes the wilderness through which the Okies must wander indefinitely, the land of promise still a mirage.”2 Steinbeck's cast of characters features a family of twelve, among them two Toms, a Rose of Sharon, a Noah, a Ruth, and a John, who represent both the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of Christ. More to the point, Rose of Sharon's husband Connie Rivers corresponds in this scheme to the biblical traitor Judas, who eventually deserts the Joads to return to Oklahoma to become a tractor driver earning three dollars—or thirty silver dimes—per day to remove the drought victims from their land. In the last scene, Rose of Sharon offers her breast to the starving man in the barn (or stable); that is, she is characterized as both a latter-day Madonna nursing the Christ Child and Mary (the “mystical rose”) cradling the body of the crucified Christ as in Michelangelo's Pietà. Most obvious of all: the “preacher” Jim Casy, who not only boasts the name of James, the brother of Christ, but the initials J.C., which identify him directly as a Christ-figure. (As if to reinforce the point, the actor John Carradine, another J.C., was typecast as Casy in John Ford's 1940 movie adaptation.) Or as Martin S. Shockley long ago stated, “Jim Casy unmistakably and significantly is equated with Jesus Christ.”3To this series of allegorical identities I wish to add one more: Tom Joad as Christ's disciple Doubting Thomas. To be sure, Shockley first observed what is now a critical commonplace—“Tom becomes Casy's disciple”4—but no one has ever associated him specifically with Doubting Thomas. Certainly Tom undergoes a conversion in the course of the novel from indifference (“I'm still laying my dogs down one at a time”) to faith and conviction just before he leaves the family. He testifies to his new belief in his final conversation with Ma: “I'll be all aroun’ in the dark. I'll be ever'where—wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin’ up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an’ they know supper's ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why I'll be there. See? God, I'm talkin’ like Casy.”Shockley ends his quotation from the speech here—but in the novel Tom delivers two more sentences: “Comes of thinkin’ about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes.”5The last statement in particular is critical. According to the gospel of John 20:25–29, Thomas was initially skeptical when the other disciples report that Christ had risen from the tomb and appeared to them. Or as Thomas insists, “Except I shall see” Him “I will not believe.” Eight days later, Christ visits the doubting apostle, who testifies to his newfound faith by declaring, “My Lord and my God.” In the King James translation of the Bible, Christ then says to the previously Doubting Thomas, “because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed”—just as Tom Joad is convinced at last of Casy's omnipresence.

Assessment of smallholders’ vulnerability to drought based on household-scale planting strategies and adaptability: A survey study of Xinghe County

The increase of the frequency, scope and intensity of drought has a great impact on agricultural production under the climate change. Smallholders are the most direct victims of drought. This paper focused on smallholders' planting strategies and family-scale indicators from the micro perspective and constructed a framework for smallholders' drought vulnerability assessment in semiarid rain-fed agricultural areas. The results show that: (1) There are significant spatial variations in smallholders' drought adaptability and the affected by drought, which may be related to the fragmentation of smallholders' cultivated land in different regions. (2) The drought vulnerability of smallholders also has obvious differences between north and south in Xinghe County. There are several obvious vulnerability hot spots in the south, especially in Datong Yao and Dianzi. The vulnerability index of smallholders in these spots may more than 0.7. (3) The effective irrigation area may be the best factor to explain the spatial variations of smallholders' drought vulnerability. Its interaction with slope can explain more than 20% of the vulnerability difference, which is significant at 0.05 level. This study is expected to enrich the evaluation dimensions of smallholders’ drought vulnerability assessment in arid and semiarid areas, reduce the risk of drought losses of smallholders, and improve the level of regional risk governance.

Drought Victims Demand Justice: Politicization of Drought by Farmers in Southern Germany over Time

Farmers have an important role in problematizing and politicizing drought. Following the argumentative turn in policy analysis, the paper analyzes the process of problem definition by means of a framing analysis, zooming in on four major drought events covered in German farming sector journals that are published by farmers’ associations. The article compares the framing of the four most-cited drought events—1947, 1975–76, 2003, and 2011–12—in order to better understand how problematization has changed over time, and how farmers justify and rationalize calls for political action. Three research questions are answered: What problems are named by farmers journals when describing drought events, and what solutions are proposed? Who is considered responsible for problems and solutions? How has framing of drought changed over time? The paper shows that farmers frame drought as a matter of justice and assert their perceived right to subsidies, compensation, farmer-friendly tax policies, and market regulations by the state. From 2003, drought has been framed in association with climate change. The data findings suggest that there is no post-productivist, post-exceptionalist paradigm shift connected to proposed drought policy solutions. Drought framings appear to be persistent, giving priority to assured farmers’ incomes, not water distribution. Considering the lobby power of farmers’ associations in Germany, this finding helps to understand why state interventions remain the same over time.

A procedure to support the distribution of drinking water for victims of drought: the case of the Brazilian semi-arid region

Although there has been an increase in the number of researches involving humanitarian logistics, few studies address slow disasters, such as drought. Although this phenomenon is one of the worst types of disaster in terms of casualties, water distribution to those affected by the drought still lacks academic development, and few studies guide local public managers regarding the efficient use of available resources, guaranteeing a high service level to the population. This paper presents a procedure for the implementation of transport and routing of water delivery. By this procedure, we can evaluate the strategy of complementary use of the water supply of drilled artesian wells. It also provides a contextualized routing tool for the practices and policies of motorized water distribution, commonly found in scenarios of water shortages. The algorithms have been implemented considering the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), providing a friendly-user tool that helps choosing water sources to be activated and in the definition of the routes between these and the points supply. Results have been validated in the Brazilian Semi - arid region, showing improvement in the current logistical performance of drought coping, in advantageous scales of operation in terms of costs and efficiency.

Quantifying Farmers’ Initiatives and Capacity to Cope with Drought: A Case Study of Xinghe County in Semi-Arid China

Farmers living in a state of poverty in semi-arid areas are the main victims of drought. They suffer most from drought, which makes it particularly important to assess their capacity to cope with it. The present study developed a new approach for such assessment. Famers’ resources and initiatives to deal with drought were evaluated, and appropriate coping strategies are proposed by analyzing the differences between the coping capacities of two categories of farmers; tenants (with large holdings) and smallholders. Tenants’ capacity to cope with drought was 1.7 times that of smallholders. Also, tenants showed greater initiative during droughts, whereas smallholders made greater efforts in preparing for droughts. Farmers’ resources were positively correlated to the degree of their initiative (correlation coefficient = 0.49). Farmers showed greater initiative when they had larger holdings and were less dependent on agricultural income. The state should give more financial support to subsidy-dependent farmers and encourage smallholders—whose major income comes from crops—to augment their income through livestock husbandry. Such a policy would prove more conducive to increasing the capacity of not only local farmers but also of the entire region to cope with droughts and to promote sustainable development of local agriculture.

Assessing vulnerability and coping capacities of rural women to drought: A case study of Zvishavane district, Zimbabwe

This study analysed the vulnerabilities and coping capacities of rural women to drought in Zvishavane district in Zimbabwe. The study utilised quantitative research approach in which a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the sampled households. The result revealed that low and erratic rainfall, lack of alternative livelihood options, lack of land and property ownership amongst others were identified as some of the indicators of vulnerability among rural women in Zvishavane. Despite the vulnerabilities surrounding them, rural women are not passive victims of drought. They have developed and adopted drought coping strategies such as; purchasing food stuffs from neighbouring communities and stocking it for consumption in dry periods, selling or trading their small livestock for grain, cultivation of drought resistant crop varieties, skipping meals and reducing meal portions and initiation of market gardens to supplement their harvests. Various institutions such as Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), the government and religious organisations are also providing necessary support to these women. In order to mitigate drought impacts on rural women, interventions such as; boosting of irrigation activities, inclusion of women in programme implementation and drought mitigation planning, diversification of livelihoods, establishment and promotion of drought buffers and social networks are needed. In addition, reforms aimed at correcting the imbalances in land ownership and rectification of gender discrimination and imbalances from past practices and policies are some of the important policy options that should be looked into.

Ethnic differences vs nationhood in times of national crises: The role of social media and communication strategies

Abstract Are there events that temporarily unite differences among ethnic groups in a multiethnic nation state? Using a Kenya’s drought-relief initiative, dubbed Kenyans4Kenya (K4K), this article responds to this question. It uses framing analysis to examine how K4K and its followers constructed messages to deliberately generate empathy for the drought victims. Messages on K4K’s Facebook page were placed in three collective frames: diagnostic, prognostic and motivational. They were also coded according to three identified thematic frames: anti-regime, humanitarian, and patriotism/ national pride. The findings of this study demonstrate the success of K4K in its ability to frame a humanitarian crisis in a way that rendered the divisive fissures of ethnic differences temporarily insignificance and inconspicuous. K4K successfully cast the pain and suffering of the drought victims as unwarranted by locating its discourse within the ambit of a nation that had failed to provide its citizens with the very basic of human rights.

Paradigms and public policies on drought in northeast Brazil: a historical perspective.

This paper describes the evolution of drought-related public policies in Northeast Brazil (NEB). Using a historical approach, we show that the evolution of public policy has not been characterized by abrupt shifts, but has instead been shaped through debates between renowned intellectuals. The resulting public policies formed a hydrological infrastructure that delivers clean water needed for robust economic activity. However, outcomes of the 2012–2013 drought show that populations that depend on rain fed agriculture are as vulnerable to drought as they were at the start of the 20th century. Although government, social, and emergency programs have aided drought victims, drought analysts agree that rain fed agriculture has remained vulnerable since drought policies were first formulated. Drought policies formulate integrated water resources management (IWRM) strategies that are geared toward supplying safe drinking water, and debates surrounding the IWRM paradigm have been affected by outcomes of major international events such as the World Water Forum.

Successful Coupling of Community Attachment of Health Science Students with Relief Work for Drought Victims

Recurrent drought is a major disaster affecting many countries. As a result of poor rain fall a major drought was forecast for Ethiopia in 2003. The country appealed for support to avert drought-related health problems. University of Gondar decided to respond to the appeal by sending students and staff to selected drought-affected areas. To illustrate how an institution has turned the response to a natural disaster into a service-learning educational opportunity while maintaining equilibrium between the two. The drought relief response of the institute was twined with the regular team-training programme and academic schedule of senior health science students and 190 of them were transferred to deployment sites. Students provided support for the national effort of reducing drought-related morbidity and mortality by participating in multifaceted public health and relief activities, and fulfilled their regular learning objectives at the same time. This project demonstrated the use of a natural disaster as a learning method to expose students to a more realistic array of health problems and human conditions. It also demonstrated the feasibility of addressing social responsibility, while fulfilling academic responsibility through community-based approach. Service-learning is a valuable learning method. Balancing the service and teaching objectives and maintaining the quality of both can be attained through careful twining of the objectives of both components.

The Realities of Images: Imperial Brazil and the Great Drought

In this monograph, Gerald Greenfield goes beyond his previous examination of imperial elite discourse on the Great Drought—the devastating drought that ravaged the backlands of much of the Brazilian Northeast between 1877 and 1879—and elite constructions on the usefulness of relief assistance to retirantes, or drought victims. He seeks to unveil the relationship between the imperial elites’ class interests, their political discourse on the drought, and the practical effects of that discourse on the reality of suffering and death of retirantes. This is a welcome addition to the scant scholarly literature on the history of the Great Drought and, more broadly, that of the backlands of Northeast Brazil.The book’s greatest contribution is its demonstration of the connections between imperial, provincial, and even municipal politics and the timing and nature of the allocation of relief help. Through the use of parliamentary records and official correspondence, Greenfield shows that self-interest and the possibility of patronage opportunities motivated local elites as well as legislative representatives from the Northeast to lobby for relief funds as early as June of 1877. But by the early months of 1880, and despite the fact that conditions in the backlands had not improved sufficiently for the surviving retirantes to return, virtually all relief help was suspended. Partisan rivalry determined the increasing opposition in the legislature to continuous expenditure on drought relief. In this context, the book furthers our knowledge of the effects of imperial politics in the periphery, and not only at the center of state power.Greenfield also seeks to demonstrate how elite discourse in Rio and the provincial capitals concerning the drought and the retirantes actually shaped the experience of retirantes in the scorched backlands. By analyzing provincial executive and municipal council sources, the author aptly shows that the elites based an exploitative relief policy—one that offered assistance in exchange for labor—on their imagined construction of backlanders as lazy and in need of moral regeneration. Therefore, in addition to contending with dislocation, epidemics, and family separation, retirantes became providers of cheap labor in agricultural colonies, railroad projects, and other public work projects that ultimately benefited those members of the elite with enough connections to channel relief assistance to their own benefit.The book is unified through the theme of the divergence between the elite representation and the reality of the Great Drought. But Greenfield also attempts to contrast the broader world of the sertao (the semiarid interior of the Northeast) and of the sertanejos (poor backlanders), as imagined by political elites, with the material reality of life in this difficult environment. However, the book is not as successful in tracing the living conditions and the social structure of the sertao. Greenfield bases most of this discussion on secondary sources that emphasize sertanejos’ dependence on large landowners and the continuity of traditional exploitative relations of production in the backlands. Furthermore, perhaps due to his reliance on correspondence from local and imperial elites, the author tends to portray sertanejos not only as the victims of a corrupt relief policy but also as lost individuals who failed to find ways to recommence their lives at drought’s end due to their loss of patron-client relations with influential potentates. These findings are at odds with the conclusions of the recent literature on the free poor in other areas of Brazil, which has uncovered various avenues to socioeconomic autonomy pursued by this group in different regions. In fact, despite the dearth of historical studies on the backlands, a handful of scholars (including Roger Cunniff and Roderick Barman) have shown that the dependence of poor free populations on large landowners gradually broke as a result of rapid social change starting in the mid-nineteenth century; this led to autonomous, if more vulnerable, livelihoods for many sertanejos. By contrast, Greenfield’s work implicitly perpetuates the image (also reproduced by local elites) of the back-landers as continuously subjugated to large landowners and of dependence as the main value orienting their lives.Greenfield’s examination of the images and realities of the sertao at large would have benefited by combining analysis of elite discourse with the methodologies and documental sources used by other researchers to uncover the lives of the free poor elsewhere in Brazil. This would have allowed a thorough examination of the material conditions of sertanejos before and after the drought and the possible ways in which they exercised agency at various levels. Nevertheless, this is a noteworthy book for historians and the general public interested in understanding some of the complex reasons why, despite relief help, the Great Drought resulted in almost half a million deaths over the course of three years.

Coping mechanisms practised by drought victims (1994/5) in North Bengal, Bangladesh

Droughts are recurrent features in Bangladesh, affecting plant growth and leading to loss of crop production, food shortages and, for many people, starvation. The main objective of this study is to examine the means by which residents of a drought-affected area of Bangladesh cope with this hazard. Data were collected during the summer of 1995 from 301 drought-affected households located in northwestern Bangladesh. Analysis suggests that respondent households practised an array of adjustments to mitigate adverse effects of the 1994/5 drought. While both high- and low-income households were affected by the drought, households belonging to the lower socioeconomic group suffered the most, receiving the least support from the national government. Government responses were delayed and inadequate in providing financial and other assistance to the drought victims. It is suggested that the government should be prepared for drought long before the occurrence of such an event.

Ecological Stress and Political Coercion in the Sudan

This article outlines the impact of state intervention on ecological relations in the Sudan. The establishment of large-scale mechanised agricultural schemes; population and livestock concentration around water sources; and the evolution of large urban centres with high demands for firewood and charcoal have all contributed to ecological degradation. These effects have been coupled with the use of coercive measures to displace traditional farmers and pastoralists from their lands in favour of large-scale farming schemes. The objectives of government policy have suffered a double retreat - from development to crisis management and from crisis management to the bare maintenance of compliance and order. The inability of the state to intervene on behalf of the victims of drought and famine has led to the use of coercion as the only means to legitimise its hold on power.

Health aspects of resettlement in Ethiopia

The literature on health implications and effects of government-sponsored resettlement in Ethiopia is reviewed with the objective of providing an initial evaluation of the health status of settlers and the health hazards of resettlement in western Ethiopia. Emphasis is on the 1984/85 resettlement program, which resulted in the movement of about 600,000 drought victims from northern and central Ethiopia to the western part of the country. Malaria, trypanosomiasis, onchocerciasis, yellow fever, nonfilarial elephantiasis, sand-flea infestation, and psychological stress are identified as immediate and greater health hazards than in the areas of settler origin, based on the geographic distribution and ecology of the major communicable, nutritional, and geochemical diseases in Ethiopia, and on the impact of program deficiencies on settler health. More studies are needed on the epidemiology and ecology of bancroftian filariasis, visceral leishmaniasis, dracunculiasis, eye and skin diseases, tuberculosis, meningitis, intestinal parasitism, diarrhea, and calorie/protein malnutrition before their public health and economic significance in settlements can be evaluated. Schistosomiasis appears to be less common, for the time being, in resettlement areas than in the areas of outmigration. Research needs and constraints in resettlement planning, implementation, and operation are identified, and some recommendations made for disease control programs.

Settler migration during the 1984/85 resettlement programme in Ethiopia

The recent history of resettlement in Ethiopia is briefly reviewed and the caused, flow patterns and some demographic impacts of the 1984/85 government-sponsored resettlement migration are examined with the objective of identifying motivations and constraints in the migration process, analysing changes in population distribution and examining policy implications. Famine was the major push factor in migration, but traditional reactions of peasants to drought and overpopulation caused more drought victims to leave their homes spontaneously for relief and transit centres than as recruits of the government-sponsored resettlement programme. However, motivation to migrate and distances travelled to centres showed strong regional variation, indicating the severity of the famine and traditional adaptive strategies. Changes in rural population density were significant in several awrajas (districts) but were reduced by return migration. Problems associated with this emergency resettlement programme are reflected in difficulties during programme implementation, generally low agricultural production of settlers and high rates of return migration. Further studies are needed on the ecological impact of settler migration in both sending and receiving areas, peasant coping behaviour, as well as the evolution of new settler migration patterns in the new settlement areas in W Ethiopia.

Africa—Asia—Latin America—Middle East

At the beginning of June the ICRC was compelled to put an end to its protection and assistance operations in aid of the victims of drought and conflict in the provinces of Eritrea, Tigray, Gondar and Wollo. In the interest of these victims, the ICRC sought agreement from the donor governments to transfer its foodstocks and logistic means in Ethiopia to other organizations. This was done after the Ethiopian authorities had confirmed the decisions conveyed to the ICRC in April and May and forced the ICRC to withdraw all its expatriate staff involved in the assistance operation. The ICRC nevertheless maintained a presence in Ethiopia to continue its activities on behalf of Somali prisoners of war. This aspect of its work, which falls within the Geneva Conventions, had not been called in question by the Ethiopian Government.

Western Aid to Africa

Recent reports of famine again devastating Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique have focused world-wide attention once more on Africa’s precarious plight. The pictures of emaciated bodies crowded into emergency feeding centers, documenting the grim statistics of declining production, are now painfully familiar. It was only three years ago that high media coverage and an active international fundraising campaign for the victims of drought brought the crisis to nightly news. However, despite the unprecedented success of efforts such as BANDAID, U.S.A. for Africa and others in raising public consciousness and contributions, the fundamental problems plaguing Africa remain unchanged and unsolved.

Western Aid to Africa

Recent reports of famine again devastating Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique have focused world-wide attention once more on Africa’s precarious plight. The pictures of emaciated bodies crowded into emergency feeding centers, documenting the grim statistics of declining production, are now painfully familiar. It was only three years ago that high media coverage and an active international fundraising campaign for the victims of drought brought the crisis to nightly news. However, despite the unprecedented success of efforts such as BANDAID, U.S.A. for Africa and others in raising public consciousness and contributions, the fundamental problems plaguing Africa remain unchanged and unsolved.

Nine Haiku for Drought Victims of Ethiopia and Sudan

Nine Haiku for Drought Victims of Ethiopia and Sudan

Organization of African Students at Howard University Seeks Aid for Victims of Drought in West Africa

Organization of African Students at Howard University Seeks Aid for Victims of Drought in West Africa