Villagers cross the river Teesta after the monsoon at Gangachra in Rangpur district, 345 km (214 miles) north of Dhaka, October 15, 2005. The Teesta, like many other rivers in the low-lying South Asian country, had burst its banks, destroying flood shelters the government built five years ago and washing away a stretch of highway. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman
Today&${esc.hash}39;s blog picks up on the impact of climate change and developments on the global aid scene...First, a quick run-down of some of the stories we&${esc.hash}39;re watching:
&${esc.hash}39; New Vision in Kampala warns that fast-breeding armyworms are heading towards Uganda, having destroyed some 50,000 acres of maize and other crops in Tanzania. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) also says in its latest update on Uganda that armyworms could flow into the country from Tanzania, threatening cereal production in the coming season. Displaced households in northern Uganda continue to face moderate to high food insecurity.
&${esc.hash}39; Caritas in Guinea-Bissau is providing basic emergency relief to some 5,000 people driven from their homes by fighting between government forces and Senegalese rebel groups along the country&${esc.hash}39;s northern border. It is also calling on others for help as its limited supplies are running scarce.
&${esc.hash}39; MSF says its French section has been forced to close its medical programmes in Mon and Karen states in Myanmar (Burma) due to &${esc.hash}39;unacceptable conditions imposed by the authorities&${esc.hash}39;, including travel restrictions and pressure on local health authorities not to co-operate with the organisation. For now, MSF&${esc.hash}39;s Dutch and Swiss sections remain in the junta-controlled country.
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The warnings continue to sound on climate change and its negative consequences &${esc.hash}39; particularly for people living in poor countries. The World Bank has issued a report saying that climate change is likely to hurt economies in the Asia-Pacific region badly.
It warns that the livelihoods of millions are threatened by rising sea levels, more intense storms, and more extreme droughts and floods &${esc.hash}39; which are also likely to cause greater loss of life. Coastal areas, where many of the region&${esc.hash}39;s mega-cities are located, are particularly vulnerable.
The Bank says industrialised Asian countries must do more to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, and the region needs to prepare itself for the coming weather extremes so as to limit the damage. But with economic growth galloping ahead in countries like China and India, one wonders to what extent the warnings will be heeded.
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While China suffers from severe flooding on an annual basis, it is also grappling with water shortages &${esc.hash}39; of which economic expansion is one of the key causes. Pollution has got so bad that the Ministry of Water Resources estimates that 40 percent of water in the country&${esc.hash}39;s 1,300 or so major rivers is fit only for industrial or agricultural use.
Dermot O&${esc.hash}39;Gorman, the WWF&${esc.hash}39;s China representative, told Reuters: "The negative effects of pollution and the health effects of dirty drinking water can undermine the development on which you depend." The government is planning to spend 500 billion yuan (${esc.dollar}62.29 billion) on a scheme to distribute water more evenly through the country.
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Meanwhile, emergency efforts are under way to reinforce river banks in the southern Czech Republic, as flood waters rise. Ten thousand people have been evacuated from their homes in low-lying areas along the Dyje River near the border with Austria. Rivers across central Europe have been swelling fast due to rain and unusually warm weather which has melted late-falling snow. Residents in the German states of Bavaria and Saxony are also bracing for floods.
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The elites of the aid world are set to enter a period of intensified navel gazing. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have announced that they&${esc.hash}39;re bringing forward by a year a deeper review of collaboration between the two institutions. The aim is to look at how areas of responsibility can be more clearly defined to achieve better delivery of their services. They also want to collaborate more effectively on country and thematic work.
Jeff Powell, co-ordinator of the Bretton Woods Project, an NGO that lobbies for increased transparency and civil society participation in the IMF and World Bank, told AlertNet that starting the review early may be a response to recent high-profile criticism of the two organisations. In a February speech, the Governor of the Bank of England attacked the IMF for issuing "ever more bland communiqu&${esc.hash}39;s and meaningless statements", and argued that it should undertake urgent reform to restore its legitimacy. &${esc.hash}39;The Fund and the Bank need to make the rest of the world think they are being self-critical,&${esc.hash}39; said Powell.
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Meanwhile in the U.S., the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a foreign aid programme set up by the Bush administration, is under attack by lawmakers, who are threatening to kill it off if it doesn&${esc.hash}39;t buck up its track record this year. It has been criticised for being slow to disburse funds and not being accountable enough. There has also been scepticism about some of its agreements with qualifying countries &${esc.hash}39; New Jersey Democrat Steve Rothman, for example, has questioned a recent ${esc.dollar}65.6 million agreement with the strategically located western Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, which has population of just 205,000.
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In Kenya, the East African Standard has sounded the alarm over the country&${esc.hash}39;s grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It says that only two planned projects out of seven have been implemented, meaning that only around one-third of available funds, worth ${esc.dollar}100 million, have been disbursed. The Global Fund is now reportedly demanding a technical and financial audit of how the cash has been used.
The newspaper raises concerns about the impact this is having on the lives of Kenyans suffering from HIV/AIDS, as well as donor trust in the Kenyan government. Given Kenya&${esc.hash}39;s drought and food crisis, a suspension of grants from the Global Fund is the last thing Kenyans need. But in the light of recent corruption scandals, the prognosis is worrying.
That&${esc.hash}39;s all for today.
Megan Rowling AlertNet reporter
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