“For everything there is a season and a time for every occupation under heaven: A time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted.”
Here in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, these words from the Book of Ecclesiastes certainly ring true. As we pass through rural villages, the heat and dust swirls and gathers around us. Children appear from everywhere as we meet villagers in these rural communities. The stories shared are heart rendering and touching. The complete failure of the rains this year, crops wilted and dead and animals struggling to survive as water dries up and disappears. People talk about this year as the worst year of drought in living memory and speak about how this year is now built on five years of erratic and sporadic rainfall.
The impacts of climate change here in these communities are undeniable and tangible. And they are played out in rural villages across Ethiopia. The awful burden is carried by people who have done so little to cause the problem. And this year has been the worst of all. With climate change already causing havoc, the additional burden of El Niño has brought food shortages, hunger and desperation.
In Ethiopia, 10.2 million people are now reliant on food aid for survival. This is on top of the 7.9 million chronically poor people who already relied on food and cash aid for survival even before this crisis.
With 75% of the harvest lost in the past year, the stress levels across Ethiopian communities are palpable. As food runs out and animals die and household items are sold off slowly and painfully, the impact of this drought reveals itself in tired and worn faces and in the eyes of those who are struggling to cope with what this year has brought.
A phrase I first heard in southern Zimbabwe comes back to me as we travel across the rural villages of Tigray: “When you fall into a river in this place, you get up and dust yourself down”. That certainly makes real sense here in Tigray as it does across so many communities in eastern and southern Africa.
And yet in the midst of this horrid drought in Ethiopia, there are three shoots of hope.
The first has been the response to the crisis by local Caritas agencies in cooperation with the government of Ethiopia and other national and international actors. Food aid is getting through and is buffering communities from the full impact of this total crop failure. Of course more needs to be done, but the effort in reaching such a vast stressed population is mammoth.
The second is that the consistent and constant work of the Church is having an enormous impact. The other day, I walked through an area of irrigated crops and vegetables that is providing food and water even in these dry and difficult times to 500 families. The funding of Caritas’ northern partners added to the technical knowledge and commitment of the local Diocesan Caritas has led to a green oasis of crops and trees in contrast to the dry and arid landscape.
And the third shoot of hope comes in our growing awareness and in our growing work across the world, concentrating on where the real price for climate change is been paid. Here in these villages the call of Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ feels alive and ever present: “Today, however, we have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.” (LS 49)
Re-thinking our world and our relationship with it, as he has challenged us to do, will directly connect to the lives, hopes and dreams of these children that run around us fascinated with our different faces and camera phones!
And despite these shoots of hope, key challenges remain.
As we travelled the road between Mekelle and Adigrat, we saw farmers everywhere toiling behind their two cows and basic plough opening the soil that they hope and pray will be blessed by rain in the coming weeks.
Seeds remain a problem and ensuring families have enough seed to plant in this upcoming season will be critical. Already Trócaire have released €500,000 to provide seeds to families whose whole seed bank has been wiped out by the year long drought.
After that we can only hope for rain. If it comes, then food will be available across Tigray by November. If it does not, the pain and suffering will continue and the millions of people reliant on food and cash aid will grow quickly. And the current response will need to be even bigger and with wider reach.
The other challenge is one back to us in Europe and is the core challenge of Laudato Si’. I remember once standing under a mango tree in northern Uganda and listening to a community struggling with a prolonged period of drought. When asked why this was happening, they said that their actions during the war had led to divine punishment. “Our bullets have wounded the sky” is the phrase that they used. But the real truth is that our actions and our lifestyles are much more responsible for the death of their crops and the burnt landscape they walked on than any actions they might take past or present.
And to these challenges, we need a response.
We need to continue to support our partners in the global South, working with and through rural communities to make a lasting and tangible difference in the lives of so many people. We need to continue to support communities in their times of greatest needs as well as working with them to put the structures and projects in place that will deliver a sustainable future.
And we also need to challenge ourselves in the global North as to how our lifestyles and choices impact on the poorest people on the planet.
Our willingness to act now will be the defining factor.
“For everything there is a season and a time for every occupation under heaven” states the Book of Ecclesiastes where I started this piece.
And our time for action here on earth is now.
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