El Nino preparedness must continue

 By JAMES LARAKI

THE anticipated El Niño event in 2014 has now been downgraded, the Papua New Guinea National Weather Service (NWS) says. 

The Seasonal Climate Outlook for July–September released last week by NWS noted the warming noticed in the Central and Western Pacific over the past several months has cooled down to almost near average temperatures in recent weeks. 

The means the projected El Niño development will not be as strong as first thought. It is likely an El Niño event may not develop at all. While most global climate mo­dels are still predicting an El Niño for the southern hemisphere, the most likely scenario is that it will be much weaker than what was projected some three months ago. The NWS says it will continue to monitor the situation closely.

While this may bring some relief, it should not be an excuse to relax our efforts in terms of preparedness and awareness. 

Developing coping measures and awareness of the likely im­pacts of an El Nino event on food security and the overall livelihood on communities must continue. It would be better to be prepared to cope and reduce the severity of the likely impacts whenever they happen. 

The National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) hopes to continue work it has been doing on preparedness and awareness to help communities cope better with likely impacts of drought situations. NARI initiated drought-re­­lated activities in 1997 following the prolonged drought experienced then. 

Since then a number of projects were initiated to develop a range of drought coping measures. With support from major development partners such as the World Bank and the Australian Government (AusAID), NARI has researched and develop a number of drought-coping measures. Work is continuing through other projects and initiatives.   

NARI has developed number of strategies including: A range of drought-tolerant crop varieties, water harvesting and simple irrigation techniques, fire and frost control measures, and ways to store and preserve local foods to provide a nutrition buffer during drought periods. 

NARI is aware more needs to be done. Some areas that need to be looked into include : Diversifying food crops, processing of local foods, simple storage techniques, identifying “hotspots” (most vulnerable communities), documenting indigenous knowledge and replicating what works in one community in another, and promoting the resource centre concept. 

The outcome of all these efforts need to be made available and accessible to all communities. 

NARI has started this process and is continuing. Efforts are being made to publicise them through various media so that communities are aware and where possible adapt them. 

Awareness is being done through the mainstream media, provincial shows and other national events, and NARI field days and innovation shows, and establishment of resource centres. Information and communication technology tools, including social media and Web 2.0 options, are being looked into.

While NARI has been able make available some of these strategies to easily accessible ru­ral communities, it remains a challenge to cover every community. 

With the scattered nature of far­ming communities in the country, along with limited resources, NARI realises that it cannot reach out to all vulnerable communities own its own. Besides it is concerned of critics who may accuse NARI of going beyond its mandate of doing agricultural research.

But NARI is equally concerned that most rural communities in PNG still have little or no access to the necessary information and resources to benefit from these measures. It is aware efforts must be to connect vulnerable communities. NARI hopes such connections could be made through the establishment of a network of  resource centres it is embarking on. 

Once established, the resource centres will become a one-stop shop centre with the aim of meeting the information void and to make technologies more available to vulnerable ru­ral communities. 

However, the success of this concept will work with commitment and participation of partners on the ground. 

NARI requires the partnership of provincial and local level governments, NGOs and community and church-based organisations that are closer to communities. 

The concept is build around effective partnership; thus partners will eventually manage the facilities, with NARI providing necessary information/resources and technical advice.  

Participation of provincial and local level governments in this concept is essential as these centres will provide necessary farmer training on wide range of areas. The centres will be­come a central point for the multiplication of planting materials. 

Reports from the 1997/98 incident indicated over than 1.3 million people were affected, mostly related to food shortage. 

Over 100,000 families were in need of planting materials during the recovery phase. These figures are likely to be higher for any event that may happen in the future with the growing population (currently about 7 million). 

While the projected El Nino event may have slowed down, devising coping measures and to ensure these are accessible to all will make communities better prepared. 

It is not about predicting or debating on when an El Nino will unfold, it is a case of whether we are prepared to cope and response to such situations whenever they happen. This should be our focus.