|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Are Famines Man-Made?
| Article
# : |
10738 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1993 |
647 Words |
| Author
: |
Alexander King
Alexander King is president of the Club of Rome. This paper
was initially presented at the Sixteenth International
Conference on the Unity of the Sciences. |
In recent years, television pictures of starving people and grim conditions of life, mainly from famine-stricken regions of Africa, have aroused world compassion and stimulated the delivery of vast amounts of humanitarian aid.
The impression given is that famines take place exclusively in arid, tropical areas vulnerable to drought. Food aid is delivered to alleviate human suffering, but it is sent with a vague sense of hopelessness that such emergencies are likely to recur indefinitely.
Famines have been a dreaded and frequent affliction throughout human history, not only in tropical areas but everywhere in the world. In Ethiopia, famines have been carefully recorded over the last thousand years, but it has also been estimated that Britain has suffered some 180 famines from 160 B.C. until today.
For most parts of the world, however, famines have faded into history though this has come about quite recently. Famines became increasingly rare in Europe and North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Economic strength, agricultural improvement, growth of international trade, good communications, and an expressed humanitarianism prevented mass starvation developing from natural disasters or wars.
In other areas, famines continued. As late as 1960-61, China suffered a horrifying famine, hidden to the world at the time, with current estimates of the death toll ranging from ten to sixty million. India suffered 630,000 deaths from starvation in 1972. Now, however, with increased crop yields from the "green revolution" and better organization of agriculture, the specter of famine has ceased to stalk such countries.
Sociopolitical factors have always played a leading role in determining whether periodic episodes of drought, flood, or disease would trigger a famine. A striking example was that of the great potato famine in the middle of the last century, which caused nearly a million deaths and forced an equal number of the desperate Irish to migrate. Delayed understanding of the crisis as it unfolded, absence of administrative concern and will to take decisive action, repressive legislation, and logistical inadequacies all shared the claim for allowing crop failure to develop into a major human disaster.
The situation in many of the countries of Africa today is strikingly similar and often greatly worsened by the disruption of civil war and
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
