女王的綠色閱覽室

A severe shortage of rainfall that has lasted more than three years has crippled agriculture in northeastern Syria, where residents say conditions are still deteriorating in the absence of economic alternatives and an adequate government response.

People's living conditions in the area are dire, said Ahmad al-Salem, an agricultural engineer who lives in a village close to the town of Qamishli.

He said that most of his fellow villagers have moved to Damascus or other big cities looking for new sources of income, many ending up with difficult laboring work.

"Some rely on smuggling cigarettes and electrical goods between Syria and Iraq and sometimes work in trafficking sheep and diesel," he said. "The women raise chickens and live from selling eggs."

Today, many northeastern villages are half-deserted with closed-down schools and abandoned houses and land.

Traditionally, the northeastern provinces, a region rich in rivers, contained some of Syria's most fertile agricultural lands where wheat, cotton, vegetables and fruits have been grown.

Observers say that the drought, coupled with poor irrigation strategies, has led to the impoverishment and displacement of large numbers of the area's inhabitants.

Some 1.3 million people have been affected by the disaster, of whom 800,000 have lost almost all of their livelihoods and face extreme hardship, according to the Syrian government and United Nations assessment missions.

In August 2009, the Syrian government and international aid organizations raised the alarm and launched an urgent program to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in the region and help raise resilience to the drought.

The response plan sought to muster US$52.9 million to provide food assistance as well as seeds and animal feed for farmers up to mid-2010, hoping that by then new crops would help improve food security.

But, the much-needed funds seem to be slow to arrive in the region. Last year, media reports said that the UN had difficulty gathering emergency funds for drought victims in Syria because of the country's tense diplomatic relations with other nations.

As part of the response plan, the United Nations World Food Programme, WFP, has a project to provide foods to the area with a budget of US$22 million, running to July 2010, the time of the next harvest.

The project targets around 300,000 beneficiaries in the northeastern regions of al-Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Hasakeh.
However, it has raised only US$5.3 million or about a quarter of the budgeted amount, which had come from Australia, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and UN central funds. It hoped to secure further funds from the European Union and the United States.

全文及圖片詳見：ENS

摘譯自2010年1月27日ENS敘利亞，大馬士革報導；王茹涵編譯；蔡麗伶審校

from:環境資訊中心