Global warming to make further flood disasters likely

It was the most disturbing image of many to emerge from Mozambique's past month of misery: a line of mentally disabled people, each one shackled to the wall in a government-owned home, and left to die when the Limpopo river started to rise last month.

These floods have not claimed vast numbers of dead, but those who died were the most vulnerable. They included old people unable to climb on to trees or roofs as the waters rose, babies left behind when their mothers' arms were already full with other children, and the disabled, already neglected and maltreated by the society into which they were born.

The process of global warming - for which we in the West are to blame - is giving rise to ever more extreme weather systems, such as the heavy rains and cyclone which caused Mozambique's great rivers to burst their banks.

Rising sea levels are making life by the coast and in river deltas increasingly precarious. Massive flooding will become commonplace unless measures are taken to protect the affected land or the emission of greenhouse gases is significantly reduced.

Population pressure has prompted more people to move to vulnerable though fertile areas along the great rivers, so the death toll in future disasters will be even greater. The bush has been overgrazed, leaving it prone to erosion and flooding. The poorest people live in these areas because they have no choice. Riverside grasslands and wetlands used to act as safety valves in times of heavy rain, but now floodwaters have nowhere safe to go.

The UN estimates that by 2025 half the world's population will be living in areas at risk from storms and other extreme weather. Everyone agrees on one thing: Mozambique deserved better. Once the poorest country in the world, it has picked itself up from a murderous 20-year civil war and started rebuilding.

Its economy was growing faster than anywhere else in Africa, inflation was under control and Mozambique was finally emerging from the isolation of centuries. It even joined the British Commonwealth, a remarkable thing considering it was ruled by the Portuguese for centuries. Last year, for the first time since the end of the civil war, it didn't have to ask the outside world for food aid.

It is also a congenial place to be. The divisions between black and white are not as sharp as in South Africa, and skin colours cover the entire spectrum, just as in Brazil. The positive side of the Portuguese legacy is certainly fading, but it is still there in Maputo's tree-lined avenues, crumbling villas and excellent fish restaurants.

Even so, Mozambique is desperately poor. Ninety per cent of people live on less than $1 a day. Life expectancy is about 45 years. One-quarter of children will die before reaching their fifth birthday.

Such a country was disastrously unprepared for what unfolded over the past month. Mozambique, 11 times the size of Ireland, has one working helicopter and three barges. The floods started on February 9th with heavy rainfall across southern Africa. Hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless, yet the world barely noticed.

Worse, no one seemed to realise that the rain falling in the uplands of South Africa and Zimbabwe would eventually make its way down to Mozambique via the Limpopo, Save and Zambezi rivers. Just when this happened, later in February, a cyclone smashed into the coast of central Mozambique, bringing more heavy rain and wreaking widespread devastation.

It was this two-pronged "second wave" that propelled Mozambique into major disaster status. The world started to take note, all the more so when television pictures emerged of dramatic rescues by South African army helicopter pilots of stranded flood victims.

At this point, the media took over. The television images galvanised public attention and forced Western governments to act. Viewed from the desk of editors and producers in London or New York, the story was simple: these people need help. Something must be done.

Viewed from Mozambique, however, the situation is more complex. Much good work has been done over the past fortnight, but the level of fuss and the waste of resources is astounding. Does it really need 20 armies, 200 aid agencies and dozens of international bodies to achieve results? Does the involvement of so many organisations not lead to unsolvable problems of co-ordination? Is the level of assistance proportionate to the need?

This emergency was driven by the media's obsession with "the big story". Across the waters of the Indian Ocean, cyclone Gloria was making 10,000 people homeless in Madagascar last week, yet the only concern of journalists was whether it would hit Mozambique. In the event, it fizzled out.

The result of all this, as one Irish aid worker mused to me during the week, could be a form of "overkill". "When the need for helicopters to rescue people was there, they weren't available. Now we're all bumping into each other in our eagerness to help," he remarked.

The best work goes on unseen. The worst, such as the flypasts of British army helicopters at Maputo airport, happens in front of the television cameras. The arrivals and departures of each visiting dignitary are faithfully recorded on film, but their excuses are not recorded.

Far better, for example, to show the pomp surrounding the arrival of an American general than to play up his startling revelation that it took President Clinton eight days to give authorisation for the US army to go into Mozambique.

Perhaps the business of emergency aid is inherently imperfect, and we should accept that. Now that the first phase of the emergency is drawing to a close, the real work can begin.