AGIRN -

The Turkana people of northwest Kenya give names to the increasingly frequent droughts that hit them. The latest, in 2005/06, is called "Atiaktiak ng'awiyei" - "the one that divided homes" - because so many families split up, migrating to towns and relief camps to survive.

According to a report on the impact of climate change in Africa by a coalition of environmental and development agencies, the Turkana say drought has plagued them persistently since 1999 when the "Kichutanak" drought - which means "it has swept away everything, even animals" - did just what its name describes.

This drought has no comparison. No other drought has been like this. It's all encompassing," says pastoralist Hassan Mahmood in Africa - Up in Smoke 2 - an update on an earlier report produced by the British-based Working Group on Climate Change and Development.

The document warns that the continent is warming steadily, and scientific models predict further temperature rises and changes in rainfall patterns.

Africa has become 0.5 degrees centigrade warmer over the past century, and this is putting strain on water resources, the report says. The change is more extreme in the interior - with the temperature having risen 3.5 degrees in two decades in Kericho, a tea-growing area of Kenya.

Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research says temperature increases over many areas of Africa will be double the global average. Drought patterns are likely to become more extreme, and Equatorial Africa and parts of southern Africa are becoming wetter, making lethal floods more likely.

None of this looks good for Africa's farmers, for whom perhaps the biggest threat is increasing unpredictability in weather patterns, the report says. "Climate change is a new and unprecedented threat to food security," it warns, noting that the average number of food emergencies in Africa per year has almost tripled since the mid-1980s.

The report argues that the international system of emergency food aid needs to be reformed in order to help people cope with the climate threat. "Food aid does save lives, but it does not offer long-term solutions, and at worst it may exacerbate food insecurity," it says.

One way of improving the system and making aid more "climate proof" would be to ensure that humanitarian relief doesn't just the meet the immediate food needs of hungry people, but includes built-in ways to help people make a steady income.

"The stop-start approach must give way to longer-term support to address the underlying causes of food insecurity, including through social protection programmes through governments, backed by reliable funding," the report recommends.

It criticises the high proportion of U.N. food aid - 70 percent - that is produced in developed countries. And it questions whether giving out food is always the best way of tackling hunger.

Where the problem isn't food shortages but a lack of access to food as a result of poverty, "providing cash can be a more appropriate, faster and less expensive option," the report advises.

It says anyone tackling poverty should give top priority to people in rural areas, especially small-scale farmers, nomadic pastoralists and women.

There's an interesting example of an innovative approach to emergency aid being used by Oxfam and Practical Action in east Africa, which is known as a "meat aid safety net" or "off-take".

When drought hits, people sell their weakest animals to an aid agency at a reasonable price. The livestock is then slaughtered and the former owners get back the meat and the hide, which they can eat or sell on. The money generated can be used to buy food, pay off debts or restock herds, meaning that it stays in the local economy.

FOOTNOTE: Christian Aid is warning that the recommendations of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in London on Monday, don't go far enough to protect poor people from an unacceptably high risk of disease and hunger.

"Stern's figures means that the world's average temperature would almost certainly increase beyond the two degree mark that scientists agree is safe. This could condemn millions of poor people on the front line of climate change to death," says Andrew Pendleton, Christian Aid's senior climate change analyst, in a response to the report.