Climate change is happening everywhere. In bustling, developed cities, it is often easy to ignore the faint stench of car fuel and the occasional intense heat wave. But developing countries, especially those tied so closely to the land and to the natural resources available to them, tell a different story. Rwanda is an example of one of these countries: a small, landlocked country with over 70% of the population involved in agriculture, including in subsistence farming and in the production of cash crops. Agriculture in Rwanda relies on the predictability of the climate: 2 rainy seasons and 2 dry seasons, steady sunlight, and stable temperatures. As the once-stable environment becomes more and more threatened, so do the livelihoods of farmers and agricultural workers who live there.
Last month, Rwanda hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Building in the newly built Kigali Convention Center, a $300 million dollar dome centered in Rwanda’s capital city that is built almost entirely from foreign aid. The convention center is the most expensive building in Africa, and the building is widely considered to be a point of pride for most Rwandans. But the picture that the building paints- of widespread success and wealth- is in many ways a facade. Just beyond Kigali’s borders, the bustling city turns to farmland and the level of poverty becomes apparent. In the provinces surrounding Kigali, farmers are actively fighting for survival as climate change takes hold of their farms- taking their food, income, and livelihoods with it.
Rwanda has come a long way in the recent decades. Just 28 years ago, building ethnic tensions between the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, and the minority, the Tutsis, erupted in a 100-day genocide. During this time, nearly 1 million people perished, and even more fled the country to seek refuge in nearby areas. Since then, the country has been healing; women have been able to occupy an incredible percentage of parliament seats (68%), the economy has been slowly regrowing, and Rwanda has continued to heal the ethnic tensions that once overwhelmed society. The capital city of Kigali in many ways shows the country’s success- the brightly lit convention center lights the metropolitan area around it and the burgeoning middle class can be seen commuting to and from work each day.
The possibility and opportunity for growth in Rwanda is underpinned by the stark contrast between the cities and rural towns. Just beyond Kigali, and in some areas within it, citizens walk for water at local streams and taps and participate in subsistence farming to feed their families. Due to the once predicatable rainy seasons and temperature, many agricultural workers have been able to lead stable lives producing, consuming, and selling their own crops. But Rwanda’s stability, and the stability of its citizens, are being put at risk by Climate Change.
Climate change in Rwanda is taking shape as a general increase in temperatures, which has the potential to burn ushielded crops and make for more challenging growing conditions. Even more dangerously, it creates unpredictable weather patterns, which causes flooding in the rainy seasons and droughts in the dry seasons, affecting crop production, community displacement, and access to water for irrigation and consumption.
Although Rwanda is a small country, it is geographically varied. Climate change, although undoubtedly present in all regions, is taking form in many different ways.
In the eastern province, the risk of rainfall deficit is increasing, putting farms and families alike at risk. For farms without implemented irrigation systems and water storage tanks, enduring short or absent rainy seasons and maintaining healthy crops is nearly impossible. Many farmers in Rwanda rely on ditches or nearby streams to nourish crops, resources which are rapidly drying.
In the northern and southern provinces, there are increased chances of excess rainfall and flooding in the rainy seasons, which can displace communities by flooding homes and ruin entire farms of crops. In the southern province in particular, the heat has grown substantially worse, rendering soil infertile.
In the western and more mountainous province, heavy rainfall and hot dry seasons creates the unique danger of erosion and landlsides.
The changes are clear on paper- climate change was already occurring in Rwanda. But was it being noticed? Were the farmers there already experiencing changes, and were their crops suffering? Were they suffering?
To answer these questions, I interviewed subsistence and cash crop farmers in Rwanda’s four major regions- East, West, North, and South- with the aid of an interpreter. I wanted to ask about the impact of climate change on their crops and their livelihoods as farmers, to better understand if climate change was a current and pressing danger in Rwanda. The results of the interviews were beyond startlking, and revealed the extent to which climate change was already threatening farmers in Rwanda. Everywhere we interviewed, farmers spoke of more harsh sunlight, which dried up water supply and soil and made plants brittle and of lower quality. The increasing amount of sunlight had also made a noticeable decrease in their crop yields, which means that farmers have fewer crops to sell at the local markets. In the north, we spoke to a woman who had lost her house due to flooding, and was forced to move to her current region where she must walk for water. In the south, I was struck by the desolation of many of the towns; it seemed that many houses and farms had been abandoned. When we spoke to a young woman and her baby there, she spoke about the intense droughts that she had seen and how she and her child were struggling to access food and water.
These stories prompted questions about government aid for farmers, and whether or not it was common for struggling agricultural workers to receive help from the government. In most cases, the question was met with a clear no or a puzzled look, and the response that very few farmers, if any, receive any aid.
Rwanda has several ministries focused on this issue, including the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture. But field research revealed a general frustration and lack of contact with these government programs, suggesting that they have done little to target the effects of climate change on their own people. There seem to be no concrete plans in place, and all of the farmers that we spoke to are “worried” for their own futures as climate change worsens. However, many revealed that simple solutions that would allow for the continues success of their farms. In all areas, sun netting would regulate exposure to harsher sun, and water pumps would allow for the storage and irrigation of water during the wet and dry seasons, which would maintain steady crop production even during variable rain years.
It is likely that the Rwandan economy will remain largely agrarian for many years to come. Its citizens rely on money made from cash crops and food grown through subsistence farming, which are threatened by the ongoing threats of climate change. Small-scale farmers in Rwanda’s countryside are the most vulnerable to these threats, and with little to no safety net, they face the possibility of starvation. Although many possible solutions still remain unclear, it is evident that foreign or internal government aid is necessary to equip farmers with life-saving solutions.
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