NAIROBI, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Experts kicked off a two-day meeting in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, on Tuesday to discuss ways of ending drought emergencies in the East African region.
The meeting brought together more than 150 stakeholders from the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an East African bloc, to enhance cooperation in improving drought disaster resilience in the arid and semi-arid lands.
Mohamed Ware, deputy executive secretary of IGAD, said that border communities, in large part, are pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, depending on increasingly unreliable and erratic rainfall.
"With limited infrastructure in border areas, humanitarian and relief efforts are often too little and too late for victims of the extremes of climate impact," Ware said.
He urged the region to develop robust early warning systems as a strategic priority to improve the ability to predict and mitigate drought crises.
Harsama Kello, principal secretary of Kenya's State Department for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands and Regional Development, said that the region is exposed to drought disasters caused by climate change, which have increased the vulnerabilities of pastoral communities.
Kello said that community-based early warning systems that rely on traditional knowledge gathered over millennia need to be incorporated to reduce the impact and recurrence of disasters. ■