Farmer Suicides Balloon As Result of Global Warming
The U.N.'s climate panel reports on nearly every climate consequence imaginable. But there's one they've missed.
In February, Kennedy Mutiso, a farmer in Eastern Kenya, committed suicide and took his wife and three children with him. He reached his fatal decision because he couldn't repay a $5,000 loan, according to a disturbing article from Reuters AlertNet. The debt leveraged the rain-fed harvests from his farm -- an impossible burden because he had no crop to sell.
Mutiso is, by far, not the only one to seek a final escape.
The region has been plagued with an unprecedented drought followed by an unusual harvest rain that led to a fungus infestation. In the wake of their climate problems, almost none of 7,000 with loans in Kenya's Eastern province have been able to repay.
As a result, suicide rates have skyrocketed. The normal suicide rate in the province is 300 per year. In the past year, it is up to 2,000. The morgues, the article reports, are "overflowing" both with suicide victims and the family members many have decided to spare the misery of living.
There are a lot of things you can say about this situation but the most important, in my mind, to recognize is that this is a global warming story. The psychological toll of climate change belongs in the the U.N.'s IPCC reports just as much as estimates of sea level rise rates.
In Kenya, temperatures have in recent years been up to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than normal. The rainy seasons -- when they come at all -- have been totally awry, even though farmers have long depended on their regular cycles to know when to plant their seeds. What's more, Kenya is struggling to emerge from a drought that put 4 million on food aid last year and saw at least 10 million facing starvation. "Normal" has little meaning there today, as I reported first hand when I visited a central Kenya village called Sakai last December.
Yeah, global warming can be a real downer. Luckily for most of us, aside from the occasional stifling heat wave, unprecedented flood or ravenous forest fire, we still have the luxury of ignoring the environmental traumas that we are leaving our children to face. It's all rather depressing background noise. But for farmers, from the U.S. to Kenya, this is stuff they just can't push aside -- especially for those who are trying to support their families on what it costs us to buy a grande latte at Starbucks. Along with all the climate experts we send to developing countries, psychologists and counselors should probably be added to the list.
Photo credit: Jess Leber
Jess Leber
is a Change.org editor. She most recently covered climate and energy issues as a reporter in Washington, D.C
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