What is the difference between drought and femine ???
Answers
The difference between famines and droughts can be confusing, as they have similar causes and similarly devastating impacts. Both create economic, social and sometimes political collapse, driven by an insufficient supply of food and water and disease that may spread rapidly. However, one is natural and unpreventable, and the other, in most cases, is preventable.
Droughts result from very low rainfall over a particular period. Depending on the region, these ranges can vary tremendously. For instance, a tropical island like Bali, Indonesia, would be in a drought if it were without rainfall for a whole week. The lack of rainfall for a similar period in a place like Libya in Africa, which has a very low annual rainfall, would not constitute a drought. Droughts result in a lack of water for a local area, and this leads to other problems like food shortages and the death of crops. There is not much that can be done to prevent a drought, but many things can be done to reverse the effects of a drought.
There is not much that can be done to prevent a drought, but many things can be done to reverse the effects of a drought or prepare for one. Famines, on the other hand, arise from a multitude of circumstances and are not entirely natural, Most, therefore, are preventable, and created by people.
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale, “famine exists when at least 20 percent of the population in a specific area has extremely limited access to basic food, acute malnutrition exceeds 30 percent, and the death rate exceeds two per 10,000 people per day for the entire population.”
While droughts can lead to famine, armed conflicts are a more likely cause. Four nations are currently experiencing famine, as alerted by the United Nations: Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen. Of these, only the famine in Somalia is a direct result of a drought; armed conflict caused the other three.
The last famine in the world was in Somalia in 2011. It killed roughly 260,000 people. The most recent European famines were a result of both world wars. Many areas in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands were under famine because of military blockades. The difference between famines and droughts is critical in understanding the underlying problems affecting populations in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen.