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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Letters

Report on the human cost in desert areas

Sahel, Chad, boy and donkey
In the Sahel, childhood malnutrition and related mortality persist at alarming rates. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Climate change is “short on human narrative”, says Jonathan Freedland (7 March). Some 15 years ago I visited a village in the Sahel belt of Senegal. Around half the villagers had left and more were planning to go. The rains had failed, the land had withered, their crops and livestock had died. I visited another village, or rather the site of another, as it had been totally abandoned. Many had no choice but to walk to the shanties of the nearest urban area. Those two villages are part of a vast problem. Things are almost certainly more acute today. And it’s the poorest who are suffering the most. I would urge Alan Rusbridger to send Guardian journalists into semi-desert areas to give us the human narrative.
John Madeley
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