".. I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages,.." As with all bad news, so too with adverse natural events – it never just rains, it pours!

In an earlier publication about drought, the various terms given to the different types of the phenomenon were discussed briefly. There was talk of meteorological drought, agricultural drought, and a paragraph on the third level; hydrological drought. There’s one more stage to consider; Socioeconomic drought, a close relative to the fourth horseman of the apocalypse .

Socioeconomic drought (SED) is the term used to describe the hard times people suffer when any, or all, of the first three faces of the actual event has made its impact. In Trinidad and Tobago we know it as the ‘banga season’, ‘guava season’ even a ‘dry spell’.

If you are having diminished income as a result of crop failure, facing more expensive electricity bills, paying even more expensive fuel, blame it on drought. When the water dries, any process which depends on it becomes harder to – well process, and so do the costs attendant to those processes rise.

The supply of many key goods in a developing economy depend on weather, since people there must grow food to eat, process potable liquids, and manufacture objects. Such a society’s haste for a better quality of life carries potential for abuse to the resource, in this case water. Poor usage is a huge factor and leads to a spiralling cycle of increasing vulnerability and; socioeconomic drought .

Examples of behaviour that can lead to socioeconomic drought abound; Locally the sight of tanker lorries pumping fresh water into the Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre reservoir to ensure a supply of coolant for the various refineries there, carries with it a benign promise of a raised cost in the end product.

Other not so apparent projections of socioeconomic drought could be that S M Jaleel will raise the selling price of their ubiquitous ‘pop’ to cover stock and asset losses incurred by recent bushfires.
Further across the region Uruguay (1988-99) had to convert their power generation plants from hydropower to diesel fuel. The reason was drought-induced lowering of the river levels and an eventual diminished stream flow to the turbines. The cost then of importing petrol led to the perfect example of socioeconomic drought.

As an aside to the conversation but germane to the topic is the fact that our Government Ministry for Planning and the Environment has nothing substantial on land use since 1980. The image is a screenprint of their site.

In most cases of acute SED, the demand for economic goods is fuelled by greater demand which leads to bigger processes. This syndrome needs great care in the forward planning. While it’s arguable that we in TnT can feed ourselves indefinitely, we cannot if we lose the agricultural land to housing a growing population.

Nor can we reserve scarce water if we pursue larger plants to make consumables for larger countries. The demand on our natural assets by larger populations is not a sustainable consideration for us. Neither is the profligate increased usage of it for industry, given the need for water to purify and lubricate it all.

It does not end there. Socioeconomic drought is exacerbated by other factors beyond a lack of rain and bushfires and overdevelopment of finite resources. The real danger of attracting a terminal case of SED is to neglect the rate of change in the demand supply chain. If the demand is increasing more rapidly than the supply, then the vulnerability and the frequency of SED will increase as the trends converge.

The short answer Trinidad and Tobago of course is to make better use of our natural gifts. Environmentalists have said it many times, so did my parents; ‘Do more with less’, ‘Waste not want not’ and of course, ‘You never miss the water till the well runs dry’.

People see the fire on the hills, and if they would pay attention to the silent voice of conscience they’d feel the chill. A lot is happening each time a bushfire begins somewhere in Trinidad and Tobago, and it all leads to the dread spectre we hear of in other places – drought.

Drought is not a thing we know of down here, although we may have heard of it, or we may have seen its effects from a vantage point at the front of our televisions. The thing is, drought for us need not become the threat of our lifetime, heaven knows we have enough other things to worry about.

But what is drought really? We usually only see the images of dry desert in the equatorial regions. One easy definition of an arid area; ‘a place which contributes nothing to the waters of the ocean system’ puts Trinidad and Tobago ‘in the cool’ speaking figuratively.

Science tells of three types of drought; Meteorological, Agricultural and Hydrological. These are dry terms for what is essentially the bane of civilizations. While it is accepted that drought is a normal phenomenon, part of natural climate variability, understanding the process can help us stave off its negative effects to some extent.

A insidious aspect of the process of drought is the length of time it takes to show its face. When it’s finally recognised, usually it’s too late for the community where it occurred. At first the symptoms will just be a little less rain, for shorter periods, and in lessening amounts.

At that initial stage expect higher temperatures, greater sunshine, less cloud cover and high winds. Of course the effects of each are already familiar to the people of Trinidad and Tobago – there’s talk of reduced water collection in the reservoirs and the aquifers. There’s been some mention of the high rate of evaporation over the lakes and the ponds. It seems we were introduced to the early days of drought. Or as science would say, Meteorological drought.

The other stage is Agricultural drought. This is where other known factors exacerbate what was the foretelling of ‘Met drought’. Agricultural drought is the period where farming communities will experience a severe loss of moisture in the soils. They will witness stressed plants, reduced growth, and will suffer smaller yields.

When the third stage of drought, Hydrological drought is apparent, then the television is no longer needed, the view is outside the window. The signs are everywhere at that point. Rivers are dry, or almost empty, wetlands are dry, and wildlife has migrated or died.

Drought has its teeth in its very insidiousness. It comes slowly, it affects no one person, it affects all communities and it takes in large geographic plots. There are not enough written laws to protect us from its ravages, nor is enough press given to it – it’s not news until it’s identified by the face of a starving child.

The thing to do is first recognise its onslaught. In Trinidad and Tobago the first time the word was used in context on the local paper, the article headlined; ‘It’s official, T&T now in drought’. In hindsight if enough media was used before the dry periods came then the public’s awareness may have been apprised.

There’s enough material on the symptoms of drought. Bushfire is one topic that comes to mind. These days are all about sirens and shortages on the news. Someone’s house burns in a wildfire and the reporting is sure to gain the media company some impressive figures for viewership or what passes for ratings.

Bushfires are what has prompted this article. Bushfires are the first stage of drought. And bushfires are not what should hold our entire attention since it’s the advance guard of a much bigger problem. Let’s make the slow burn our focus here.   
Here’s more on drought..

[For more of what communities can do about the economic, social and environmental impacts of drought contact Environment Tobago or COPE in Trinidad  ]