The people most at risk are the 300,000 mainly Somali refugees in the Kakuma and Dadaab camps.  Kakuma is in northwestern Kenya and Dadaab in the east on the border with Somalia.   The overcrowded Dadaab complex of three camps was built to hold some 90,000 people but its population has swollen to three times that, in the process becoming home to more refugees than any other site in the world, according to the UNHCR.

U.N. aid agencies have activated contingency plans, bringing food, water treatment chemicals and mosquito nets to flood-prone areas.  The flooding, which follows on from a period of drought, is also bringing disease in its wake – the WHO is reporting that cholera has already infected 10,000 people this year in Kenya.

Elsewhere in Kenya, hundreds of people have been evacuated from their homes in the central part of the country after mudslides, brought on by the heavy rain, destroyed houses.

When Advance Aid was in Nairobi at the end of September the grass almost everywhere was brown and the Masai were bringing their cattle into the centre of the city in search of grass verges that might have been watered that the painfully thin cattle could feed on.

Now there are floods as the country goes, almost overnight, from too little to too much water.  The same story is being repeated in Somalia, on the border with Kenya, where 15,000 people in the town of El-Waq are reported to have been displaced by floods.

And today Sir Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development at Imperial College, London, is arguing that Africa is already warming faster than the global average and that people living there can expect more intense droughts, floods and storm surges.

His Discussion Paper No 1 published by Imperial College’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change suggests that:
• The drier subtropical regions will warm more than the moister tropics.
• Northern and southern Africa will become much hotter (as much as
4 °C or more) and drier (precipitation falling by 15% or more).
• Wheat production in the north and maize production in the south
are likely to be adversely affected.
• In eastern Africa, including the Horn of Africa, and parts of central
Africa average rainfall is likely to increase.
• Vector borne diseases such as malaria and dengue may spread and
become more severe.
• Sea levels will rise, perhaps by half a metre, in the next fifty years,
with serious consequences in the Nile Delta and certain parts of
West Africa.

The humanitarian consequences of these types of changes are very clear.  And very worrying.

Now the UN is to revise its appeal made on 7th October.  Initially it called for $74m, but now it says that this “was clearly not enough” and the UN is stressing that this number would be revised upwards when more detailed reports come in from the field.

Amongst the problems the UN – and the Philippines – is facing are the double impact of the global financial crisis and the number of emergencies to hit South East Asia over the past few weeks – tsunamis in Samoa, the earthquake in Indonesia and flooding in several countries in the region.

John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said he was optimistic the international donor community would respond positively to a revised appeal, and added, “Climate change is already causing more intense disasters.”

Cyclone Ketsana dumped record rainfall on Manila and surrounding areas on 26th September, causing unprecedented flooding. It destroyed hospitals and homes, and washed away entire communities along river banks.

A week later on 3rd October, super-typhoon Parma hit the northern Philippines and Luzon island’s western coast, drowning large tracts of farm land and causing landslides that destroyed bridges and motorways.

Authorities were also forced to release water from two near-bursting dams, adding to the flooding that at one point covered an entire province.

Damage to infrastructure and agriculture, which contributes significantly to the economy, is initially placed at 17.6 billion pesos ($382.60 million), a figure that is likely to rise once a final assessment is made, officials said.

There are already nearly 20m people in the region dependent on food aid and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is forecasting that this number will increase.

The Guardian carried a particularly disturbing picture and report on the disastrous effects that the drought was having on pastoralists.

And the FAO suggests that the current drought could be followed by floods, “The effects of El Niño, which usually brings heavy rains towards the end of the year, could make matters worse, resulting in floods and mudslides, destroying crops both in the field and in stores, increasing livestock losses and damaging infrastructure and housing.”

Food prices are rising as a result, “In Uganda and Kenya, for instance, prices of maize in June 2009 were almost double their level 24 months earlier.  In Khartoum, Sudan, June 2009 prices of sorghum, another staple crop, were more than double their levels in June 2007.  Similarly, prices in Mogadishu, Somalia, still remain higher than the pre-crisis period, despite declining since mid-2008.“

Conditions are probably worst for the people of Somalia, “According to FAO’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit, Somalia is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years, with approximately half the population – an estimated 3.6 million people – in need of emergency livelihood and life-saving assistance.  This includes 1.4 million rural people affected by the severe drought, about 655 000 urban poor facing high food and non-food prices, and 1.3 million internally displaced people, a result of escalating fighting and conflict.”

In Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea poor harvests are being reported and in Kenya forced migrations in search of water supplies and pasture have worsened livestock conditions, increased disease outbreaks and exacerbated resource-based conflicts among pastoralists.

But at this time of year the flooding problem is in West Africa.  Just a couple of days ago the BBC was reporting that 350,000 people had been affected in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Benin, Guinea, Niger and Senegal.

Now CNN is quoting the UN as saying that the number affected has risen to 600,000.  Its report says, “The World Food Programme (WFP) has set a goal of feeding 177,500 people, mainly in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, where 150,000 people have been affected and key infrastructure — including a central hospital, schools, bridges and roads — has been damaged.  The flooding in Burkina Faso is the worst in 90 years.”

And this is a recurring problem.  In 2007 300 people died and 800,000 were affected by the storms and flooding that result from the West African rainy season that runs from June through to September.

But the sad thing is that even flooding and displacement on this scale does not make the television news or hit the front pages even though the UN is reporting that, “Roads and buildings have been ruined from Mauritania to Niger”, which covers a huge area .  And if a disaster is not on TV in the West, it’s almost as if it hasn’t happened as far as donations and public offers of help are concerned.