Bangkok - Cyclone-damaged Myanmar needs an estimated 32
million dollars in immediate emergency aid to help 52,000 farming
families plant their rice this rainy season, the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) said Wednesday.
'Time is not on our side,' said Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO Regional
director for Asia-Pacific. 'The window is narrow to meet the seasonal
deadline for the monsoon season cropping.'
Myanmar's fertile Irrawaddy Delta, the country's traditional rice
bowl, was hit by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3, which brought with it
tidal waves that submerged up to 780,000 hectares of land and left at
least 130,000 dead or missing.
An accurate estimate of the cyclone's damage to Myanmar's rice
crop has been provided this week by the FAO, which recently
concluded a needs assessment mission to the Irrawaddy delta with
eight FAO experts accompanied by counterparts from the Myanmar
government.
'We are talking roughly about 183,000 hectares of paddy land that
could be lost for this production season, or roughly half a million
metric tons of paddy,' said Albert Lieberg, who headed the FAO needs
assessment team.
The estimated shortfall is considerably lower than the
government's initial estimate of 3 million tons. The Irrawaddy delta
provides about 65 per cent of Myanmar's rice needs.
Should the international community fail to supply funding for the
emergency package designed by FAO to assist the 52,000 farming
families who own the 183,000 hectares of paddy land, a production
shortfall of 500,000 tons of paddy can be anticipated in 2008 which
could lead to severe food shortages or reliance on foreign food aid,
Lieberg warned.
'But if the programme is implemented, then we will be able to make
it,' he told a press conference in Bangkok.
The FAO has pinpointed another 100,000 landless farmers in the
cyclone-affected areas of the Irrawaddy who will also need emergency
assistance as they have lost their means of employment.
The United Nations agency estimates that another 51 million
dollars in disaster aid will be needed from the international
community to go toward rehabilitation of agriculture, fisheries and
forestry in the Irrawaddy over the next two years.
Cyclone Nargis, the worst natural disaster to hit Myanmar in
recent history, killed an estimated 30,000 people working in the
fisheries sector and destroyed thousands of fishing boats, said the
FAO.
New boats will need to be brought in as part of an emergency
package, and the boat-building industry will need to be rehabilitated
as part of the long-term package.
The cyclone also destroyed about 14,000 hectares of mangrove
forest, although mangrove destruction has gone unmonitored in the
delta for the past 40 years, making a proper assessment of the
environmental damage of the cyclone difficult, said Lieberg.
The FAO expert claimed to have faced no restrictions in carrying
out their assessment mission, which took them to many remoter areas
in the Irrawaddy.
'During our work...we had total freedom of manoeuvre,' claimed
Lieberg.
Myanmar's ruling junta was heavily criticized for restricting the
entry of foreign disaster experts to the cyclone-struck areas in the
Irrawaddy during the first weeks of the catastrophe, but they
appeared to loosen up after a national referendum was held on May 25.
The vote had preoccupied the generals and apparently taken priority
over relief activities.
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