Flood and Drought—Acts of God?
“I GET dizzy and my stomach feels cold.” The African woman was trying to describe to an Awake! reporter what it felt like to starve. Said another resident of a drought-stricken region of South Africa: “We lose all our strength to the extent that we are not able to laugh, cry, see, or breathe.”
The misery of these individuals was recently shared by an estimated 35 million in Africa alone. They were victims of a drought that threatened to spell continental disaster.
This suffering by no means went unnoticed. Ghastly images of starving women and children—often reduced to mere skeletons—were broadcast and published, spurring on massive relief efforts. For many victims, though, such measures were too little, too late. Relief shipments do not bring the dead back to life, nor do they restore economic prosperity to ruined farmers.
But while some pray with parched lips for a drop of rain, many others suffer at the hands of a natural hazard that some consider even more ruinous to life and property—flood. Observed the book Historical Catastrophes: Famines: “Many of the major crop failures . . . have been caused by too much water.”
For example, China’s Yellow River winds toward the sea like an elevated highway. Alongside its banks, dikes protect the peasants living on the plain below. But in times of flood these walls sometimes burst, turning the plain into a sea of terror. Over the centuries some ten million Chinese have died in floods, making the Yellow River the cause of more human suffering than any other natural feature on earth!
Floods and droughts continue to haunt man in spite of technological know-how. And whether you have experienced their horror directly or not, you are nonetheless affected. For flood and drought inevitably create food shortages, which in turn cause the price of food to rise sky-high. So helpless is man in the face of these disasters that they are commonly called acts of God. But how true is this designation?
Who Is Responsible?
Earthscan, a “news and information service on global development and environment issues,” published a report entitled Natural Disasters—Acts of God or Acts of Man? It presents data showing that the average number of reported floods increased worldwide from 15.1 per year in the 1960’s to 22.2 in the 1970’s. Droughts increased from 5.2 per year to 9.7 during the same period. Far more alarming, though, is the fact that the number of people killed by these disasters increased over sixfold!
The Earthscan report says: “Disasters are increasingly man-made. Some disasters (flood, drought, famine) are caused more by environmental and resource mismanagement than by too much or too little rainfall. . . . Disasters are social and political events which can be and often are prevented. In the Third World where the poor are forced to overuse their land and live on dangerous ground, disasters are taking a rising toll.”
Consider how acts of man have brought about so-called acts of God. One night in May 1943 about 330 million tons of water poured into valleys in the western part of Germany. An act of God? No. It was caused by the bombing of the Möhne and Eder dams by British warplanes in World War II. Some 1,294 people drowned in the floods, and most were civilians.
Just five years earlier, a disaster occurred that some believe was more devastating than the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Commenting on a report from SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), the magazine New Scientist said: “It was the dynamiting of the Huayuankow dyke of the Yellow River, which stopped Japanese troops advancing through China in 1938, but which also drowned several hundred thousand of China’s own people.” Millions more were left homeless.
Similarly, one African newspaper charged: “Not all the agony [of droughts] can be blamed on the weather. . . . Wars from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic shore and back to Mozambique have sent peasants fleeing from their croplands.” Ethiopia’s drought, for example, has been aggravated by years of civil war that has destroyed grasslands.
God or Greed?
Thanks to modern technology, farmers are now able to plow vast tracts of land—including areas that ecologists say should not have been plowed in the first place. Said National Geographic respecting parts of the Great Plains of North America: “Speculators and hard-pressed ranchers have been plowing up hundreds of thousands of acres of fragile grasslands to grow wheat . . . These soils easily blow when it’s dry, and prolonged drought on the plains, like the one that led to the Dust Bowl [a drought-stricken area of the United States during the 1930’s] is only a matter of time.”
Already, some grazing lands in that region are covered with a blanket of soil reaching up to the fence posts. One cattle rancher thus affected said: “It’s not an act of God. It’s an act of greed. God doesn’t have a plow.” Mohandas Gandhi put it well when he said: “There is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.”
However, some would say it is the livestock raisers who are greedy. Some stock so many animals that the lands are overgrazed. And while they may get away with doing so for years, when drought strikes, overgrazed lands can turn into a permanent desert. Consider what happened on the borderlands of the Sahara Desert. Earlier this century, thousands of wells were sunk to provide more water. African livestock raisers rejoiced, for this allowed them to increase their livestock. But, alas, there was not sufficient grazing land to accommodate this increase!
“The Sahel was already sick when a drought began in 1968,” states the book Our Hungry Earth—The World Food Crisis. “As the grasses died, herdsmen cut down trees so that their cattle could eat the leaves. The drought continued, and the grasslands and farmers’ fields started turning to desert.” The Sahara, according to New Scientist magazine, “has expanded southward by 650 000 square kilometres [250,000 sq mi] over the past 50 years.” That is an area larger than Spain and Portugal combined!
Then there are developers who chop down trees, ignoring the ecological consequences. “On a global basis,” says Professor Hanks, Director of the Institute of Natural Resources, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, “in the time it takes you to read this sentence, three hectare [7.4 a.] of forest will have disappeared. . . . There is much more to this loss of trees than a loss of raw material for energy and for building. Deforestation destroys well-established water cycles, leading to siltation of streams and rivers, depletion of ground water, intensified flooding, and an aggravation of water shortages during dry periods.”
An example of this can be seen in the Himalayas. “Forests in the foothills,” says the book Our Hungry Earth—The World Food Crisis, “are fast disappearing. As a result, floods are getting worse in South Asia. A 1973 flood in Pakistan destroyed large amounts of stored grain. And in 1974, floods in Bangladesh and India damaged crops almost as much as drought.”
Divine Punishment?
No wonder, then, that the aforementioned Earthscan report concluded that man—not God—is responsible for the disastrous effects of flood and drought. True, man does not control the weather, although there are some who think that man’s tinkering with the environment through nuclear testing and the like have altered weather patterns. However, as the Earthscan report stated:
“People are changing their environment to make it more prone to some disasters, and are behaving so as to make themselves more vulnerable to those hazards. Growing Third World populations are forced to overcultivate, deforest and generally overuse their land, making it more prone to both floods and droughts.”
‘But is it not possible,’ some may ask, ‘that God somehow uses these disasters to punish man for his mismanagement of the earth? Does not the Bible show that God used such disasters in times past?’ Remember, though, that the divinely caused Noachian Flood was preceded by advance warning. God saw to it that righteous Noah and his family were spared from death. (Genesis 6:13, 14, 17) Certainly this cannot be said of recent disasters, for at times even faithful servants of God have suffered hardship and death because of them.
This does not mean, however, that God is insensitive to man’s ruining of the earth. The Bible indicates that God in due time will bring retribution through his Kingdom. The Bible describes what will happen: “In the days of those kings [present-day governments] the God of heaven will set up a kingdom [his heavenly government] that will never be brought to ruin. . . . It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite.”—Daniel 2:44.
For centuries, true Christians have awaited God’s Kingdom. Why, Jesus taught his followers to pray: “Father, . . . let your kingdom come.” (Luke 11:2) Is there reason, though, to believe that a heavenly government could stem destructive floods and droughts? Yes, indeed! For one thing, scientific attempts to control the weather have thus far met with little success. Yet the Creator has the power to regulate the weather. He promised his ancient people: “I shall also certainly give your showers of rain at their proper time, and the land will indeed give its yield, and the tree of the field will give its fruit.”—Leviticus 26:4.
The resurrected Jesus Christ, appointed by God to be King of this government, has also demonstrated the power of weather control! The Bible tells of an incident where a “violent windstorm broke out.” Jesus was awakened from a deep sleep, “roused himself and rebuked the wind and said to the sea: ‘Hush! Be quiet!’” What happened? “The wind abated, and a great calm set in.” This moved Jesus’ frightened disciples to say: “Who really is this, because even the wind and the sea obey him?”—Mark 4:36-41.
Under God’s Kingdom rule, earth’s weather will likewise obey the commands of Jesus and therefore be kept in perfect balance. And what about earth’s ecology? There will be no greedy men to strip earth of its forests or pollute the atmosphere. The Bible says: “The earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters are covering the very sea.” (Isaiah 11:9) Under that rule mankind will doubtless learn to build homes and develop the earth in such a way as not to upset its ecology. (Isaiah 65:21) Thus earth will be transformed into a beautiful place—a real paradise!—Luke 23:43.
[Picture on page 18]
Why are deserts such as this one in Africa growing rapidly?
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FAO photo