Economic development, drought, and famines: some limitations of dependency explanations

Drought is today a major instigator of famine disasters that developing countries suffer. Until recently scientists set great store in climatic theories of famine devastation. Over the past decade, climatic determinism has given way to a sociological thesis, putting famines connected with drought down fundamentally to political and economic causes of poverty rooted in colonial and neocolonial forms of capitalism. According to this thesis drought acts only as a catalyst of a situation long in the making. These 'dependency explanations', discussed below, trace over important links forming the causal chain. But they attend insufficiently to proximate (immediate) causes of famine and overlook risks from indigenous village institutions. Further, outbreaks of famine in developing countries opposed staunchly to capitalistic doctrines and practices lie beyond the explanatoru scope of dependency frameworls. These claims are elaborated and then directed to an assessment of research needs presented in the concluding section.