The Bushmen and the British: problems of the identification of drought and responses to drought

This chapter discusses two cases involving apparent drought and responses to drought, that of the !Kung Bushmen, a hunter-gatherer population inhabiting the Kalahari Desert of Botswana, and that of the British, an urban-industrial population inhabiting a normally well watered island in north-west Europe. The !Kung are a loosely organised population of hunter-gatherers and part-time farmers and herders. They live in the semi-arid Kalahari desert area in the Republic of Botswana and the Territory of Namibia. The account that follows is based primarily on the research, centred in the Dobe area of northwestern Botswana, by Richard Lee and associates. Beginning in the summer of 1975, news media took notice of the remarkable spell of sunny weather that had settled on northern Europe. By late spring of 1976 the potential seriousness of the situation had become apparent to people in Great Britain, particularly farmers, and the developing problem was noted in the British press.