Why does there need to be 'heavy handed intervention'. The conversation woulg go something like this, "you are all dieing of starvation, we can and will fix your problem long term by irrigating your desert land so that you can grow food to feed yourselves. We do not require paying for this as the long term economic results will heavily outweigh what we already pump into you currently".

Then again, we could provide farming tools and tractors for them right away, couldn't we?