Last month, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) issued a report, warning that the pandemic, climate crisis and conflict were combining to create alarming levels of global hunger.
Currently, 34 million people globally face emergency levels of acute food insecurity, classified as Phase 4 on the 5-Phase IPC (Integrated food security Phase Classification). An additional 174 million people are classified as IPC Phase 3, indicating a “crisis” level of food insecurity requiring immediate action, a 29% increase from 2019, when 135 million people were suffering from this degree of food insecurity.
The Covid-19 pandemic and its resulting economic fallout; conflict and instability; and weather extremes are compounding upon one another, threatening to drive even more people into extreme food insecurity in 20 regions of the world, deemed “hotspots” in the report. Climate change is increasingly recognized as a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing crises, including the current hunger crisis, and contributing to conflict, an additional cause of food insecurity.
Urgent action is needed from the international community to avert this crisis, predicted to heighten between March and July of 2021. The current FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu emphasized the need for immediate steps to be taken,
“The magnitude of suffering is alarming. It is incumbent upon all of us to act now and to act fast to save lives, safeguard livelihoods and prevent the worst situation….In many regions, the planting season has just started or is about to start. We must run against the clock and not let this opportunity to protect, stabilize, and even possibly increase local food production, slip away.”
In the coming months, the report predicts that Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso will face the most severe crises. In parts of Yemen and South Sudan, the conditions are so severe they are categorized as famine-like.
The majority of hotspots are located in Africa, where violent conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia has displaced over 2 million people and thousands more have been forced to seek refuge in Sudan.
As well, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Nigeria, northern Mozambique, and the Sahel region, including the Lake Chad Basin, an area that Climate Refugees has written about in our detailed regional field report, is driving displacement and food insecurity.
In Central Asia, food insecurity is likely to increase in Afghanistan, as a result of increased violence, expected to follow the withdrawal of American military forces.
In Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, both longstanding conflict and economic shocks are driving the hunger crises. Significantly, this report cites unmanageable debt burdens as a driver of the type of economic crisis that worsens food insecurity, an issue that we recently covered in this feature-length article.
While climate change contributes to both increased rates of conflict and external debt burden that increase a region’s vulnerability to hunger, it also directly affects agricultural yields. And while conflict often leads to the loss of livelihoods and the destruction of crops and livestock, climate shocks like drought cause resource scarcity, which in turn can trigger conflict.
In many of the hotspots mentioned experiencing political instability or violence, including Afghanistan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia, weather extremes exacerbated by climate change are disrupting crop production, causing compounded harm. Additionally, desert locusts pose a regional risk in East Africa and the Red Sea Coast, threatening to decimate crop yields in the coming months.
The report provides breakdowns of the current conditions in each of the hotspot nations and regions, painting a grim outlook for millions of people. While much of the Global North is currently “recovering” from Covid-19, the harms suffered by the Global South as a result of both the pandemic and climate change have only just begun.
Emergency response is needed to confront this global crisis afflicting some of the poorest people in the world. Primarily, the Global North needs to take a stand and contribute financially to save lives and avert this hunger crisis exacerbated by wealthy nations’ historical carbon emissions. In March, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu urged the world to act:
“We urgently need three things to stop millions from dying of starvation: the fighting has to stop, we must be allowed access to vulnerable communities to provide life-saving help and above all we need donors to step up with the $ 5.5 billion we are asking for this year.”
This is just the beginning of an era of climate change-induced humanitarian crises. The scale of this crisis is dizzying, but necessary aid will save lives if wealthy countries take responsibility for the effects of their development, now.