Southern Madagascar is experiencing drought so severe that citizens are being forced to scavenge for most meals. Currently, more than 1.14 million people are being pushed to the edges of starvation. Of those, 14,000 people are in Integrated Phase Classification-5 (IPC-5) category ‘catastrophe/famine’, which will double by October.

WFP Executive Director David Beasley has emphasized that the food crisis “is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change.” Madagascar’s global share of emissions is only 0.01%, yet the people there are currently experiencing some of the worst effects. 

Beasley added, while Madagascar has contributed almost nothing to climate change, they are “paying the highest price”

In an effort to keep attention on the severity of the situation, WFP held a press conference last Friday with Lola Castro, Regional Director in Southern Africa who said in Madagascar “we are seeing the impacts of climate change at its worst.”

Madagascar is the “only country in the world” facing IPC-5 food insecurity without a conflict. “So, basically we have people on the verge of starvation and there is no conflict. There’s just climate change at its worst, affecting them badly.” 

IPC has become the global standard for acute food insecurity. According to IPC, “IPC-5 is the highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity scale, and is attributed when an area has at least 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people for every 10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease” Castro added a further 500,000 people are in IPC-4 Emergency category, “and the worst is yet to come.”

As of the last OCHA humanitarian update in March, about 4,000 people—including more than 1,000 children—have displaced to several districts, but Castro mentioned meet hundreds of rural migrants, “people we can basically call climate displaced”, including women and children, who have migrated to urban areas and wherever they can find assistance.

Theordore Mbainaissem, head of the WFP office in southern Madagascar, explains that “people are eating white clay with tamarind juice, cactus leaves, wild roots just to calm their hunger.” This drought is noted as being one of the worst droughts in over forty years, and is coming on the heels of several previous years of drought, pushing the Malagasy people to the brink. 

Women must often walk several miles to food distribution sites and children are dropping out of school to supplement their family’s income. The elderly suffer from higher rates of starvation. 

Where Climate Change Meets Sustainable Development

In Madagascar, 80% of the population live in rural areas, depending heavily on agriculture for their livelihood. In recent years, many streams and rivers used for irrigation have dried up. Much of the forests of Madagascar have been cleared for rice cultivation, a mainstay crop but one that is heavily water-intensive. In many parts, this deforestation has led to desertification. 

In addition, rising global land and ocean temperatures have increased cyclone intensity. Madagascar is the most vulnerable country in Africa to cyclones, as it is an island in the direct path of eastern-bound storms from the Indian Ocean.  

In recent months, many Malagasy have begun to migrate from rural areas to cities in order to find food and work. With limited resources to assist integration, Malagasy will continue to face food insecurity and high rates of poverty. The effects of climate change are only expected to get worse, targeting the most vulnerable populations and straining dwindling resources.

When Climate Change Drives Forced Migration from Rural to Urban, & Beyond

Last week, at a convening on climate displacement hosted by 350.org, the International Refugee Assistance Project and ACLU Southern California, Climate Refugees presented work conducted in the African Sahel’s Lake Chad Basin, on the impacts of rural to urban migration, driven in part by climate change and climate shocks. We were joined by colleagues from the Mayors Migration Council (MMC), who shared that cities serve as “the frontlines of both migration and the climate crisis,” where local leaders are stepping up in the face of State responses to climate migration as security challenges. 

However, they rightly warn that moving to cities comes with high risks, where migrants and displaced people usually settle in informal settlements and marginalized neighborhoods, becoming vulnerable to social and public service gaps, labor exploitation, trafficking and other human rights violations. 

In addition, with only five percent of global climate finance allocated to climate adaptation, cities are generally more vulnerable to climate hazards, “meaning that new arrivals may end up swapping one set of climate risks for another,” as MMC warns.

Mindful of COP26 negotiations world leaders will take up in November this year, James Bays from Al Jazeera asked Lola Castro at last Friday’s WFP press conference “what would you say to world leaders after what you have seen in Madagascar?” 

Castro did not hold back and offered concrete suggestions:

“These people have contributed nothing to climate change, and they take the whole burden of climate changes. So I think for the leaders, can we try to mitigate now this problem, to solve this immediate problem because this is hunger and starvation, but at the same time, can we invest much more in trying to invest long term support for these people to have adequate support, sources of water for these people to be able to change behavior and not simply plant maize, but also sorghum, cassava and millet that will be able to be more drought resistant, so that will require a big investment for the dunes to be stabilized so they don’t blow on the harvest. 

“All that could be done through resilience activities and projects,” she added. “So they just need to invest in these places, but I hope, in fact, we are not too late.” 

Castro added that Southern Africa has been hugely impacted by climate change. In 2019 we saw the sudden onset impacts of cyclones in Comoros, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and now we’re seeing the slow onset effects of huge droughts that are permanent and making life for people impossible in some areas.

Investment is what is needed now to work with local communities towards solutions, Castro added, and if not, the displacement will not be only to urban areas, “they will go somewhere else at the end of the day.” 

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