Latest news with #FamineEarlyWarningSystem
Irish Examiner
07-05-2025
- Science
- Irish Examiner
Donald Trump's cuts to USAID expose world's hungriest to famine
The global Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) has gone offline, leaving some of the world's most vulnerable people unprotected, due to the Trump administration's huge cuts in federal agency funding. FEWS monitored 30 countries across Africa, Central America, the Caribbean and South Asia, collecting data on weather patterns, agricultural production, market prices and conflict trends, to predict food crises before they escalate into full-blown famine. It was part of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been largely dismantled by the President's flood of executive orders in his first 100 days. The disappearance of FEWS has left humanitarian relief organisations short of guidance on when, where and how to deploy aid. In 1984, the Reagan administration and the National Security Council were shocked by the images of Ethiopian children dying in a famine. It resulted in an estimated one million deaths, and President Ronald Reagan took a personal interest, followed by congressional leaders starting the process to set up FEWS. It proved its worth, for example, being credited with preventing another famine in Ethiopia in 2016. Now, researchers warn that Trump's funding cuts have greatly affected the world of agriculture, food, and famine. "The reality in science is changing almost by the day due to US government policies," according to a statement by Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, ranked No 1 in the world for agriculture and forestry. Amid requests from US scientists looking for new jobs, professors at Wageningen are worrying about the availability of data they use from US agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and of data from American satellites. Gert-Jan Nabuurs, professor of European Forests at Wageningen, said: It's frightening how fast things are moving. Entire groups in climate research are being wiped out. Their research is not consistent with the government's ideas, it's getting dictatorial. This is really going to lead to a brain drain in the US. Wageningen scientists noted that FEWS, and its analyses to predict famine, "went down overnight". Professor Guido van der Werf of the Department of Meteorology and Air Quality at Wageningen, said: "There is a lot going on. You notice that academic freedom is being restricted, and that is terrifying. Ignoring scientific information that does not fit into one's worldview is of all times, but because of this official policy, we are going back to the days of quackery." Professor of Meteorology and Air Quality at Wageningen, Jordi Vila, said: "Currently, NOAA is facing significant redundancies. Critical services are at risk due to reduced manpower. Think of the prediction of extreme weather, such as tornadoes. "Entire lines of research are being abruptly discontinued, hampering efforts to monitor climate change and our understanding. Rebuilding these research teams would require years of work". He warned of a particularly concerning setback, given the accelerating pace of climate change. Professor Nabuurs was concerned about the effect on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on which governments rely for scientific information to develop climate policies. He said: "The latest news is that the US has already withdrawn funding for one report." He said nothing will come of the upcoming climate summit in Brazil, COP30, without the US, one of the big emitters, now at odds with China, the other big emitter. Mistaken dismissals Along with scientists, thousands of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees have been fired. But an independent federal board ordered the USDA to temporarily reinstate close to 6,000 employees fired since February 13, finding reasonable grounds to believe the agency illegally fired probationary employees. In particular, the USDA said their Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and it had to rescind some dismissal letters to these workers. "We're looking to hear from federal government workers who have been laid off. If you're willing to talk with us, please email us," was the message to some fired employees. The error was one of many, as the mass firings of federal workers was carried out by tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which is heavily staffed by people without government experience. Others fired in error included nuclear safety employees. About 25% of employees in an office doing avian flu tests were fired and many of them must be re-hired for the Trump administration's $1 billion plan to stop bird flu spreading. This is a hot inflation-linked political issue for Trump, because egg prices rose to record levels, linked to the loss of 166 million birds in flu-infected flocks. There are also reports of dismissals causing partial shutdown of research facilities involved in the fight against bird flu, which has spread beyond poultry and into dairy herds in more than a dozen states. The Agricultural Research Service (ARS), which is the USDA's chief in-house research agency with more than 90 research units and laboratories spanning 42 states, had some 800 employees laid off, as food and agriculture were hit hard by the chaotic firings, or targeting for layoffs, of at least 121,000 workers in more than 30 federal agencies, in the three months since President Trump's second term began. Included was the systematic dismantling of USAID, the final blow of which was closing 21 USAID-funded Feed the Future Innovation Labs, tasked with specialised research on agricultural challenges that disrupt the global food supply. It is feared that agricultural research funding and staff cuts will cut off access for farmers in the USA to innovations that improve yields, resilience, and profitability. Read More Collapse of USAID leaves a gap in our huge fight against malaria
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - The Trump funding cuts will backfire if they are not stopped
As the U.S. Agency for International Development was fed into the 'wood chipper' this month, so was our ability to predict and prevent the worst effects of the next humanitarian crisis. One of the casualties of suspending funding for USAID programs and threatening to shut the agency down has been FEWS NET, the global Famine Early Warning System, which I helped create 40 years ago and initially directed. FEWS NET monitors 30 countries across Africa, Central America, the Caribbean and South Asia, collecting data on weather patterns, agricultural production, market prices and conflict trends in order to predict and guide responses to food crises before they escalate into full-blown famine. Known as 'the gold standard of famine-warning systems,' it has allowed governments and international organizations to save millions of lives by sharpening the focus and cutting the costs of emergency aid. FEWS Net forecasting also enabled the U.S. agriculture and shipping industries to send aid where and when it was needed most, helping alleviate global food insecurity and saving even more lives. But now, due to attacks on USAID, FEWS NET is offline. As a result, humanitarian relief organizations around the world (not just the U.S.) are flying blind, without important data to guide them on when, where and how to deploy aid. This may be a good time to recall where the original impetus for FEWS NET came from. Was it the brainchild of tax-and-spend liberals looking for a way to waste money on a woke agenda? No — it was the Reagan administration and the National Security Council, who understood the U.S. interest in preventing famines. In 1984, they and the country had been shocked by images of Ethiopian children dying in a famine that had gripped the Sahel countries. Reagan took a personal interest, creating a special $50 million presidential fund to allow more a flexible response to severe food emergencies and a task force to provide better forecasting of food shortages. Then congressional leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, charged USAID with developing a way to inform political decision-makers about the location and probability of potential famine events that could impact U.S. security. At the time, I was at Tulane University working on a computerized health information system for the country of Niger. USAID contacted me, and within a few months we built a rudimentary system to monitor food security conditions across the Sahel region using early portable computers, a ham radio, and a forerunner to the Internet called Mango Net. This was the 1.0 version of the system that grew into the global FEWS NET. As its first director, I pushed to expand the project's scope to incorporate infectious disease and other data, so the system could also provide early warning for preventable crises like global pandemics, and to assess progress on other key issues, such as climate change adaptation, all of which could make aid more efficient. The great irony of shutting down FEWS NET is that it goes against the Trump administration's stated rationale of slashing bureaucracy and ceasing to waste money on ineffective programs that aren't in U.S. interests. I have long been a vocal critic of USAID's overly bureaucratized management and lack of sensible monitoring and impact evaluation. Critics who complained USAID programs were often managed by inexperienced personnel stuck in their silos re-inventing the wheel aren't wrong. I was one of them. But that's no argument for shutting the agency down. On the contrary, it's an argument for working it harder and smarter — doing the monitoring and evaluation, busting the silos, increasing the efficiency, and setting performance indicators for USAID programs in terms of achieving U.S. objectives. If the goal is to make federal spending efficient and serve U.S. national interests, then FEWS NET shouldn't be dismantled; it should be expanded. We need a data-driven approach to deploy limited resources effectively and prevent famine and disease before they spread. Data-driven early warning systems like FEWS NET enable aid providers to head off famines by giving them time to stockpile food. For example, FEWS NET is credited with preventing famine in Ethiopia in 2016, thereby also heading off the downstream economic and security losses that famines incur. And it costs a tiny fraction of what it would cost to respond to a full-blown famine. Responding to humanitarian crises ineffectively, with too little, too late — or failing to respond at all — is self-defeating and will hurt the U.S. It is profoundly in our interest to prevent famine and reduce food insecurity worldwide. Climate change, supply chain disruptions, pandemics and conflicts are multipliers that increasingly intensify food crises. Hunger and famine make people desperate, drive migration and often fuel terrorism. If we want to further U.S. goals like fighting terrorism and easing growing migration pressures, while making the most efficient use of our resources, we not only need to reinstate data-driven tools like FEWS NET, we need to upgrade them. Modern monitoring systems can incorporate AI advances and new analytical thinking, and measure progress on various aspects of sustainable development. You can't manage what you can't measure. By measuring and managing humanitarian crisis risk with modern data-driven tools, we can achieve the kind of efficiency the Trump administration wants and serve our national interests while helping humanity. Dr. William E. Bertrand is the Emeritus Wisner Professor of Public Health at Tulane University, known for his work in technology-driven international development and environmental and institutional sustainability. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
24-02-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
The Trump funding cuts will backfire if they are not stopped
As the U.S. Agency for International Development was fed into the ' wood chipper ' this month, so was our ability to predict and prevent the worst effects of the next humanitarian crisis. One of the casualties of suspending funding for USAID programs and threatening to shut the agency down has been FEWS NET, the global Famine Early Warning System, which I helped create 40 years ago and initially directed. FEWS NET monitors 30 countries across Africa, Central America, the Caribbean and South Asia, collecting data on weather patterns, agricultural production, market prices and conflict trends in order to predict and guide responses to food crises before they escalate into full-blown famine. Known as ' the gold standard of famine-warning systems,' it has allowed governments and international organizations to save millions of lives by sharpening the focus and cutting the costs of emergency aid. FEWS Net forecasting also enabled the U.S. agriculture and shipping industries to send aid where and when it was needed most, helping alleviate global food insecurity and saving even more lives. But now, due to attacks on USAID, FEWS NET is offline. As a result, humanitarian relief organizations around the world (not just the U.S.) are flying blind, without important data to guide them on when, where and how to deploy aid. This may be a good time to recall where the original impetus for FEWS NET came from. Was it the brainchild of tax-and-spend liberals looking for a way to waste money on a woke agenda? No — it was the Reagan administration and the National Security Council, who understood the U.S. interest in preventing famines. In 1984, they and the country had been shocked by images of Ethiopian children dying in a famine that had gripped the Sahel countries. Reagan took a personal interest, creating a special $50 million presidential fund to allow more a flexible response to severe food emergencies and a task force to provide better forecasting of food shortages. Then congressional leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, charged USAID with developing a way to inform political decision-makers about the location and probability of potential famine events that could impact U.S. security. At the time, I was at Tulane University working on a computerized health information system for the country of Niger. USAID contacted me, and within a few months we built a rudimentary system to monitor food security conditions across the Sahel region using early portable computers, a ham radio, and a forerunner to the Internet called Mango Net. This was the 1.0 version of the system that grew into the global FEWS NET. As its first director, I pushed to expand the project's scope to incorporate infectious disease and other data, so the system could also provide early warning for preventable crises like global pandemics, and to assess progress on other key issues, such as climate change adaptation, all of which could make aid more efficient. The great irony of shutting down FEWS NET is that it goes against the Trump administration's stated rationale of slashing bureaucracy and ceasing to waste money on ineffective programs that aren't in U.S. interests. I have long been a vocal critic of USAID's overly bureaucratized management and lack of sensible monitoring and impact evaluation. Critics who complained USAID programs were often managed by inexperienced personnel stuck in their silos re-inventing the wheel aren't wrong. I was one of them. But that's no argument for shutting the agency down. On the contrary, it's an argument for working it harder and smarter — doing the monitoring and evaluation, busting the silos, increasing the efficiency, and setting performance indicators for USAID programs in terms of achieving U.S. objectives. If the goal is to make federal spending efficient and serve U.S. national interests, then FEWS NET shouldn't be dismantled; it should be expanded. We need a data-driven approach to deploy limited resources effectively and prevent famine and disease before they spread. Data-driven early warning systems like FEWS NET enable aid providers to head off famines by giving them time to stockpile food. For example, FEWS NET is credited with preventing famine in Ethiopia in 2016, thereby also heading off the downstream economic and security losses that famines incur. And it costs a tiny fraction of what it would cost to respond to a full-blown famine. Responding to humanitarian crises ineffectively, with too little, too late — or failing to respond at all — is self-defeating and will hurt the U.S. It is profoundly in our interest to prevent famine and reduce food insecurity worldwide. Climate change, supply chain disruptions, pandemics and conflicts are multipliers that increasingly intensify food crises. Hunger and famine make people desperate, drive migration and often fuel terrorism. If we want to further U.S. goals like fighting terrorism and easing growing migration pressures, while making the most efficient use of our resources, we not only need to reinstate data-driven tools like FEWS NET, we need to upgrade them. Modern monitoring systems can incorporate AI advances and new analytical thinking, and measure progress on various aspects of sustainable development. You can't manage what you can't measure. By measuring and managing humanitarian crisis risk with modern data-driven tools, we can achieve the kind of efficiency the Trump administration wants and serve our national interests while helping humanity. Dr. William E. Bertrand is the Emeritus Wisner Professor of Public Health at Tulane University, known for his work in technology-driven international development and environmental and institutional sustainability.
