Latest news with #MarkSvoboda
The Guardian
18 hours ago
- Climate
- The Guardian
Droughts worldwide pushing tens of millions towards starvation, says report
Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown. More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas, ensuing widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is now edging towards starvation, and at least a million people have been displaced. The situation has been years in the making. One-sixth of the population of southern Africa needed food aid last August. In Zimbabwe, last year's corn crop was down 70% year on year, and 9,000 cattle died. These examples are just the beginning of a worldwide catastrophe that is gathering pace, according to a report on drought published on Wednesday. In regions across the world, drought and water mismanagement are leading to shortages that are hitting food supplies, energy and public health. Mark Svoboda, the founding director of the US National Drought Mitigation Center (NMDC), and co-author of the report, said: 'This is not a dry spell. This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen.' The report, published by the NMDC, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the International Drought Resilience Alliance, examined in detail more than a dozen countries in four main regions: Africa, south-east Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean. Taking information from governments, scientific institutions and local sources, the authors were able to build a picture of human suffering and economic devastation. In Latin America, drought led to a severe drop in water levels in the Panama canal, grounding shipping and drastically reducing trade, and increasing costs. Traffic dropped by more than a third between October 2023 and January 2024. By early 2024, Morocco had experienced six consecutive years of drought, leading to a 57% water deficit. In Spain, a 50% fall in olive production, driven by a lack of rainfall, has caused olive oil prices to double, while in Turkey land degradation has left 88% of the country at risk of desertification, and demands from agriculture have emptied aquifers. Dangerous sinkholes have opened up as a result of overextraction. Svoboda said: 'The Mediterranean countries represent canaries in the coalmine for all modern economies. The struggles experienced by Spain, Morocco and Turkey to secure water, food and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming. No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent.' El Niño weather conditions in the past two years exacerbated the underlying warming trend of the climate, the authors found. 'High temperatures and a lack of precipitation had widespread ramifications in 2023 and 2024, such as water supply shortages, low food supplies and power rationing,' they wrote. The impacts of drought stretch far beyond the borders of stricken countries. The report warned that drought had disrupted the production and supply chains of key crops such as rice, coffee and sugar. In 2023-2024, dry conditions in Thailand and India led to shortages that increased the price of sugar by 9% in the US. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Wednesday's report follows a series of recent warnings on the world's water crisis. Fresh water is in sharper demand than ever, but a combination of global heating, which is changing rainfall patterns to make dry areas drier and in others replacing steady rain with more extreme cloudbursts, and the widespread mismanagement and pollution of water resources have left the world on the brink. Demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% by the end of this decade, and more than half of the world's food production will be at risk of failure in the next 25 years, according to the biggest report yet on the state of the world's water resources, published last autumn. Separately, a report in March highlighted the 'unprecedented' loss of glacier ice, which is threatening the food and water supply of 2 billion people around the world. Last month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said the global land area affected by drought had doubled in the last 120 years, and the cost of droughts was also rising sharply. An average drought in 2035 is projected to cost at least 35% more than it would today. Ibrahim Thiaw, the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the global treaty signed in 1992 meant to avoid the worst impacts of drought, said the problem had received too little attention. 'Drought is a silent killer. It creeps in, drains resources and devastates lives in slow motion,' he said. 'Its scars run deep.' He added: 'Drought is no longer a distant threat. It is here, escalating, and demands urgent global cooperation. When energy, food and water all go at once, societies start to unravel. That's the new normal we need to be ready for.'
BBC News
a day ago
- Climate
- BBC News
Recent droughts are 'slow-moving global catastrophe'
From Somalia to mainland Europe, the past two years have seen some of the most ravaging droughts in recorded history, made worse by climate change, according to a UN-backed drought as a "silent killer" which "creeps in, drains resources, and devastates lives in slow motion" the report said it had exacerbated issues like poverty and ecosystem report highlighted impacts in Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America and Southeast Asia, including an estimated 4.4 million people in Somalia facing crisis-level food insecurity at the beginning of this recommends governments prepare for a "new normal" with measures including stronger early warning systems. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen," said co-author Dr Mark Svoboda, founding director of the US National Drought Mitigation Center."This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on."The Drought Hotspots Around the World report identifies the most severely impacted regions from 2023 to this time, the warming effects of climate change were made worse by an El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon that affects global weather El Niño happens when surface waters in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean become unusually often leads to drier conditions in regions such as southern Africa, parts of south-east Asia, northern South America, and south-east from humans, for example the use of irrigation in agriculture, has also put a strain on water resources. Drought-linked hunger By January 2023, the worst drought in 70 years had hit the Horn of Africa, coming from years of failed rainy seasons in Kenya, Ethiopia, and followed the deaths of an estimated 43,000 people in Somalia in 2022 from drought-linked hunger. African wildlife was also affected, with hippos in Botswana stranded in dry riverbeds, and elephants culled in Zimbabwe and Namibia to feed hungry communities and prevent overgrazing. The report highlights how drought hits the world's most vulnerable people including women hardest, with often far-reaching impacts on child marriages more than doubled in four regions of Eastern Africa hit hardest by drought, as families scrambled to secure dowries to survive, it noted."The coping mechanisms we saw during this drought grew increasingly desperate," said lead author Paula Guastello. "Girls pulled from school and forced into marriage, hospitals going dark, and families digging holes in dry riverbeds just to find contaminated water - these are signs of severe crisis."While low- to middle-income countries bore the brunt of the devastation, none could afford to be complacent, the report says, noting how two years of drought and record heat cut Spain's olive crop in the Amazon basin, record low water levels killed fish and put endangered dolphins more at risk as well as hitting drinking water supplies for hundreds of thousands of drought even had an effect on world trade - between October 2023 and January 2024, water levels fell so much in the Panama Canal that daily ship transits dropped from 38 to 24. "Drought is not just a weather event – it can be a social, economic, and environmental emergency," said report co-author Dr Kelly Helm Smith. "The question is not whether this will happen again, but whether we will be better prepared next time." Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC's Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Climate
- The Guardian
Droughts worldwide pushing tens of millions towards starvation, says report
Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown. More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas, ensuing widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is now edging towards starvation, and at least a million people have been displaced. The situation has been years in the making. One-sixth of the population of southern Africa needed food aid last August. In Zimbabwe, last year's corn crop was down 70% year on year, and 9,000 cattle died. These examples are just the beginning of a worldwide catastrophe that is gathering pace, according to a report on drought published on Wednesday. In regions across the world, drought and water mismanagement are leading to shortages that are hitting food supplies, energy and public health. Mark Svoboda, the founding director of the US National Drought Mitigation Center (NMDC), and co-author of the report, said: 'This is not a dry spell. This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen.' The report, published by the NMDC, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the International Drought Resilience Alliance, examined in detail more than a dozen countries in four main regions: Africa, south-east Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean. Taking information from governments, scientific institutions and local sources, the authors were able to build a picture of human suffering and economic devastation. In Latin America, drought led to a severe drop in water levels in the Panama canal, grounding shipping and drastically reducing trade, and increasing costs. Traffic dropped by more than a third between October 2023 and January 2024. By early 2024, Morocco had experienced six consecutive years of drought, leading to a 57% water deficit. In Spain, a 50% fall in olive production, driven by a lack of rainfall, has caused olive oil prices to double, while in Turkey land degradation has left 88% of the country at risk of desertification, and demands from agriculture have emptied aquifers. Dangerous sinkholes have opened up as a result of overextraction. Svoboda said: 'The Mediterranean countries represent canaries in the coalmine for all modern economies. The struggles experienced by Spain, Morocco and Turkey to secure water, food and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming. No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent.' El Niño weather conditions in the past two years exacerbated the underlying warming trend of the climate, the authors found. 'High temperatures and a lack of precipitation had widespread ramifications in 2023 and 2024, such as water supply shortages, low food supplies and power rationing,' they wrote. The impacts of drought stretch far beyond the borders of stricken countries. The report warned that drought had disrupted the production and supply chains of key crops such as rice, coffee and sugar. In 2023-2024, dry conditions in Thailand and India led to shortages that increased the price of sugar by 9% in the US. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Wednesday's report follows a series of recent warnings on the world's water crisis. Fresh water is in sharper demand than ever, but a combination of global heating, which is changing rainfall patterns to make dry areas drier and in others replacing steady rain with more extreme cloudbursts, and the widespread mismanagement and pollution of water resources have left the world on the brink. Demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% by the end of this decade, and more than half of the world's food production will be at risk of failure in the next 25 years, according to the biggest report yet on the state of the world's water resources, published last autumn. Separately, a report in March highlighted the 'unprecedented' loss of glacier ice, which is threatening the food and water supply of 2 billion people around the world. Last month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said the global land area affected by drought had doubled in the last 120 years, and the cost of droughts was also rising sharply. An average drought in 2035 is projected to cost at least 35% more than it would today. Ibrahim Thiaw, the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the global treaty signed in 1992 meant to avoid the worst impacts of drought, said the problem had received too little attention. 'Drought is a silent killer. It creeps in, drains resources and devastates lives in slow motion,' he said. 'Its scars run deep.' He added: 'Drought is no longer a distant threat. It is here, escalating, and demands urgent global cooperation. When energy, food and water all go at once, societies start to unravel. That's the new normal we need to be ready for.'
