A field of failed corn crops at a farm in
Glendale, Zimbabwe on March 11, 2024. A swath of southern Africa about the size
of France suffered the driest February in decades. Cynthia R
Matonhodze/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Johannesburg,
South Africa (CNN) — More than 24 million people in southern Africa face
hunger, malnutrition and water scarcity due to drought and floods, an aid group
has warned, as experts say the situation risks spiraling into an “unimaginable
humanitarian situation.”
The warning from
Oxfam on Wednesday came as Zimbabwe joined other southern African nations in
declaring its drought a national disaster, following earlier declarations by
Zambia and Malawi.
Zimbabwean
President Emmerson Mnangagwa said more than 2.7 million people in the country
will go hungry this year and more than $2 billion in aid is required for the
country’s national response, Reuters reported.
The country’s top
priority “is securing food for all Zimbabweans,” the president told journalists
at the state house in Harare. “No Zimbabwean must succumb to, or die from,
hunger.”
The drought has
been fueled by El Ni?o, a natural climate pattern originating in the Pacific
Ocean along the equator, which tends to bring high temperatures and low
rainfall to this part of Africa. When it does rain, dried-out ground is unable
to absorb the moisture, making flooding more likely.
El Ni?o is
exacerbating the impacts of the climate crisis, caused primarily by burning
fossil fuels, which is driving more frequent and severe weather — including
drought and floods — across southern Africa, a region Oxfam describes as a
“climate disaster hotspot.”
As southern Africa
enters its traditional dry season this month, vast parts of the region —
including Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi,
Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe — have already been grappling with a
prolonged dry spell.
From late January
to February, rainfall levels were the lowest in at least 40 years, a recent
report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs revealed.
Central parts of
the region experienced the driest February in more than 100 years, according to
a report by the United States Agency for International Development’s Famine
Early Warning Systems Network.
In Zambia, Malawi
and Central Mozambique, extreme drought has damaged more than 2 million
hectares of crops, Oxfam said.
Zambia declared
its drought a disaster on February 29.
Malawi’s president
declared a state of disaster across the majority of the country on March 23.
It’s the fourth consecutive year the country has been forced to do this due to
the impact of extreme weather conditions. The World Food Programme said this
week the El Ni?o impact is “exacerbating the devastating effects of the climate
crisis in Malawi.”
Southern Africa is
particularly vulnerable to climate change despite being responsible for only a
tiny portion of global planet-heating pollution.
In Mozambique — a
country accounting for only 0.2% of global emissions — 3 million people face
hunger, according to Oxfam. The country’s capital, Maputo, experienced
devastating floods in March, after Tropical Storm Filipo hit followed a few
weeks later by further intense rainfall.
“It is so deeply unjust that climate change impacts are hammering
Mozambique over and over again. One of the poorest countries in the world is
carrying the costs of the climate crisis it has done little to cause and is
being pushed deeper into debt and spiralling poverty,” Teresa Anderson,
ActionAid’s International Climate Justice Lead, said last week following the
flooding.
“Wealthy polluting countries need to own up to their responsibility
for the damage they are doing through climate change and be willing to provide
climate finance so that vulnerable communities can cope with the climate
disasters that are being unleashed,” she added.
Oxfam’s southern
Africa program director, Machinda Marongwe, said the region is “in crisis” and
called on donors to “immediately release resources” to prevent the spiral into
an “unimaginable humanitarian situation.”
“With all these countries facing multiple crises simultaneously, the
urgency cannot be overstated,” Marongwe said.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/04/climate/southern-africa-hunger-drought-floods-climate-intl/index.html