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As
Migrações em massa apenas começaram … Agora, uma mistura de
migrantes económicos e refugiados de guerra … No futuro, as
migrações em massa provocadas pelas alterações climáticas e
aquecimento global.
OVOODOCORVO
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Record
El Niño set to cause hunger for 10 million poorest, Oxfam warns
Charity
says countries already facing a ‘major emergency’ include
Ethiopia, where 4.5 million people need food aid because of scarcity
of rain this year
Oliver
Milman
Thursday
1 October 2015 01.00 BST
At least 10 million
of the world’s poorest people are set to go hungry this year
because of failing crops caused by one of the strongest El Niño
climatic events on record, Oxfam has warned.
The charity said
several countries were already facing a “major emergency”, such
as Ethiopia, where 4.5 million are in need of food aid because of a
prolonged scarcity of rain this year.
Floods, followed by
drought, have slashed Malawi’s maize production by more than a
quarter, farmers in central America have suffered from two years of
drought and El Niño conditions have already reduced the Asian
monsoon over India, potentially triggering a wider drought across the
east of the continent.
Indonesia’s
government has declared drought in 34 of the country’s provinces
because of El Niño, while 2 million people in Papua New Guinea have
been affected by crops shrivelling in heat in some parts of the
country and severe frosts in its highlands.
El Niño is a
periodic climatic phenomenon where waters of the eastern tropical
Pacific warm, triggering a range of potential consequences for global
weather. While parts of South America are typically doused in heavy
rainfall, warmer, drought-like conditions are experienced in
Australia, south-east Asia and southern Africa.
The UK Met Office
has predicted this year’s El Niño could be the strongest on record
since 1950, warning that famine could grip west Africa.
An Oxfam report,
called Entering Uncharted Waters, states the El Niño will rival that
of 1998, which caused droughts, floods and forest fires that resulted
in 2,000 deaths and caused about $33bn in property damage.
The report warns
“major humanitarian emergencies” were possible without proper
intervention, pointing out that failure to respond to drought has
proved disastrous in recent years, such as 2011 when rains failed in
the Horn of Africa and more than 260,000 people died.
Dr Helen Szoke, the
chief executive of Oxfam Australia, said the charity had already
started work with communities, including in Papua New Guinea, in an
attempt to stave off crop failures.
“We are working
with farmers in PNG to plant drought-resistant seeds and to help them
with the collection of rainwater,” she said. “Vanuatu is another
country where we are doing that work although, cruelly, they’ve
already had a head start due to the repairing of water systems due to
cyclone Pam.
“Our staff in
Zimbabwe and Malawi, for example, are expressing concern about the
preparedness of the seasonal crop. People who rely on subsistence
farming aren’t necessarily prepared for frosts or drought, which is
when food security becomes an issue.
“The poorer
countries don’t have the systems in place and are much more
vulnerable. Potentially millions of people will be affected by a lack
of access to water and if food prices go up, the poor will miss out
again.”
El Niño-like
conditions were expected last year but failed to materialise. The El
Niño now brewing in the Pacific Ocean is expected to end in January
but may, in the long term, become more frequent. Research published
in Nature Climate Change last year predicted El Niño frequency could
double because of climate change fuelled by the release of greenhouse
gases.
Last year was the
warmest year globally on record, with 2015 and 2016 potentially set
to cause this record to topple again.
Szoke said the
international community needed to ensure El Niño conditions weren’t
replicated every year by changes to rainfall, extreme heat and
cyclones caused by climate change.
“We can’t keep
just patching up communities,” she said. “We need a long-term
vision for climate change. We need to reduce emissions, move away
from old technologies and address this issue. We have an opportunity
to do that in Paris [at UN climate talks] later this year.”
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