1.14 million people in Madagascar are facing food insecurity due to the worst famine in decades. Conflicts and disease have nothing to do with it — climate change is to blame. 1.14 million people in Madagascar are facing food insecurity due to the worst famine in decades. Conflicts and disease have nothing to do with it — climate change is to blame.
Madagascar is experiencing the worst famine in decades. For five years now, rainfall — especially in the south of the island — has been scarce, and this has brought local agriculture to its knees. Large swathes of territory are undergoing a process of desertification as a result of the drought. 1.14 million people are living in a state of food insecurity, a figure that could double before the end of 2021. The World Food Programme (WFP) is in no doubt: the cause of this situation lies exclusively in climate change.
Madagascar, an island off the African continent in the Indian Ocean, is a country on its knees — and it is not to blame. The southern part of the island is experiencing a period of drought that has now lasted five years and is causing the worst famine since 1981. Five of the last six rainy seasons have recorded precipitation levels well below average; there are areas where it has effectively not rained for three years. At the same time, the territory is increasingly affected by sandstorms that are creating arid, dry soil unfit for cultivation. The result is that the local population can no longer feed itself, as the climate no longer allows it to.
There are 1.14 million people in a state of food insecurity, while 400,000 are experiencing an outright famine situation. The AFP news agency has counted at least 340 deaths from hunger on the island in recent months. When village fields can no longer produce crops due to climatic conditions, people resort to offering everything they have at local markets just to gain access to a piece of meat. Many have even started feeding themselves on roots and other wild forest products, going so far as to eat locusts — paradoxically one of the additional causes of the ongoing agricultural devastation, given the swarms of recent years.
A situation that seems set to worsen, as forecasts for the upcoming growing season hold little promise. As the World Food Programme (WFP) has pointed out, by autumn the number of people without food could double.
What is happening in Madagascar has a single cause: climate change. According to the WFP, the crisis on the African island is the first that has little or nothing to do with conflicts and disease; its cause lies exclusively in global warming. And the paradox is that those suffering its effects bear no responsibility for the problem: the population of the south of the island rarely uses cars, electricity is scarce and, in general, the way of life is not environmentally intrusive. Yet today it is precisely these people who are bearing the consequences of decisions and mistakes made far away.
International organisations are now trying to raise 78.6 million dollars, the sum deemed necessary to provide food for the months ahead to those in Madagascar who have been left without. But the resources needed are far greater. The entire system needs to change completely, with crops better suited to the new arid climate that characterises an island that is nominally tropical, and with livestock breeds capable of surviving and performing at their best in this context. More broadly, Madagascar's crisis is only "the tip of the iceberg", to quote Lola Castro, WFP director for southern Africa.
While some areas such as Ethiopia's Tigray region are already caught in the grip of famines caused by the ongoing armed conflict, climate-driven food crises could soon spread like a virus to many countries across the continent, such as Angola, Mozambique or, further down the line, the Sahel region. The famine currently unfolding in southern Madagascar is the worst in decades, but it is only a preview of what we will see elsewhere in the years to come.
