Madagascar on the brink of experiencing the world’s first climate change-induced famine

Climatologists are warning the current extreme food shortage in southern Madagascar, caused by four years of no rain and severe drought, has driven the country to the brink of the world’s first famine driven almost entirely by the climate crisis.

The United Nations estimates that 30,000 people in the south of the country are facing “level five” food insecurity, defined as a “catastrophe or famine” according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

Madagascar’s regular pre-harvest “lean season,” also known as the “hunger season,” is looming, Issa Sanogo, the UN resident coordinator on the Indian Ocean island nation said on Saturday.

People may be left “without the means to eat, without money to pay for health services, or to send their children to school, to get clean water, and even to get seeds to plant for the next agricultural season,” he said.

Insufficient rains since 2019 in the Grand Sud or the Big South of Madagascar have caused the most severe drought since 1981. These conditions have devastated families, leaving them to scavenge for insects and edible roots and leaves to survive.

“These are famine-like conditions and they’re being driven by climate, not conflict,” said the UN World Food Programme’s Shelley Thakral, reports The BBC.

“This is unprecedented. These people have done nothing to contribute to climate change. They don’t burn fossil fuels… and yet they are bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Ms. Thakral.

In the remote village of Fandiova, in the Amboasary district, families recently showed a visiting WFP team the locusts that they were eating.

“I clean the insects as best I can but there’s almost no water,” said Tamaria, a mother of four, who goes by one name.

“My children and I have been eating this every day now for eight months because we have nothing else to eat and no rain to allow us to harvest what we have sown,” she added.

“Today we have absolutely nothing to eat except cactus leaves,” said Bole, a mother of three, sitting on the dry earth. Her husband recently died from hunger, as did a neighbor, leaving her with two extra children to feed.

“What can I say? Our life is all about looking for cactus leaves, again and again, to survive.”

Madagascar and the climate crisis

Madagascar is an island country in the Indian Ocean. At 592,800 square kilometers (228,900 sq mi) Madagascar is the world’s second-largest island country after Indonesia.

The country has the distinction of being a biodiversity hotspot, with over 90 percent of its plants and wildlife found nowhere else on the planet. This uniqueness has led some ecologists to refer to Madagascar as the “eighth continent.”

And various ecosystems abound, from the Madagascar Lowlands to its sub-humid rain forests, mangroves, woodlands, and its arid desert regions in the south. But a large part of all this diversity has been destroyed at the hands of man.

Since the arrival of humans around 2,350 years ago, Madagascar has lost more than 90 percent of its original forest. After being introduced 1,000 years ago, cattle herds have contributed to the loss of forests, as well as the continued reliance on charcoal as a fuel for cooking.

And of course, the population of the country has grown. In 2018, the population of Madagascar was estimated at 26 million, up from 2.2 million in 1900. Today, about 69 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line threshold of one dollar per day.

Madagascar was identified in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a country that was expected to face an increase in agricultural and ecological drought if the world failed to rapidly work to eliminate fossil fuel extraction and reduce the heating of the planet.

Dr. Rondro Barimalala, a scientist from Madagascar who works at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, believes the current crisis in Madagascar is clearly linked to climate change.

“With the latest IPCC report, we saw that Madagascar has observed an increase in aridity. And that is expected to increase if climate change continues,” Barimalala told the BBC. “In many ways, this can be seen as a very powerful argument for people to change their ways.”

So it seems that adding the climate crisis to Madagascar’s already existing problems has created a very difficult situation, forcing the world to figure out a way to help people confronted with the long list of things mankind has done in destroying our planet.