{"id":130,"date":"2021-09-03T10:06:18","date_gmt":"2021-09-03T10:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/?p=130"},"modified":"2021-09-03T10:06:19","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T10:06:19","slug":"the-worlds-first-climate-change-induced-famine-in-madagascar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/2021\/09\/03\/the-worlds-first-climate-change-induced-famine-in-madagascar\/","title":{"rendered":"The world’s first climate change-induced famine in Madagascar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Grand Sud region of Madagascar, in the south of the country,\u00a0is currently experiencing what is increasingly being considered the modern world’s first climate change-induced famine.\u00a0The worst droughts in 40 years have put\u00a0more than one million\u00a0people at risk of malnourishment.\u00a0These droughts are leading to increased desertification,\u00a0and when rains do come,\u00a0locust\u00a0swarms<\/a>\u00a0often arrive soon after to devour any crops that have grown.\u00a0This has led to a situation\u00a0where food\u00a0shortages\u00a0are\u00a0threatening\u00a0a catastrophic humanitarian disaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Families are digging for\u00a0roots and\u00a0tearing chunks off\u00a0cacti in a desperate attempt to sustain themselves.\u00a0Some people have been driven to eating scraps of leather, boiled and salted.\u00a0Al Jazeera<\/a>, reporting from the\u00a0Anosy\u00a0region\u00a0of\u00a0the country,\u00a0heard from one woman who pleaded for help:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook at my child, please help us!\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The report described the mother hurriedly undressing the young girl, revealing an emaciated torso, with ribs showing clearly underneath her skin.\u00a0Further along the road, the reporters came upon a family standing vigil over the body of their father, who had died four days previous. A lack of food meant they were unable to bury the man in the dignified traditional way, with a good meal as a sendoff. Aid workers have described the hamlet where the family live as one many \u2018zombie\u00a0villages\u2019, areas where no hope of salvation exists, and the small populations seem to have to have no choice but to wait for death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These horrific experiences embody a new reality, brought upon by devastating climate change. The\u00a0Grand Sud\u00a0region\u00a0has experienced four consecutive years with insufficient rain to allow for the cultivation of food crops.\u00a0Man-made climate change is widely accepted as the cause of this deviation from normal patterns of precipitation.\u00a0Overwhelming\u00a0sandstorms,\u00a0meanwhile, are suffocating the lands creating a barren inhospitable region.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A child attempts to plough their plantation with cattle\u00a0<\/em>File: Viviane Rakotoarivony\/UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs via Reuters]\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Among those at risk, young children are particularly vulnerable, being so reliant on their parents or guardians for support. This is made worse by the high birth rates, and levels of teen pregnancy in the region. Save the Children<\/a>, an organization working on the ground in Madagascar, have highlighted the\u00a0heightened risk of abuse, and violence towards children due to families facing increased pressures brought about by the famine.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madagascar\u2019s disaster, like so many other climate change-induced catastrophes, is caused by the increases in human-made\u00a0greenhouse\u00a0gas emissions over the past century.\u00a0The country is responsible for just 0.01%<\/a> of the planet\u2019s carbon dioxide emissions annually.\u00a0Australia, a country with a\u00a0similar sized population, contributes roughly 1.16%,\u00a0a figure more than one hundred times higher.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 60% of the population in the Grand Sud are subsistence farmers, who have seen their only source of food lost to these climactic alterations. These are people who have done nothing to contribute towards the worsening crisis, yet they are the ones who suffer the most. The developed world has a responsibility to provide requisite aid and support in the immediate term, and work towards severely reducing their collective carbon dioxide emissions if climate justice is to be delivered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famines, like the one unfolding in Madagascar currently, are only going to become more commonplace. As more of the planet\u2019s landscapes become inhospitable to human life, forced migration will become more commonplace, and we need to be there to support these people when the time comes. Before resigning vulnerable populations to migration, and refugee status however, adaptive and mitigative action needs to be taken to ensure as many people as possible can continue to live and thrive in their homelands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Grand Sud region of Madagascar, in the south of the country,\u00a0is currently experiencing what is increasingly being considered the modern world’s first climate change-induced famine.\u00a0The worst droughts in 40 years have put\u00a0more than one million\u00a0people at risk of malnourishment.\u00a0These droughts are leading to increased desertification,\u00a0and when rains do come,\u00a0locust\u00a0swarms\u00a0often arrive soon after to devour … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The world’s first climate change-induced famine in Madagascar”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/daire-houlihan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}