A climate in crisis
Article published on oxfam website on 04/27/2017. A report by Tracy Carty
How climate change is making drought and humanitarian disaster worse in East Africa.
Nearly eleven million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia are dangerously hungry and in need of humanitarian assistance. The worst drought-affected areas in Somalia are on the brink of famine.
There is growing scientific analysis suggesting that the impacts of current and recent droughts in East Africa are likely to have been aggravated by climate change. Climate change is not a distant, future threat. As this briefing explains, it is helping fuel this emerging catastrophe in which poverty, chronic malnutrition, weak governance, conflict, drought and climate change have combined to create a perfect storm.
Governments across the region and around the world need to take responsibility and provide humanitarian assistance to save lives now. Humanitarian aid needs to be coupled with longer term support to promote the resilience of pastoralists and smallholder food producers. Without global efforts to reduce emissions and to help the world’s poorest people cope with the effects of climate change, this crisis will continue to repeat itself.
Related Articles
What’s Driving the Global Refugee Crisis?
09/15/2016. A record 65 million people have been displaced from their homes, mostly by war. Half are children.
INTERVIEW: Global humanitarian needs have never been higher, says UN official
10/02/2017. The number of those needing humanitarian assistance is at its highest since the end of the Second World War – some 145 million people.
“Migrants and Refugees” conference in Rome, Pope Francis’ message and the Order of Malta’s action
05/29/2018. The key theme of the conference was the Italian Relief Corps’ ten years of medical assistance at sea, whose doctors and nurses were the first to embark on the vessels of the Italian authorities in the Mediterranean.
