Rising heat making it ‘too hot to survive’
AN IRISH aid worker living in Malawi said climate change is posing an “existential threat” that could leave parts of the country uninhabitable if temperatures keep rising.
Conor Kelly, from Clane, Co Kildare, has lived in the landlocked country in the south-east of Africa with his family for the past few years.
As the small, poor country grapples with an increase in major disaster events such as cyclones and flooding, Mr Kelly said more empathy was needed towards people vulnerable to climate challenges.
“Cyclone Idai happened pretty much when I arrived in 2019,” the programmes manager in Malawi for Irish charity Trocaire said of the second-deadliest tropical cyclone to hit the southern hemisphere.
“The evidence is clear — climate change is impacting Malawi,” he said.
“They are one of the top 10 countries who have been impacted by climate change and that will only continue to get worse unless action is taken, unless we all take action.”
Around three quarters of Malawi’s 21 million strong population rely on agriculture, meaning if crops fail, people go hungry.
Over four million people are food insecure in Malawi according to its government, and depending on the harvest yield in the next few months, this could double to eight million.
Mr Kelly said climate change related events in Europe, such as the 2021 floods in Germany and forest fires in Portugal last year, have “helped to turn the needle” on how climate change is viewed in the global north.
Grow
He added: “I think if there was one million people food insecure in Ireland... you’d see a lot of action being taken then, while the fact that people are food insecure in Malawi due to climate change, maybe it doesn’t bring about the action as quickly.”
Changing weather patterns have also made it difficult for Malawian farmers, who mostly grow the food that they eat, to know when to farm.
Last year, the deadly and powerful Cyclone Freddy flooded the south of the country and a drought hit the north. But this year, the south had dry spells in February at a crucial time during the rainy season.
Farmer Malita Mussa is a single mother-of-six who lives in the Machinga district in southern Malawi.
She said her maize crop yield last year was “a bit off ”, but this year it is expected to be much worse.
“I expect to harvest one bag, while in the previous years I would have got six bags,” Malita said, speaking through an interpreter.
Malita, who has four children still living at home, said it may mean going from two meals a day to one, or going days without food.
The woman and her two youngest children, 13-yearold twins Patrick and Patricia, feature on this year’s Trocaire box as part of the Irish charity’s Lenten appeal.
Asked what she would say to