Nation on the brink of famine

Madagascar is possibly facing the worst impact of climate change of any country in the world, and with the continuing climate crisis set to intensify, according to experts, which will result in major food shortages and more intense natural disasters, this climate catastrophe will push more than one million people into food insecurity.

Madagascar is a large island nation in the south-western part of the Indian Ocean.

It is the fifth-largest island in the world, and the country encompasses a diversity of ecosystems, with a highland plateau extending throughout the centre, fringed by low-lying coastal areas on all sides and a number of rivers.

The key sectors of the country’s national economy include agriculture, fishing and livestock production.

Madagascar faces significant risks imposed by an increasingly variable and changing climate.

Last year, the UN announced that Madagascar was on the brink of experiencing the world’s first “climate change famine”.

Although Madagascar experiences frequent droughts and is often affected by the change in weather patterns caused by El Niño, experts believe climate change can be directly linked to the current crisis.

Scientific evidence shows that global climate change has likely contributed to higher temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall in the country’s semi-arid Deep South region, which has seen below average rainfall for five years in a row.

The UN World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization said last year that around 1.14 million people were facing high levels of acute food insecurity in the south and that nearly 14000 were in a state of “catastrophe” – the highest type of food insecurity under the five-step scale of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

It is the first time it has been recorded since the IPC methodology was introduced in Madagascar in 2016.

Poverty, poor infrastructure and dependence on rain-fed agriculture are the main drivers of the ongoing food crisis in Madagascar, according to a new “rapid-attribution” study, while climate change played “no more than a small part”, according to Carbon Brief, who tracks developments around climate change.

Madagascar is still reeling from its fourth tropical cyclone in a month.

According to the UN agency, although it is the typhoon season in the Indian Ocean, it is rare to see four storms hitting the same country in the space of four weeks, said Clare Nullis from the World Meteorological Organization.

Furthermore, Madagascar’s poor economic and development capacity make it difficult for the country to adapt to a variable and changing climate, says the World Bank’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal.

From 1980 to 2010, 53 natural hazards – including droughts, earthquakes, epidemics, floods, cyclones and extreme temperatures – affected Madagascar and caused economic damages of more than $1 billion (R15.2 billion).

In addition, high poverty rates and lack of functional institutions increase vulnerability to natural and climatic hazards such as floods, droughts, cyclones, extreme temperatures and sea-level rise, say climate experts.