Millions in the Pacific could be left without food, clean water due to El Niño

Because of the upcoming El Niño, more than four million people in the Pacific are at risk of experiencing water shortages, food insecurity, and disease, experts warn.

An El Niño happens when waters in the eastern tropical Pacific ocean become warmer, causing extreme weather conditions, and forecasters say this year's might be as intense as the 1997-98 El Niño, when about 23,000 people died. In Papua New Guinea's Chimbu province, where frost has killed off almost every crop and there is a record drought, 24 people have died from hunger and drinking contaminated water. Oxfam Australia's climate change policy advisor, Dr. Simon Bradshaw, told The Guardian that some areas of Papua New Guinea will run out of food in about two to three months. "People are almost exclusively reliant on subsistence farming, farming of sweet potatoes," he said. "We do know that water is becoming very scarce, that's of course impacting food production, and PNG is almost entirely dependent on its own food."


While El Niño brings more rain and flooding to countries near the equator, countries in the Pacific southwest will see drier and hotter conditions. Sune Gudnitz, head of the Pacific region office of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, and the Solomon Islands are dealing with reduced rainfall, and drought conditions will "further complicate the humanitarian situation." In Fiji, water is being trucked into some villages, and water is being shipped to the outer islands of Tonga. Bradshaw said research research suggests El Niño patterns, which typically happen every three to seven years, could soon take place twice as frequently because of climate change. "We've seen an unprecedented run of extreme and erratic weather, which has had very real impacts," he said. "Of course, those impacts are felt first and hardest by the world's poorest communities, but these countries are also the least responsible for climate change. They've contributed negligibly to global greenhouse emissions."

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