Human-induced global warming is the cause of the famine hitting Madagascar, the first of its kind but not the last, warned an official of the World Food Program (WFP) on Tuesday.
According to Aduino Mangoni, deputy director of WFP in Madagascar, 30,000 people are now suffering from famine in the southern half of the island hit by an unprecedented drought for 40 years and more than 1.3 million suffer from acute malnutrition, underlined M Mangoni by videoconference, during a UN meeting in Geneva.
For him, this is the first famine caused by global warming due to human activities.
It is also “the only famine linked to climate change on Earth”, he insisted, stressing that those which now hit Yemen, South Sudan and the Ethiopian region of Tigray are all caused by Conflicts.
“The situation is very worrying,” he said, describing children, “who have only skin on their bones” that he met in a nutrition center during a recent trip to the region. most affected.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he added.
The next harvest can only take place in six months and the situation can only deteriorate by then, he warned, recalling that 500,000 children are already suffering from malnutrition, including 110,000. severe or acute and are only one step away from death.
WFP needs $ 69 million to be able to put in place the necessary assistance over the next six months.
In the southern tip of the island of Madagascar, 91% of the population lives in a situation of poverty and the drought has destroyed the agricultural and fishing production capacities on which families depend for their survival, recently underlined a report drawn up by Amnesty International.