The top of the Southern African Improvement Neighborhood regional bloc mentioned 17% of individuals within the area would wish help amid droughts attributable to local weather change.
Tens of tens of millions of individuals in southern Africa are affected by the consequences of El Niño-induced drought, which has decreased crop and livestock manufacturing and led to meals shortages in some nations, a regional group has warned.
Elias Magosi, govt secretary of the Southern African Improvement Neighborhood (SADC), mentioned on Saturday that 17% of the area’s inhabitants, or about 68 million individuals, wanted help.
“The 2024 wet season is a difficult one, with a lot of the area negatively affected by the El Niño phenomenon, characterised by delayed rainfall,” Magosi mentioned.
His remarks got here as heads of state from the 16 Southern African Improvement Neighborhood nations had been assembly in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, to debate regional points together with meals safety.
Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia are the nations in southern Africa most affected by malnutrition attributable to the drought that started in early 2024.
Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa reported from Harare on Saturday that SADC nation leaders could also be discussing methods to offer extra funding and meals help to affected nations.
“Crops are dying and that is an enormous downside,” Mutasa mentioned.
In early June, the United Nations World Meals Program highlighted the dire influence of drought, significantly on communities already susceptible to meals shortages.
“The agricultural communities we met there instructed us they’d by no means seen something like this. They had been extraordinarily fearful about their future.
The United Nations mentioned southern Africa skilled its driest February in 100 years, with solely 20% of regular rainfall. Temperatures had been additionally a couple of levels above common.
U.N. Secretary-Common Antonio Guterres mentioned late final month that excessive warmth attributable to the local weather disaster “more and more tears aside economies, widens inequalities, undermines sustainable growth targets and takes a toll on lives.”
“We all know what’s driving it: fossil fuel-driven, human-caused local weather change. We all know it’ll worsen; excessive warmth is the brand new anomaly,” he mentioned.
Specialists warn that as the consequences of local weather change intensify, climate patterns develop into extra excessive, with droughts, tremendous hurricanes, floods and wildfires affecting a lot of the world.
