The crisis, worsened partly by climate change, has been accompanied by soaring food prices and could have consequences for hunger, elections and migration worldwide.
“Droughts operate in silence, often going unnoticed and failing to provoke an immediate public and political response,” wrote Ibrahim Thiaw, head of the United Nations agency that issued the estimates late last year, in his foreword to the report.
The arrival last year of El Niño, a natural, cyclical weather phenomenon characterized by warmer-than-normal temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean, has also very likely contributed.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a research group funded by the United States government, estimates that the ongoing El Niño will affect crop yields on at least a quarter of the world’s agricultural land.
The export restrictions further help keep prices low and, in a country where hundreds of millions of voters subsist on rice, they dampen political risks for incumbent lawmakers.
In a region where violence and economic insecurity drive millions of people to try to migrate north to the United States, one recent study found that drought can press a heavy finger on the scale.
“If that goes into atmosphere as greenhouse gases, that can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the global climate,” said Philip Fearnside, a biologist at the Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus, Brazil.
The original article contains 826 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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“Droughts operate in silence, often going unnoticed and failing to provoke an immediate public and political response,” wrote Ibrahim Thiaw, head of the United Nations agency that issued the estimates late last year, in his foreword to the report.
The arrival last year of El Niño, a natural, cyclical weather phenomenon characterized by warmer-than-normal temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean, has also very likely contributed.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a research group funded by the United States government, estimates that the ongoing El Niño will affect crop yields on at least a quarter of the world’s agricultural land.
The export restrictions further help keep prices low and, in a country where hundreds of millions of voters subsist on rice, they dampen political risks for incumbent lawmakers.
In a region where violence and economic insecurity drive millions of people to try to migrate north to the United States, one recent study found that drought can press a heavy finger on the scale.
“If that goes into atmosphere as greenhouse gases, that can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the global climate,” said Philip Fearnside, a biologist at the Institute for Amazonian Research in Manaus, Brazil.
The original article contains 826 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!