Environmental News

Farmers in Nepal have been able to produce only half their usual crop, said an Oxfam International report released last week. Livestock are dying of malnutrition in Yemen, according to the humanitarian news service IRIN. And the Red Cross is bracing for the effects of heavy rains across 16 West and Central African nations.

 

All three are the result of extended atypical weather events -- drought, rain, or untimely combinations of both -- in places where subsistence farmers have long depended on predictability.

Nepal's farmers are clashing head on with the effects of a changing climate. © World Bank Photo Collection (flickr)In Nepal, more than 3 million people -- about 10 percent of the population -- will need food aid this year, said Oxfam. While farmers used to grow enough food for their families to eat for three to six months of the year, last year's crop only amounted to about one month's worth of food for many families, said Oxfam.

The lack of food production has hit Nepali families with a double whammy, not only reducing the amount available to eat, but also diminishing their ability to buy surpluses at market, as costs have increased and incomes decreased.

A combination of natural disasters, including one of the worst winter droughts in the country's history, have levied the current burden on the Himalayan Asian nation, where more than three in ten people live below the poverty line even in good times.

While Oxfam notes that a single drought event can never be attributed to global climate change, the group blames Nepal's food shortage on the unpredictability of weather that scientists say is a direct result of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- or "climate change."

In recent years, Nepal has experienced greater extremes of temperature, more intense periods of rainfall, drier winters, and delays in the summer monsoon rains.