The Human Toll

“More than 260,000 children aged under five may have died from extreme hunger or related diseases in East Africa since the start of the year, according to new analysis by Save the Children. It has been the impacts of the climate crisis that have ultimately taken the highest toll on children. East Africa is currently experiencing the devastating impacts of climate change, with concurrent emergencies like drought and floods across the region leading to mass displacement and severe hunger. While communities in eastern Kenya, southern Somalia, and parts of Ethiopia are reeling from successive drought, parts of South Sudan remain underwater after three years of unpredictable and excessive rains.

Watch this video then add your name to our letter to President Biden, urging him to send Southern Madagascar the resources it needs to end the suffering and help communities heal, adapt and develop resilience. Thank you!

On July 6, we published a letter urging President Biden to race all needed resources to Southern Madagascar, where over a million of people are facing starvation due a climate crisis they did nothing to create.

Since then, over 300 scientists, academics, NGO directors, doctors, engineers, technology and software professionals, school teachers, students and climate advocates have added their names. You can read the published letter and with all signatories listed by country here. If you haven’t yet, please join them.

Over the last 2 weeks, we’ve been gathering all the information we can about conditions on the ground. I spoke a few days ago with Tim Irwin of UNICEF in Southern Madagascar. UNICEF’s detailed assessment of the situation as of July 26 is the most recent available.

Since the WFP’s call to action on June 23, the number of people listed as starving has doubled.

UNICEF warns we’re on track for HALF A MILLION acutely malnourished children younger than 5, including 110,000 “suffering irreversible harm to their growth and development.”

Despite World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley’s impassioned call for polluting countries to “help these innocent victims of climate change NOW,” not only with emergency relief but “rain harvesting and adaptation,” nothing like the resources needed have been forthcoming.

Even UNICEF’s emergency nutrition assistance, targeted to the most severely malnourished children, is 17% underfunded.

In July, Médecins Sans Frontières reported children treated for malnutrition weren’t putting weight back on, citing totally inadequate “half rations” being distributed and calling for a “massive increase in food assistance.”

The crisis in Madagascar is only the most extreme instance of the hunger we’ve seen across Southern Africa due to severe, multiyear drought. Gerald Bourke of the WFP said in December of 2019, “In fact, the primary reason for the unprecedented hunger in Southern Africa is climate change.” He was talking about 45 million human beings, over half of them children, going hungry.

So more than million people in the South of Madagascar were not “pushed to edge of starvation” overnight, catching the world off guard. This climate and humanitarian emergency emerged over four years of relentless drought, soil drying out and blowing away, what remains buried by sandstorms.

Whole communities have been left for months with no food, struggling to survive on locusts and cactus leaves, even clay. Their climate emergency is a matter of life and death. It is also a matter of justice, not charity. Fully 85% of the excess CO2 driving global warming was produced by Anglo-European majority countries, 40% of it by the US alone.

“These people have done nothing to contribute to climate change. They don’t burn fossil fuels… and yet they are bearing the brunt of climate change,” said the UN World Food Program’s Shelley Thakral.

We ask that you add your name to our letter urging President Biden to make the very modest investment needed to end Madagascar’s suffering and help these communities heal, adapt and develop resilience. We ask further that you help grow this community of conscience by asking friends and colleagues to do the same.

We also ask all who can do so to contribute to UNICEF’s ground operation in Southern Madagascar using this link: https://www.unicef.org/appeals/madagascar

Thank you so very, very much.

At least half a million children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished including 110,000 in severe condition, suffering irreversible damage to their growth and development. 

WFP & UNICEF Joint Press Release July 26, 2021

“What is currently happening in southern Madagascar is heartbreaking. We cannot turn our backs on these children whose lives are at stake. We need to double our efforts to curb this catastrophic rise in hunger but we cannot do it without significant funding resources and buy-in from partners”

Moumini Ouedraogo, WFP’s Representative in Madagascar

On June 23, Earth’s highest authority on hunger, World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley, warned over a million people in Southern Madagascar were on the brink of famine as a direct result of climate change, and charged GHG polluters with “a moral obligation to help these innocent victims of climate change now.” Beasley cites the need not only for immediate relief but for “resilience programs and water harvesting” to bring real and lasting relief to over a million people pushed “to the very edge of starvation.”

On July 26, UNICEF released a detailed assessment of conditions in Madagascar, warning we’re on track for half a million children younger than 5 to be acutely malnourished, including 110,000 in severe condition, “suffering irreversible damage to the growth and development.”

On August 16, I discussed that horrifying trajectory with Tim Irwin of UNICEF in Southern Madagascar.

Tim confirmed that over a month after WFP Director Beasley’s historic call to action, resources are insufficient for this climate and humanitarian catastrophe. Even UNICEF’s emergency nutrition assistance, targeted to the most severely malnourished children, is only 83% funded. Overall, of the funds UNICEF has requested this year for its operations in Madagascar, just 33% has been received.

Add your name to our letter to US President Biden, urging him to fund relief, adaptation and resilience in Madagascar NOW.

“Step up and help these innocent victims of climate change right NOW.” – WFP Executive Director David Beasley

Add your name to our letter, calling on US President Biden to come to their aid!

Names updated daily at 19:00 UTC Click to add your name now!