Extreme droughts in the Western Pacific region are expected to persist over the next three months.

These conditions are causing a massive strain on agriculture, water supply, and daily life for residents in FSM's Yap Proper, the atoll of Wotje in the northern Marshall Islands, and other nearby islands in the Marshalls.

Guam weather service forecaster Joshua Schank told RNZ Pacific that while the region expected the last four months to be dry, the current El Niño weather pattern has intensified conditions.

"The rainfall across our region just kind of stopped for many places," Schank said.

Read More

Water carriers walk for hours, bucket handles digging into their hands. Goats and cows, grazing for absent pasture, stagger with protruding ribs. Families ration portions of turbid water.

At underfunded hospitals, emaciated infants on stretchers are fed rehydrating salts. Maryangel, a young doctor, shakes her head. "We've had pregnant mothers come in weighing less than 30 kilograms."

Far from access to proper medical care, shovels cut the suffocated soil to make way for bodies. Government figures indicate that thousands of children here have died of malnutrition and preventable illnesses in the last few years. Many more die unregistered, without noise. "Why would you inform the state of the death of a person they have abandoned?" a father asks.

The majority of these children are Wayúu, from Colombia's most populous indigenous nation. Across the country, the fate of the Wayúu has largely been met with chronic indifference or ephemeral outrage. Politicians and state departments have played down the crisis, engaging instead in finger-pointing. But the brutal epidemic of hunger continues, its multiple causes unsolved or unrecognized.

At first glance, the drought's origin appears to be primarily atmospheric: The absence of water stems from climate change and a fierce El Niño, which have ravaged the landscape and disrupted patterns of precipitation.

As Armando Valbuena, a Wayúu leader and former president of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia explains: "Here in the desert, we live on the blade of a knife. It's a very fragile system. With climate change, sea temperatures increase. Fish move deeper into the sea to find colder waters and our fishermen are left without food." Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Daniel Macmillen Voskoboynik, a writer and activist, in The Week
• Image: Breaking News

According to the UN at the peak of the regional drought in summer, food and water issues affected more than 4.7 million people

The impact of these factors continues to be felt, especially on health, education and livelihoods.

The report details examples of widespread hunger and thirst across the Pacific.

Children have been eating to eat cassava roots softened with paracetamol.

People dying from lack of food and clean water are among the examples of widespread hunger and thirst across the Pacific that are detailed in the latest Caritas State of the Environment Report for Oceania, Hungry for justice, thirsty for change.

The report reveals the region's basic food and water supplies have been severely affected by a very strong El Nino weather pattern.

That has compounded the effects of serious emergencies like cyclones Pam and Winston and the ongoing effects of climate change.

"This is why we have shifted our assessment of the state of safe food and water supplies in Oceania to severe, up from high in 2015," says Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand Director Julianne Hickey.

"According to our partners across the region, this was the most severe El Nino drought their people had ever experienced."

"We heard of people walking days to get food and water in Papua New Guinea, with many becoming sick and some people dying from lack of food and access to safe drinking water."

"In the Kimbe area of West New Britain, we heard of streams drying up, cracked soil and shrivelled coconut fruit - people could no longer make copra. Then a devastating bush fire hit that destroyed 25,000 cocoa trees,"says Hickey.

Caritas has been working with the people of Kimbe since 2009 to develop alternative cash crops to oil palm, with support from the New Zealand Aid Programme.

"Seeing their dreams go up in flames, they say 'it was like losing a child'. But they're not giving up. They are replanting, and looking for ways to minimise risk from future fires," says Hickey.

State of the Environment for Oceania report considers impact of El Nino

Source

• Supplied
• Image: looppacificassets.s3.amazonaws.com

Planning is underway for relief assistance in the future should the developing El Niño be as severe as climatologists are predicting.

Crop gardens have already been destroyed by frost and rivers and creeks have either dried up or are drying up fast, as the severe weather pattern intensifies in the Highlands.

Caritas Papua New Guinea has been working in partnership with Caritas Australia and Caritas New Zealand to aid the affected communities.

Bags of rice and sweet potatoes collected from Catholic parishes in the Highlands have been distributed to these communities.

In an interview last month, the General Secretary for the Catholic Bishops Conference of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, Fr Victor Roche, promised that K20,000 would be given as assistance aid for the victims of frost in the Highlands.

"An El Niño has the potential to trigger a regional humanitarian emergency," says Sune Gudnitz, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Regional Office for the Pacific.

"We estimate as many as 4.1 million people are at risk from water shortages, food insecurity and disease across the Pacific."

The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Fiji, Osnat Lubrani says climatologists are now unanimous in predicting that we are heading for a strong to severe El Niño event in the coming months.

"Some modelling is now suggesting this El Niño could be as severe as the event in 1997/98 which is the worst on record and brought severe drought to PNG and Fiji."

The Catholic dioceses of Mt Hagen, Wabag, Mendi and Kundiawa met recently in the provincial capital of the Western Highlands Province to discuss and establish short and long term plans to guide relief assistance efforts.

Source

• emtv.com.pg
• http:preventionweb.net
• Image: www.dailybulletin.com.au

"This is a time to draw upon our traditional Melanesian values of sharing and hospitality, and particularly on the Christian virtues of charity, honesty and justice," said Bishop Arnold Orowae President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

"This is not a time for some to benefit from other's misfortune, but rather an opportunity to demonstrate our resourcefulness and concern for one another."

"Water flowing in rivers has its source in rain coming from the heavens. It does not belong to anyone."

"So it is wrong if some people with access to rivers charge money for those people without river access to get water. River water is for the common good."

"Likewise, now is not a time for some who are relatively unaffected by drought and frost to inflate prices for garden food or seedlings and to make a large profit from those who are less fortunate."

"Nor is it right to take advantage of people who have to leave their homes to take refuge elsewhere."

"Any form of profiteering from this tragedy is unjust and unacceptable"

"Now as PNG begins celebrations for our forty years of Independence, this is surely a time to show our resourcefulness and concern for one another."

"We have helped some needy countries which were affected by natural disasters: Vanuatu, Philippines and Haiti," said Fr Victor Roche, general Secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference.

"Let us help our own brothers and sisters now. Let us raise funds for drought and frost affected people."

"Let us have a Sunday collection and give generously to those in need."

"The frost and drought are natural disasters. It is because of the lack of rain and the experts say it is El Niño effect," said Roche.

"It is also a man-made disaster: people in PNG have cut down lots of trees for mines and for export in order to get money."

"We have also created lots of bush fires."

"We all have contributed to the frost, drought and El Niño effect," he said.

Source

• wantokniuspepa.com
• wantokniuspepa.com
• Image: dailybulletin.com.au