Climate change to make droughts longer, more common, says UN
The frequency and duration of droughts will continue to increase due to human-caused climate change, with water scarcity already affecting billions of people across the world, the United Nations warned in a report Wednesday.
The U.N. desertification agency, which is currently hosting a conference of parties in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, estimates that roughly one third of the world's population — 2.3 billion people — is already facing water scarcity, with that number expected to double by 2050.
Although no region is spared from drought, the report noted that Africa is the hardest hit continent, with the Americas, India and Australia also highlighted as areas of particular current and future concern.
The ongoing debilitating drought in the east and Horn of Africa was highlighted as one of the “dramatic consequences" of climate change by the U.N. agency. The continent suffered 134 recorded droughts in the past century, with over half occurring in east Africa.
“We used to be able to grow enough tomatoes that we could stay fed for 8 months,” said Kenyan farmer Kheira Osman Yusuf, whose crops have been without rain for over a year. “We used to have luscious mango trees and papaya trees.” She added that food sources have become incredibly scarce and the drinking water supply has also greatly suffered. She explained they sometimes had to resort to drinking from the livestock reservoir, running the risk of getting sick from contamination.
The agency’s lead scientist Barron Orr told the Associated Press that the world needs to be more proactive rather than reactive when it comes to dealing with drought-related disasters. Orr said the next step for hardest-hit Africa is to “direct investments to build resilience, so as to bounce back from drought.”
India saw a drought-related...