2022 has begun with an unfair start for the island nation of Madagascar. January saw tropical cyclone Ana rip through the country displacing 130,000 and killing at least 55. Now, a mere two weeks later tropical cyclone Batsirai has just hit displacing another 48,000. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent estimates as many as four million people to be at risk in 14 districts, with 600,000 people directly affected and 150,000 likely to be displaced. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is preparing for the same numbers of displaced, with water levels in rivers and canals continuing to rise following the storm.
Already the twin disasters have overstretched the country’s emergency response capacity, with water and electricity in the south-eastern city of Mananjary, where the cyclone struck, disrupted for two days. Evacuation centers had their roofs torn off from the strength of cyclone Batisraj.
"It's as if we had just been bombed. The city of Nosy Varika is almost 95% destroyed. The solid houses saw their roofs torn off by the wind. The wooden huts have for the most part been destroyed." -- Willy Raharijaona, technical advisor to the vice president of Madagascar’s Senate.
Storms and cyclones are not new phenomena for Madagascar, which receives on average three to four cyclones every season between November and March, but the increasing intensity and unpredictability of these cyclones has many worried about what the future has in store. Recent studies point to this shift as an effect of climate change producing warmer waters in the surrounding south west Indian Ocean, which in turn is fueling more intense storms and cyclones impacting Madagascar.
Unfortunately for Madagascar, weather-related disasters aren’t the only challenges climate change poses. These back-to-back disasters come on the heels of one the worst droughts to hit the country in 40 years. The drought, which has primarily hit the southern part of the country, has placed an estimated 2 million in need of urgent food assistance.
As we’ve underscored in this previous SPOTLIGHT article on Madagascar, WFP has declared southern Madagascar on the brink of famine with acting director David Beasley stating this is the first climate induced famine the world has ever seen. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report further supports that claim noting there have been observed increases in aridity in Madagascar and that climate models predict a future increase in droughts as climate change worsens.
Last November, Climate Refugees was part of a special broadcast of the CBC Radio show The Current on climate migrants, where Tsina Endor, the Deputy Director of SEED Madagascar, heartbreakingly described situations in southern Madagascar, where famine was forcing people to eat locusts and cactus to survive. Endor said it’s the worst situation she’s witnessed in decades, adding that when a lack of rainfall forces farmers to eat the seeds they would normally plant, it really doesn’t get any worse.
A recent study by the World Weather Attribution initiative challenges the claim that climate change has played a significant role in this drought. The rapid attribution study, though not yet peer reviewed, found that climate change played a “statistically insignificant role” in reduced rainfall. While climate change cannot be held solely responsible for the extreme levels of poverty or food insecurity in Madagascar, studies show it is heavily influencing non-climatic stressors and drastically exacerbating vulnerabilities throughout the country. With 80 percent of its population listed as living in extreme poverty, climatic events will continue to drive persistent poverty and drought and disaster-induced displacement with little hope for sustained progress.
What Madagascar is facing now and in its future are the ravages of the climate crisis it has played no role in creating. Even though its global share of historic carbon emissions is significantly less than 1 percent, even the aforementioned more skeptical researchers warn the country’s vulnerabilities to climate change are stark. Under current climate change conditions, researchers estimate the drought Madagascar is currently facing has a 1 in 135 chance of happening in the region each year.
What Madagascar is facing is also clearly a situation of loss and damage sustained by climate change, which cannot be avoided by mitigation, adaptation or sufficient disaster risk management. The type of loss and damage that keeps its people unjustly captive to the adverse effects of climate change, while also trapped in vicious cycles of odious debt it will be forced to take on to recover from sustained disasters and the ravages of its socio-economic weight.
But as seen at COP26 in Glasgow, the wealthy high emitting countries clearly rebuffed attempts to advance a loss and damage fund that would help frontline countries withstand the costs of climate change impacts, which numerous studies show can range anywhere from $290 billion to nearly $2 trillion dollars.
Madagascar’s environment minister told the BBC “the country had submitted a plan to the COP26 climate conference, which showed it needed $1 billion a year to adapt to the effects of climate change.”
For one of the “least developed countries in the world” to spend $1 billion a year adapting to a crisis fueled by wealthy nations is both unrealistic and unjust.
Developed countries have yet to fully come through on 2009 climate finance pledges of providing $100 billion annually in funding to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. The latest OECD assessment estimates finance delivery at $79.6 billion, but an Oxfam study contends the actual number to be half, factoring for countries over-reporting and finance provided as loans, instead of grants.
If so, developing countries are not only looking at outdated finance adaptation estimates, they’re also looking at a funding shortfall of about $50 billion and no progress on loss and damage, with developed country partners that not only holdback pledged climate finance, but also utilize power and privilege to unfairly rig the system to their advantage.