Urgent action now can prevent major suffering and loss
Publication date: 4 December 2015
Millions of poor and vulnerable people face hunger and poverty this year and next because of record global temperatures, droughts and erratic rains in 2014 and 2015, followed by the development of possibly the most powerful El Niño on record.
This briefing makes the case to urgently scale up humanitarian response in countries already in crisis. It also draws on the experience of the super El Nino in 1997–98, and the inadequate response to the Horn of Africa drought of 2011, to push for early action to save livelihoods elsewhere.
Long-term approaches to reduce food insecurity must be found, and climate change, which is super-charging the effects of El Niño, must be tackled at the UN climate conference in Paris and beyond.