OVER the past two decades, the issue of climate change has been increasingly discussed internationally.  Countries across the globe are being forced to admit the devastating effect that pollution has wreaked on our global environment and are engaged in ongoing debates about what measures should be taken to avert a looming disaster.

Melting glaciers, the rise in sea levels and more intense heatwaves are all currently taking place at an accelerated pace.

Scientists’ predictions of an increase in global temperature as a result of human-made greenhouse gases, more frequent wildfires and longer periods of drought in some regions, along with an increase in the intensity and duration of tropical storms, are all coming to pass.

Indeed, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said, “Modern humans have never before seen the observed changes in our global climate, and some of these changes are irreversible over the next hundreds to thousands of years.”

And the World Health Organisation (WHO) made the telling observation that “…the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it – people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities.”

This brings me to the current dire situation of countries in what is referred to as the ‘Horn of Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, but also including Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda.

Aljazeera has reported the UN’s recent announcement that millions of people in the Horn of Africa are facing food shortages as a result of rising global food costs and the worst drought in four decades leading to the worst hunger crisis in 70 years. Drier-than-average conditions mean that 13 million people in the region now face what the UN and other aid organisations have termed an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe”.

And the figures are staggering, as the World Bank in June of this year estimated that 66.4 million people in the region, including ten million children, would experience food stress or food crisis with a possible emergency and famine by the following month, July.

We are now in October and the crisis is well underway. In Ethiopia, 20.4 million people need food support; in Somalia nearly half of the population of 15 million were said to be “seriously hungry” then and are now in the throes of a full-fledged famine and, in Kenya, half a million people face a hunger crisis.

Developed countries have been delinquent in contributing the funds necessary to provide food, water and other essential services and have so far come up with less than four per cent of the US$473 million required by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).

At the same time, the current Russia-Ukraine conflict has both overshadowed and added to the woes of the region as the focus has shifted to this war in Europe and huge sums of money are now being diverted to render assistance to the Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the UN has warned that the Horn of Africa is likely to experience drought for a fifth season, forcing more than one million people across the region to leave their homes in search of food and water, something which has already begun to happen as families trek hundreds of miles seeking treatment for badly undernourished children.

The organisation, in referring to climate change, has also noted that, “…some changes (such a droughts, wildfires and extreme rainfall) are happening faster than scientists previously assessed.” They cautioned that the developed world will also suffer, as evidenced by the huge and destructive wildfires in Australia and California and severe flooding that many countries have been experiencing as a result of heightened rainfall.

It is incumbent, therefore, on the developed world to not only render immediate and significant aid to the Horn of Africa, but to also address with urgency the issue of climate change which is fast becoming the major underlying cause of weather disruption.