How Super El Niño Could Trigger Humanitarian Crises Around the World

So there's a whole set of downstream impacts to this that we can anticipate are anticipating the question is whether we have the resources to make the difference that we'll mitigate and alleviate some of those impacts. Welcome to Global Dispatches, the podcast that helps you understand the world through conversations with the people who know it best. I'm your host, Mark Leon Goldberg, an international affairs journalist who's been covering global politics for more than two decades. Enjoy the show and please visit globaldispatches.org to learn more, sign up for our newsletter and support Independent Journalism with a global perspective. I am joined today by Michelle Nunn, President and CEO of CARE, a leading international humanitarian organization. By way of introduction, Michelle, please tell us a bit about CARE. I have been at CARE now a little over 10 years and that's a part of a 80 year history. So we just recently celebrated our 80th year and the story of CARE begins with the beginning of the first CARE packages and it was an idea that was created by a few Americans who said we're not going to watch people face starvation in post-World War II Europe and they literally created what stood for then something like cooperative and assistance and relief in Europe and sent 20,000 CARE packages and we have been doing humanitarian work ever since and we have continued to then also do development work and we operate in 100 plus countries last year we reached close to 40 million people. We center a lot of our work around women and girls and families and I think both a illustrious and important history and one that we are all proud to continue to steward into the future. So I've reached out to you today for this interview because I've been hearing from contacts and messaging from the global humanitarian community including from CARE about deep concerns for the impact of the super El Nino weather pattern that's forming that's impacting us right now. Could you just by way of introduction explain what makes this a super El Nino and what forecasters are predicting and then we'll discuss kind of the humanitarian consequences of it. This El Nino which is a part of a cyclical historical expectation that comes is going to be and already is extraordinarily and I would say exponentially impactful and it is especially going to impact those communities those countries that are already facing into challenges from a climate perspective and what it means if you radiate out is that you have estimates that for instance close to 50 million more people will face into acute food insecurity. It means that in places like Somalia and the Horn of Africa that are already facing again the threat they're on the real verge potentially of in some communities even facing famine like conditions that those are all exacerbated in really profound and difficult ways. And I just got back from a trip to Southeast Asia was in the Philippines Vietnam Laos visiting with our teams there you can see it already in effect and you know for those who are sort of more lay people on the equation doesn't necessarily make sense but what you have is you both have flooding and also drought and you have drought like conditions that then when the rains do come they come more heavily and they create this sort of dynamic of impact that makes it even more difficult for smallholder farmers and for the people that are living invulnerable and fragile conditions already. So I guess you have the super El Nino is layered on top of already important and difficult and critical challenges related to climate, to conflict and to fragile contexts and at the same time you have this dramatic decrease in aid and so all of that combines to make a really challenging humanitarian context. You mentioned you were just in Asia East Asia and how will or how has the super El Nino manifested itself there and what are some of the predictable humanitarian impacts that you foresee to result from this weather pattern in that part of the world. Just to give you a sense as I was there it was supposed to be the beginning of the rainy season but that had not come and you know everybody in Southeast Asia is an example on the tip of their tongues is the super El Nino it's not necessarily from an American perspective on everybody's radar at the same threshold but it is a lived reality there and I think they are both working towards ensuring that they can anticipate and mitigate to the degree that that's possible but as I said it's issues of drought right now potential flooding coming forward and then increased heat index you know when I was there it was dramatically hotter than what they are used to at this time of the season all of that impacts people in their everyday lives especially smallholder farmers who tend to be those who are already living oftentimes in poverty but also you know as we've discussed care focus a lot on women and girls particularly vulnerable issues of heat index increases issues of for those women that are pregnant and it makes their health more endangered it increases issues of gender based violence by certain percentage points we know that heat index is actually literally just raise the number of women that endure sexual and gender based violence not to mention issues of then economic fragility that impact families and therefore make it more precarious for girls to go to school or to avoid things like child marriage so there's a whole set of downstream impacts to this that we can anticipate are anticipating the question is whether we have the resources to make the difference that will mitigate and alleviate some of those impacts so in the countries you recently visited talk me through you know you're programming so I arrived in Vietnam traveled eight or nine hours by car got on a moped to go and visit then a smallholder farmer coffee grower in Vietnam over the last two years and so this is pre El Niño but based upon changes in the climate that farmer had lost half of his yield from a productivity perspective and so one of the points of intervention that care was working on with that community was irrigation so we had helped install irrigation that had now increased back to the former amount of support that he was able to provide for his coffee crop and so he was back up to having basically doubled from that having halved so we had a whole community of people that were there to demonstrate and show how this was impacting them and also how they were adopting these irrigation tactics as they go forward so that's one example we're also working with a group of women there called the RIT coffee cooperative they have increased by tenfold the production of their coffee they had never actually tasted their own coffee before care started working them six years ago they now are moving up that supply chain and are working with over 400 farmers to collect their coffee beans and to put them into the higher rates of prices for coffee so a lot of work with smallholder farmers a lot of work with women's economic power those are some of the examples of around that and then for instance in the Philippines a lot of work around humanitarian response you have earthquakes volcanoes and typhoons Philippines is one of the most fragile contexts in the world in terms of natural disaster and care is delivering emergency care packages helping people with the provision of shelter and homes in addition to helping especially women and families grow their economic capacity for resilience I mean that was kind of my next question I mean not just in that part of the world but throughout where care reaches which is like most of the world to what extent is this super El Nino complicating your already existing programs because presumably you'd have to divert some resources into building resilience against what we know might be either a coming drought or coming flood or a drought that is followed by a flood well of course it's making that all the more difficult again at a time when as you said so many of these crisis are compounding less resources to put into it and it's more expensive to respond to some of these challenges as well and that's based upon the downstream impacts of the conflict of the Middle East and a whole set of challenges so I would say one is making the conditions more difficult for the people that we serve to is making it more costly and difficult to respond and then three of course it is exacerbating everything from health to educational challenges to agricultural productivity so it's a perfect storm well so I'm glad you described it as a perfect storm because you know many people in the humanitarian community have kind of described this super El Nino as a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm for the fact that you've had these rising fuel prices become of conflicts in the Middle East, and on top of that you've had cuts, major cuts across the board, two humanitarian funding from traditional donors, and you have now this looming kind of crisis of the superloneño that might cause, you know, displacement and hardships in places that you're already trying to serve. So how are you dealing with this? So the message should not just be all despair and gloom, I think the message needs to be that we have a forecast, we can see what is happening and what is coming, and we also have tools and interventions that can mitigate the impacts and the suffering and truly alleviate what is potentially these devastating and challenging consequences for the people that are, again, already in fragile context. So for us, that means, for instance, we have raised several million dollars for what we call anticipatory action around the superloneño. That means everything from working with communities to help set up literal heat centers so that when it becomes too hot that people have the capacity to literally cool down by going to one of these stations, we forget that, you know, in many parts of the world, air conditioning is not an available opportunity for them, preparing and supporting and training healthcare workers so that they can deal with issues of heat as one example. We also are doing things like helping farmers grow more resilient seeds that can withstand some of the difficulties that we already can perceive for them in a locally based context and putting in things like irrigation systems and that help people, again, around issues of drought. So a whole combination of things that just are health interventions, agricultural interventions, and also community resilience and readiness interventions. And one thing we know is that if you invest in what you call anticipatory action, you are, you know, one dollar can save up to seven dollars. And literally, by getting cash in the hands of people where we can see that these consequences are in front of them, we can make an enormous difference. The challenge, again, is that all of that funding has gone down, so we're trying to just get back anything that we're doing from a funding perspective is just clawing our way back to what was available even just, you know, within the last 24 months. And we have a big hill to climb in order to do that. Presumably, you know, you're having lots of conversations with donors about the need for anticipatory action, as you said, but presuming that funding levels maybe are not restored, not just for care, but across the humanitarian community and other organizations that are also trying to alleviate the predictable consequences of this super elmenio. Like how far downstream do you expect to see the humanitarian impacts from this manifest? Is it, you know, like I missed planting season and then six months later, you're going to see higher levels of food insecurity? Like what are some of the predictable consequences downstream of failing to respond to this in a robust anticipatory way? Well, you received Chicago's just came out in the last couple of months and said that you can see that without real interventions, timely interventions, that just from the heat index that will arise from El Nino, the projections are hundreds of thousands of people will die. And they can show this is what geography this is going to impact. So, you know, that's a very clear downstream impact that's ahead of us again without the kind of interventions that we've begun to talk about. And as you said, yes, absolutely. We'll have farmers that are not able to get to that productive yield. They'll either miss a planting season or they will have a diminished planting season. And that leads to folks that will just not have enough to eat, be eating one meal a day instead of two or three meals a day. And as I said, you know, you can see there's a projection that you could have up to 50 million people that would be an acute hunger as a result just of the El Nino. So, the folks that are suffering from hunger is a second downstream impact. And then, you know, the third, I would just put into a category of all sorts of things that we can't always even capture, gender-based violence, maternal deaths, you know, stunting and the consequences that have long-term impacts for children that won't be eating in the season ahead. And I would say just a generally regression around progress as it relates to resilience and the capacity for people to move forward. And certainly to be escaping poverty, you know, we've moved from an arc in which we are moving forward to one in which we are just trying to not fall too far backward. Lastly, and we're speaking in early November, what needs to happen in the very short term to prevent some of those problematic outcomes and crisis outcomes that you just articulated, hundreds of thousands of deaths, misplanting seasons, high other like externalities, gender-based violence and maternal mortality that will all be increased. Like, what needs to happen in the very near term to prevent at least some of those negative consequences? Resourcing is probably the biggest point of action. And that means that, you know, the global community needs to be anticipatory versus waiting for these consequences and then trying to respond to them or after the fact. And so that means, you know, more funding from governments. And I would say diversified funding across the world. And certainly from a philanthropic capital perspective, I think we can ask the emergence of some of this third wave of philanthropy to be catalytic in their investments and to support humanitarian infrastructures that can prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths in the coming months with the kind of early action that we've just talked about. I would say, you know, certainly this has all got to be done in partnership with governments, not only at the national level, but at the local level, supporting and equipping communities to be able to respond to these El Nino effects. And again, I think it's a combination of the humanitarian community and partnership with local governments and local civil society and resource at new thresholds in order to avoid some of those downstream consequences that we've talked about. But it's within our reach and it's within our capacity to make that difference in the coming days and weeks. Thank you so much for your time. This is really helpful. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Thanks for listening to Global Dispatches. The show is produced by me, Mark Leon Goldberg. It is edited and mixed by Levi Sharp. If you are listening on Apple podcasts, make sure to follow the show and enable automatic downloads to get new episodes as soon as they're released. On Spotify, tap the bell icon to get a notification when we publish new episodes. And of course, please visit globaldispatches.org to get on our free mailing list, get in touch with me, and access our full archive. Thank you.