Posted on 28-11-2002

Climate Change --> Hunger

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, November 26, 2002 (ENS) – Cambodia, already one of
the most disaster prone countries in Southeast Asia, is now going through
cycles of drought and flood due to global climate change, according to the
Cambodian director for the United Nations World Food Programme. Some
670,000 Cambodians will need thousands of tons of food aid in the next five
weeks because their crops have been wiped out, the agency said Monday.

World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director Rebecca Hansen emphasized that
these new food shortages must serve as a “wake up call” to the "startling
weather patterns that have sabotaged the Cambodian rice crop of vulnerable
farmers" in affected areas for the past three years. The WFP has identified
187 “priority communes” out of a total of 1,621 where there has been either
too little or too much precipitation for the crops.

Instead of distributing straight food relief to the people in these areas,
Hansen says the WFP is providing food for work. Over 1,700 metric tons of
food is being distributed for disaster mitigation projects such as
reservoir rehabilitation, community ponds, dikes, and dams for irrigation
purposes. This food will benefit an estimated 56,000 people in 116 villages
in eight of the most affected provinces. Hansen says next year the WFP will
support community rice banks and rainwater reservoirs. “It is vital to
build these defenses against food shortages in the future,” she said. “To
ignore the threat of climate change is to gamble with people’s lives.”

Cambodia has the typical Southeast Asian annual flood season starting in
August when torrential rains fill rivers to overflowing. Rohan Kay of the
International Red Cross wrote in September 2001 that rural Cambodians
traditionally view the annual floods is a blessing, not a curse. "Without
such waters carrying nutrient rich silt over their fields, farmers would
harvest few crops. But last year, the floods were worse than normal.
Cambodia weathered three floods, not the usual one," Kay wrote.

In 2000, the Mekong Delta countries, including Cambodia, experienced the
worst floods in 70 years. Eighty percent of Cambodia's rice harvest was
destroyed in 2000 with only half replanted in time before the rains ended.
The damage from the 2000 floods was still being dealt with when the 2001
floods arrived. "Hundreds of thousands of people have had insufficient time
to get back on their feet after being knocked down by last year's floods,"
said Seija Tyrninoksa, head of the International Red Cross Cambodia
delegation. When last year’s floods hit, the WFP provided emergency food
aid to some 95,000 people who lost their homes or rice crops.

In 2001 and again this year, the country has been parched by severe drought
before the floods came. In some areas of the country two planting seasons
in a row were lost. Now the World Food Programme, through the UN Disaster
Management team, is collaborating with the UN’s Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Assistance to purchase local rice, fish and vegetable oil
and deliver it to more than 10,000 hungry families. About 6,500 metric tons
of food aid will be required, Hansen said.

A new study by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies shows that the number of people in the Pacific Rim region
affected by natural disasters increased by 65 times over the past 30 years.
The study quotes scientists who predict that the El Nino warming ocean
phenomenon will give rise to even more cyclones and droughts around the
Pacific Rim this coming year