Southeast Asia braces for record El Niño-driven food crisis - TimesLIVE
All signs are pointing towards a record-breaking El Niño this year, which experts say may cause severe drought in Asia and other extreme weather across the world, threatening food security for millions of people.
El Niño is part of a natural climate cycle of warming ocean temperatures, but this year’s is expected to reach new extremes of drought, heatwaves, flooding and other climate-related disruptions in South America, Africa and Asia.
Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions. It’s already beset by an energy crisis triggered by the war in Iran. El Niño is fuelling wildfires across farmland, depleting water supplies for major cities and hurting fish catches in the region.
Asian governments that have been drawing on their financial reserves to mitigate the war’s ripple effects of higher energy costs and scarce fertiliser supplies have less capacity to cope with this year’s intensifying El Niño, which is forecast to peak in December.
The phenomenon may amplify other crises in Southeast Asia, according to Paul Teng of Singapore’s Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, who said: “El Niño is compounding all the other problems we see.”
During El Niño years, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are warmer than usual. This happens every few years and often alters global weather patterns.
This year, the seas are already hotter than average, with global oceans hitting new temperature records in August as the climate warms, said Kareff Rafisura, chief of the disaster risk reduction division at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
This intensifying El Niño may be the “strongest in living memory”, according to the UK’s national weather and climate service. Similarly, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there is a 69% chance this will be the strongest recorded El Niño since record-keeping began in 1950.
El Niño’s impact will be felt differently across regions, but it is expected to jeopardise food security worldwide. It could push at least 49-million more people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027, according to the UN World Food Programme.
The problem will be worst in parts of central America and southern Africa, with significant effects also anticipated in eastern Africa and south and southeast Asia, warned the food agency.
In Southeast Asia, wildfires are torching forests and peatlands in Indonesia, sending up plumes of toxic haze. The water level of a major reservoir supplying the bustling capital city of Jakarta, the world’s biggest metropolis, is dropping centimetre by centimetre.
As the lake dries, the ruins of one of 11 villages that had been inundated by the reservoir have emerged, as alarm grows over the need for alternative water supplies for the city of 42-million.
“I would have rather not moved. There were plenty of livelihood opportunities here,” said Hussen, who only uses one name, as he ferried people across the receding reservoir.
This is only the beginning, said Erma Yulihastin with Indonesia’s Research Centre for Climate and Atmosphere, who warned El Niño has just begun its “super phase”.
Less rainfall and hotter temperatures are putting pressure on Southeast Asia’s fisheries, an essential source of protein.
It’s a pressing problem along the Mekong, a river basin that flows through six nations and is being disrupted by mining and construction of hydropower dams.
“It’s one punch after another,” said Zeb Hogan, with the University of Nevada, Reno, who runs the research and conservation project Wonders of the Mekong. “If the river doesn’t catch a break, we will reach a point where it’s no longer going to sustain people in the way it always has.”
Lower flows are especially hard on communities along the Mekong who depend on predictable water levels for fishing and farming, said Kongmeng Ly, with the Mekong River Commission, an intergovernmental group for Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
Southeast Asia’s wet season generally runs from June to October, when rains usually replenish reservoirs, cool overheated cities and supply water for irrigation ahead of the next planting season.
Drought may force farmers to delay planting, reduce acreage or switch crops entirely, said Rafisura. “Agriculture is definitely on the front line,” she said.
Cutbacks in staple crops such as rice and palm oil can have global impacts. The world’s top three exporters of rice — India, Vietnam and Thailand — are among the nations most likely to be hit hard by El Niño this year.
North of the Thai capital Bangkok, rice farmers such as 55-year-old Boonmark Marksuuk are facing tough choices. Apart from pricier fuel and fertiliser because of the war, he’s spending most of his days pumping water into his rice fields because he no longer trusts the rain.
El Niño is also bearing down on Indonesia and Malaysia, suppliers of about 85% of the world’s palm oil, which is used in everything from cookies and lipstick to toothpaste and laundry detergent.
Malaysia’s prime minister has ordered its ministry of agriculture and food security to find ways to mitigate El Niño’s impact, which is forecast to hit Malaysia hardest in November.
In Indonesia, farmers rely on rain to dissolve fertilisers into the soil to avoid burning the plants, explained Eddy Martono, chair of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association.
“If it doesn’t rain, everyone will definitely stop fertilising,” which will hurt national production, he said.
While the total economic fallout of an extreme El Niño is hard to calculate, losses from past events have reached trillions, according to HSBC’s Global Investment Research, which warned the numbers could be bigger this time.
Analysts at the investment bank Goldman Sachs estimated this El Niño could push up global food commodity prices by more than 15%.
“Whatever happens to agriculture determines whether people stay below or slightly above the poverty line,” Rafisura said. “Coming back to southeast Asia, whatever happens here, the extent to which countries can protect production levels, will have global impacts.”
