'The Warning Bells are Deafening': Super El Niño Threatening Global Hunger Crisis

As many as 50 million people across the world face potential hunger, disease, and water shortages by early 2016 if countries do not act immediately, declared Oxfam International on Monday, addressing those nations predicted to be ravaged by this year’s Super El Niño as well as wealthy governments indebted to those most vulnerable to climate change.

Click Here: New Zealand Rugby Shop

“The warning bells are deafening,” said Meg Quartermaine, humanitarian manager with Oxfam Australia, which issued the warning on the same day that the powerful Typhoon Melor made landfall in the Philippines, forcing the evacuation of 725,000 people.

The Philippines is among the countries that the global anti-poverty group has previously identified as having a food supply already threatened by the impacts of climate change. The typhoons and other extreme weather events that are being predicted under, what could be “the most powerful El Niño on record” are expected to drive millions of people in the Pacific rim region, and across the globe, into even more dire straits.

Monday’s report (pdf) said that Papua New Guinea will likely bear the brunt of this season’s “super charged weather phenomenon,” with the country’s National Disaster Committee estimating that as many as 3 million people are at risk of starvation, “as crop failures force many people to cut back to eating just one meal a day.”

While that nation—along with Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Tonga—are “experiencing worsening drought, central Pacific countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu will likely see intense rain causing flooding and higher sea levels,” the report states.