It is according to a new report of United Nations Convention to Fight Desertification (UNCCD), the National Center for US National Dryness (NDMC) and the International alliance of resilience of drought On the global impacts of droughts from 2023 to 2025.
“Drought is a silent killer. He slips, drains the resources and devastates lives in slow motion. His scars are deep, “said UNCD executive secretary Ibrahim Thiaw.
“This is not a period of drought,” said Dr. Mark Svoboda, co-author and director of NDMC. “This is a global disaster with slow evolution, the worst that I have ever seen. This report underlines the need for systematic monitoring of the way in which drought affects the lives, livelihoods and the health of the ecosystems on which we all depend. ”
Record devastation in Africa
According to the report, while 90 million people face acute hunger across East and South Africa, certain regions of the region have experienced the worst drought ever recorded.
In Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, corn and wheat crops have undergone repeated failures. In Zimbabwe, in particular, the 2024 corn harvest fell 70% in the year, corn prices have doubled and 9,000 cattle died of thirst and famine.
Some 43,000 people in Somalia died in 2022 only due to the hunger linked to drought. The crisis continued until 2025, with a quarter of the population in the face of food insecurity in terms of the crisis at the start of the year.
Following the drought, Zambia suffers from one of the worst energy crises in the world: in April, the Zambezi river fell to 20% of its long -term average, and the country’s largest hydroelectric factory, the Kariba barrier, fell to 7% production capacity, causing a characteristic of electricity that can go up to 21 hours a day. This led to closing hospitals, bakeries and factories, further aggravating devastation.
World impacts
But the effects of drought extend beyond Africa. For example, by September 2023 in Spain, two years of drought and record heat caused a 50% drop in olive harvest, doubling the prices of olive oil nationwide.
In Türkiye, the exhaustion of the groundwater accelerated by the drought has triggered chasms, by endangering communities and their infrastructure while reducing the storage capacity of aquifers.
In the Amazon basin, record river levels in 2023 and 2024 led to the death of fish and endangered dolphins, disturbed the supply of drinking water and created transport challenges for hundreds of thousands. Deforestation and current fires also threaten to move the Amazon from a carbon well to a carbon source.
The drop in water levels in the Panama Canal has reduced the transit by more than a third, resulting in major global trade disturbances. Among the overflowing effects were the drop in American exports and shortages of soybeans and the price increase in British grocery stores.
Call for cooperation and solutions
The report has listed several recommendations to help fight this crisis, including stronger early alert systems, surveillance of drought in real time and impact on drought, and nature -based solutions such as the restoration of watersheds and the use of Aboriginal crops.
He also called for more resilient infrastructure – including out -of -network energy and alternative water supply systems – and global cooperation, in particular with regard to cross -border river basins and commercial roads.
Publicado anteriormente en Almouwatin.
