El Niño drought in Papua New Guinea affects up to 8 million people

An extreme drought driven by a historic El Niño is affecting as many as 8 million people in Papua New Guinea, drying up rivers and creeks, killing family food gardens and disrupting water, electricity and schooling across the Pacific nation.

A coalition of churches, trade unions and business groups has called the situation a "national crisis", saying there appears to be "no coordinated plan to protect vulnerable communities from the worsening impacts of El Niño."

Families ration food to one meal a day

Emilly Meren, humanitarian projects manager at CARE International in PNG, said families in rural highland areas were rationing food to one meal a day, and that food insecurity was leading to localised disputes between families. Women and girls were expected to do more to support their families but were "the last to eat because they have to serve others first", she said. They travel three to four hours to find water and food and face a heightened risk of harassment, with reports of transactional sex — exchanging sex for money or food.

'We're starved of rain'

The El Niño climate pattern is gaining strength in the tropical Pacific, with forecasts suggesting it will be the strongest ever recorded and its impacts worsened by global heating. Some parts of PNG have had less than a quarter of their usual rainfall since August.

The PNG National Weather Service declared the onset of El Niño in June, but assistant director Kasis Inape said much of the country was already in drought by then and about 8 million people had been affected. He said PNG is one of the wettest places in the world, with rain fed by warm tropical waters, but El Niño had shifted those waters east. "Because we're a rain-fed country, a lot of our people are subsistence farmers and they depend just on rainfall to survive and to feed themselves," he said. Short-term relief is forecast for the wet season between November and April, but Inape said two months of rain would not be enough for crops to grow and water levels to recover.

Schools and clinics cut their hours

In Morobe province's Bulolo district, smaller rivers have dried up. Resident Theophil Zarack said many schools and health centres were operating for only half a day, with some clinics no longer accepting inpatients because of a lack of water. Martha Zureno, of Leklu village, said her children walk miles every afternoon to fetch water for cooking and drinking, all the crops in the gardens have dried up and died, and panning for gold — the main local income — has become increasingly difficult without water.

A destructive hailstorm in parts of Enga province earlier this month, not blamed directly on El Niño, buried sweet potatoes under ice and worsened food scarcity, according to George Iki, president of the Sambe Unity Development Association.

In the capital Port Moresby, PNG Power has begun planned blackouts after falling dam levels cut hydropower generation, saying disruptions could continue for up to 10 months while it manages dam releases to protect the city's water supply. Business figure Peter Aitsi, co-chair of the Community Coalition Against Corruption, said the government needed to carry out "proper assessments" of the impacts, particularly on rural communities, and warned that urban centres shielded so far could be hit by blackouts and fresh food shortages. Prime Minister James Marape has directed provincial and district authorities to prepare for a prolonged dry season and said cabinet is examining financial arrangements to support disaster responses.

Source: The Guardian.