Fish, rice and El Niño: A recipe for disaster in Asia and the Pacific?
As the climatic phenomenon commonly known as El Niño disturbs weather patterns across the Pacific and much of Asia, the European Commission has partnered with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to enhance the resilience of the most populated country in the Pacific, Papua New Guinea – where the impact has been the most severe so far.
By Joe Lowry
Fish and rice. It’s a staple dish found on every street corner across Asia and the Pacific. From 'biriyani' to 'kung pao', from 'kao tom pla' to 'nasi goreng', from the underground Fijian 'lovo ovens' to 'Tandoori pots' across South Asia, the region marches on a stomach filled with fish and rice. But now, there are deep concerns about the effects that the climatic phenomenon, El Niño, will have on these two staples.
El Niño (Spanish for ‘the child’, named after the infant Christ due to the benevolent weather it can bring) is caused by a band of warming water in the central Pacific. It occurs regularly, and is sometimes imperceptible.
But the El Niño that is developing now is predicted to be one of the strongest, if not the strongest on record. It is always felt most intensely in Asia, and there are already wild and erratic weather patterns.
In recent weeks, worrying levels of drought and delayed rainfall have hit Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. Myanmar/Burma and Laos were recently awash with floods, and hundreds died in both heatwaves and floods in Pakistan and India.
This is bad news on many levels. Of course agriculture will be hard hit. Without monsoon rains, rice crops suffer. A temperature rise of just one per cent reduces rice yields by one tenth. As ocean temperatures rise, fish go deeper, or migrate. One cannot overestimate the importance of fishing to the region. In Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, fishing accounts for 55 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). More diverse economies like Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam rely on fishing for employment, and for 10 per cent of their GDP.
El Niño is not only affecting coastal communities. A team of experts from the European Commission and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) recently visited one of the remotest, least accessible parts of the world, the Papua New Guinean Highlands. There, they found drought and frost had destroyed wide tracts of food gardens and plantations, while traditional levels of water sources such as local streams and rivers were significantly reduced.
"Staple foods like sweet potato and other tuber crops have been stunted in size or completely destroyed. Families are struggling to maintain food supplies as most of their farms and gardens have already been destroyed,” reads an IOM report.
While it may seem as if the much-loved sweet potato or 'kaukau' is being scraped off Papua New Guinea’s dinner plate, fear not: IOM is currently working with funding from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO) to help the Highlands people recover from the drought.
The project focuses on providing resilient water supply sources through the rehabilitation or drilling of boreholes in community schools and clinics, as well as training farmers on climate-resilient agriculture techniques incorporating indigenous farming practices, and supporting crop diversification through the distribution of drought-tolerant varieties.
The last major El Niño in 2010 was accompanied by a 45 per cent rise in the price of food staples across much of the world. Drought is a major contributor to food shortages, but it also leads to lack of hydropower, which supplies 100 per cent of Nepal’s energy, 70 per cent of Myanmar's, and 30 per cent of Cambodia’s. Power cuts are already being seen across the region. Lack of hydropower means more use of fossil fuels, resulting in higher prices for everything, as well as increased pollution.
There is much that can be done on a macro level, including better use of food reserves, improved water management and investment in drought-tolerant crops.
On a micro level, what people will do, when all else fails, or even before it fails, is to resort to humanity’s oldest poverty-reduction strategy. Like the fish in search of security, they will migrate.