ENVIRONMENT: UN Prepares Multiple Receiving Party for El Nino

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Dec 18 1997 (IPS) - The United Nations Organisation (UN) started many pronged-action this week to prevent and mitigate the effects of the el Nino phenomenon, which are expected to worsen in the next three months.

A special group, made up of some twenty UN agencies, will develop an internationally concerted and comprehensive strategy to include technical cooperation, technology transfers, financial assistance and the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

El Nino, an overheating of the western waters of the Ecuatorial Pacific, alters atmospheric pressure in the regions of influence and unleashes a series of weather disturbances, like the floods which killed 1,800 people in Somalia this year.

The UN Task Force warned a press conference Thursday the consequences of the phenomenon will appear with full force after Christmas, when the effects of el Nino normally reach their peak.

As a preview, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recorded the losses notched up by the phenomenon during recent days in Somalia, Sudan and southern Brazil.

Apart from the 1,800 deaths, the surprise floods in southern Somalia also caused a loss of housing for 230,000 people, 60,000 hectares of harvests and 33,000 head of livestock.

Many of the victims perished when their houses collapsed or in the ensuing attacks by crocodiles, said the UNDP.

In Sudan, the torrential rains caused floods which destroyed residential buildings, killing eight people and leaving more than 2,500 people dead.

Then excessively strong sunshine baked the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul over recent weeks, killing four people and making 12,700 people homeless, said the UNDP.

However, experts from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) added not all the natural catastrophes of recent times, like the serious floods in Central Europe, and Germany in particular, can be put down to el Nino.

But the mark of the phenomenon is evident in the droughts currently occuring in Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and Central America, they added.

In Asia, the monsoon rains arrived late, in some cases, and with less rainfall than normal, in others. The rainy season also came late to subsaharan Africa.

The World Food Programme (PMA) said the threat of drought is hanging over the heads of 27 million people across South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana.

Emergency aid to these populations will require 600,000 tons of food at a cost of 200 million dollars, but “the investment will have to be greater if El Nino provokes more devastating effects on the region,” said the WFP.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shared the concern for the crops to be sown in the next few months in the equatorial belt, providing the foodstuffs for 1998.

The most intense impact of El Nino is expected from December, said the FAO.

However, they said, cereal production in 1997 was expected to be little affected by El Nino, despite some reductions in harvests due to related phenonema.

The UN experts stressed the recurrent nature of El Nino, but admitted it had hit hard this year, on a scale only comparable with the 1982-1983 period.

In that year, El Nino caused the historic drought in the Sahel, killing 2,000 people and costing 13 billion dollars in the African region.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) demanded improved systems to predict the effects of El Nino in order to help national health services in their planning.

In southeast Africa, the regional WHO cholera monitoring team was warned of the forecast of drought from El Nino, and could therefore reduce the severity of a bout of the illness in Mozambique.

Meahwhile, the WHO must also recognise the malaria epidemics in Pakistan and Colombia were related to increases in temperature as a result of the phenomenon.