49m more may face acute hunger: WFP

A powerful El Niño weather event could push an additional nearly 49 million people into acute food insecurity across some of the world’s most vulnerable regions by the end of next year, the World Food Programme (WFP) said yesterday.

The UN agency said in a report that there was an 81 percent chance of a very strong El Niño event, with sea surface temperatures at their warmest levels since at least 1982 and potentially making it the strongest such event since 1950.

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El Niño alters global weather patterns and is often associated with drought in Southern Africa, delayed monsoons in parts of Asia and erratic rainfall elsewhere.

“These are events that in the past have triggered large-scale hunger,” Jean-Martin Bauer, director of WFP’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Service, told reporters.

Based on an analysis of 45 countries, WFP estimates that the number of people facing acute food insecurity could rise by almost 49 million to a total of 274 million people, an increase of 22 percent, relative to the baseline population already experiencing crisis-level food insecurity or worse.