| HotSpots H2O: Ongoing Madagascar Famine Is Driven By Poverty, Not Climate Change
After two below-average rainy seasons, Madagascar is in the grip of a deadly famine. Over one million people — half a million of them children — require emergency food aid, in what international leaders for months have been calling an emergency of enormous proportions. International organizations had blamed the calamity on climate change, but a new study rejects that assumption. The study found that the main drivers of the famine are poverty, natural variations in weather, and poor infrastructure. Although atmospheric warming has made severe droughts and heat waves more likely worldwide, the report found that the recent dry spell in Madagascar falls within the natural fluctuations of the country’s weather, which is highly variable. The finding aligns with conclusions in the U.N.’s recent state-of-the-science report, which noted that there was “limited evidence” that human influence has affected droughts in the region. | 