The carcasses of goats lie in the sand on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, after four failed rainy seasons have driven millions of people to the brink of famine. Photo: Hayden / ZUMA Wire / IMAGO

“Pending nightmare” in Somalia with millions at risk of starvation – “Tens of thousands of people will already have died by the time we declare a famine”

By Sertan Sanderson 14 September 2022 (DW) – A humanitarian catastrophe is imminent in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. That’s the joint assessment of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), following months of food security assessments. The number of people in dire […]

Residents ride on a wooden boat as they pass submerged houses amid flood water, following rains and floods during the monsoon season in Bajara village, at the banks of Manchar lake, in Sehwan, Pakistan 6 September 2022. Photo: Akhtar Soomro / REUTERS

Pakistan looks “like a sea” after floods, PM says, as 18 more die – “You wouldn’t believe the scale of destruction there”

By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad 7 September 2022 SEHWAN, Pakistan (Reuters) – Parts of Pakistan seemed “like a sea”, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday, after visiting some of the flood-hit areas that cover as much as a third of the South Asian nation, where 18 more deaths took the toll from […]

Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara from the Guajajara ethnic group shows her hands painted in red symbolizing blood, during a protest against Violence, illegal logging, mining and ranching, and to demand government protection for their reserves, one day before the celebration of "Amazon Day," in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sunday, 4 September 2022. Photo: Andre Penner / AP Photo

Indigenous forest guardians reported slain in Brazil – “We are here to say: enough with this violence, enough with genocide against our people and our territory”

RIO DE JANEIRO, 4 September 2022 (AP) – Two members of the Brazilian Indigenous group known for its forest guardians who combat illegal deforestation have been killed according to the Indigenist Missionary Council, a nonprofit that monitors violence against native peoples. Forest guard Janildo Oliveira Guajajara was killed with multiple gunshots from behind, while another […]

Lake Sawa in Iraq, 6 July 2022. The lake is filled with only 5 percent to 10 percent of its initial area. Photo: Laurence Geai / Le Monde

Iraq’s fertile valley is dying – Authorities estimate that the Euphrates could dry up as early as 2040

By Hélène Sallon 21 August 2022 (Le Monde) – From the top of the old tourist complex built on the shores of Lake Sawa, in the province of Al-Muthanna in southern Iraq, the desert stretches as far as the eye can see. The buildings have been abandoned since the 2003 US-British invasion. “In the past, […]

People make their way through a flooded area following heavy rains in Karachi, Pakistan on 24 August 2022. Photo: Shahzaib Akber / EPA 24 August 2022.

Pakistan struggles to avert danger as floods rise, death toll tops 1,300 – More than 400,000 pregnant women in Sindh province displaced by floods, only 891 have reached relief camps

By Syed Raza Hassan and Asif Shahzad 5 September 2022 ISLAMABAD/KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistani authorities are struggling to prevent the country’s biggest lake bursting its banks and inundating nearby towns after unprecedented flooding, while the disaster management agency on Monday raised its toll of flood deaths by another 24. Record monsoon rains and melting glaciers […]

Current food security outcomes, Baidoa and Burhakaba Districts in Bay of Somalia, July to September 2022 (left) and projected food security outcomes, Baidoa and Burhakaba Districts in Bay of Somalia, October to December 2022 (right). Famine (IPC Phase 5) is projected to emerge in three areas of Bay Region, Somalia, in late 2022 in the absence of urgent, multisectoral humanitarian assistance. Although levels of acute malnutrition among children and the rate of hunger-related deaths have not yet met the IPC’s technical definition of Famine (IPC Phase 5), those thresholds are expected to be reached during the October to December 2022 projection period based on currently available information that minimal humanitarian food assistance will be delivered in these areas in November and December due to funding constraints. Data: FEWS NET and FSNAU. Graphic: FEWS NET Somalia

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator says famine is at the door in Somalia – “The unprecedented failure of four consecutive rainy seasons, decades of conflict, mass displacement, severe economic issues are pushing many people to that brink”

Mogadishu, 5 September 2022 (OCHA) – The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition analysis report shows concrete indications that famine will occur in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts in south-central Somalia between October and December. Full remarks to the press by Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths I have been shocked to my […]

Children use rafts to make their way along a waterlogged street in a residential area after a heavy monsoon rainfall in Hyderabad on 24 August 2022. Record monsoon rains were causing a “catastrophe of epic scale”, Pakistan's Climate Change Minister said August 24, announcing an international appeal for help in dealing with floods that have killed more than 800 people since June 2022. Photo: Akram SHAHID / AFP

Sleepwalking to destruction: World struck by relentless climate catastrophes – “We just would not get temperatures as high as we’ve seen without human-caused climate change”

By Nick O’Malley 3 September 2022 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Authorities are having difficulties finding the words to properly capture the devastation caused by the floods that have swept across Pakistan in recent days, killing more than 1400 people and displacing up to 50 million as water inundates about a third of the country. […]

A firefighter adjusts his helmet as he stands guard to monitor a fire near Saint-Magne, southwestern France on 11 August 2022. Photo: Philippe Lopez / AFP

Will the summer of 2022 hasten France’s efforts to fight climate change? – “The summer of 2022 is probably the coolest you have experienced or will experience in the next 20 years”

4 September 2022 (France24) – The summer of 2022 was a record-breaking season, marked by several heatwaves, forest fires, and severe drought. These extreme weather events seem to have increased awareness of climate change among the French. But will it be followed by concrete action? Heatwaves, fires, drought, violent storms… The summer of 2022 broke […]

Local residents cross a portion of road destroyed by floodwaters in Kalam Valley in northern Pakistan, Sunday, 4 September 2022. More than 1,300 people have died and millions have lost their homes in flooding caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan this year that many experts have blamed on climate change. Photo: Sherin Zada / AP Photo

Pakistan floods villages to save a city – Damage estimated at $10 billion – “The scale of devastation is massive and requires an immense humanitarian response for 33 million people”

By Zarar Khan 4 September 2022 ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistani engineers cut into an embankment for one of the country’s largest lakes on Sunday to release rising waters in the hopes of saving a nearby city and town from flooding as officials predicted more monsoon rain was on the way for the country’s already devastated […]

A sunken boat that sat underwater for years has been exposed as Lake Mead continues to recede after years of chronic overuse and drought worsened by rising temperatures. Photo: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

Facing “dead pool” risk, California braces for painful water cuts from Colorado River – “It’s very scary. If there’s no river, then you have no community.”

By Ian James 4 September 2022 (Los Angeles Times) – California water districts are under growing pressure to shoulder substantial water cutbacks as the federal government pushes for urgent solutions to prevent the Colorado River’s badly depleted reservoirs from reaching dangerously low levels. California has the largest water entitlement of any state on the Colorado […]

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