Southeast Asia braces for record El Niño-driven food crisis

All signs are pointing towards a record-breaking El Niño this year, which experts say may cause severe drought in Asia and other extreme weather across the world, threatening food security for millions of people.

El Niño is part of a natural climate cycle of warming ocean temperatures, but this year’s is expected to reach new extremes of drought, heatwaves, flooding and other climate-related disruptions in South America, Africa and Asia.

Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions. It’s already beset by an energy crisis triggered by the war in Iran. El Niño is fuelling wildfires across farmland, depleting water supplies for major cities and hurting fish catches in the region.

Asian governments that have been drawing on their financial reserves to mitigate the war’s ripple effects of higher energy costs and scarce fertiliser supplies have less capacity to cope with this year’s intensifying El Niño, which is forecast to peak in December.

The phenomenon may amplify other crises in Southeast Asia, according to Paul Teng of Singapore’s Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute, who said: “El Niño is compounding all the other problems we see.”

During El Niño years, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are warmer than usual. This happens every few years and often alters global weather patterns.

This year, the seas are already hotter than average, with global oceans hitting new temperature records in August as the climate warms, said Kareff Rafisura, chief of the disaster risk reduction division at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

This intensifying El Niño may be the “strongest in living memory”, according to the UK’s national weather and climate service. Similarly, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there is a 69% chance this will be the strongest recorded El Niño since record-keeping began in 1950.

El Niño’s impact will be felt differently across regions, but it is expected to jeopardise food security worldwide. It could push at least 49-million more people into acute food insecurity by the end of 2027, according to the UN World Food Programme.

The problem will be worst in parts of central America and southern Africa, with significant effects also anticipated in eastern Africa and south and southeast Asia, warned the food agency.

In Southeast Asia, wildfires are torching forests and peatlands in Indonesia, sending up plumes of toxic haze. The water level of a major reservoir supplying the bustling capital city of Jakarta, the world’s biggest metropolis, is dropping centimetre by centimetre.

As the lake dries, the ruins of one of 11 villages that had been inundated by the reservoir have emerged, as alarm grows over the need for alternative water supplies for the city of 42-million.

“I would have rather not moved. There were plenty of livelihood opportunities here,” said Hussen, who only uses one name, as he ferried people across the receding reservoir.

This is only the beginning, said Erma Yulihastin with Indonesia’s Research Centre for Climate and Atmosphere, who warned El Niño has just begun its “super phase”.