El Niño's Inexorable Return: A Legacy of Hunger and State Fragility
The United Nations’ World Food Programme and its agriculture agency have issued a joint appeal for funds, a stark signal that the specter of a global hunger crisis, driven by the re-emergence of El Niño, is once again upon us. This pre-emptive call underscores a critical lesson from history: the cyclical weather phenomenon, now returning, has a devastating track record far beyond mere climatic shifts.
El Niño, a term coined by Pacific fishers in the 1800s, was only truly understood for its global reach by scientists in the 1970s. That same decade saw the 1972-73 El Niño warm Peruvian waters to an extent that collapsed the world’s largest anchovy fishery, precipitating the first-ever forecast of its state the following year. More critically, it brought harsh drought to south Asia, the Sahel, and parts of east Africa. In Ethiopia, failed harvests led to widespread suffering, prompting protests against the emperor's handling of the famine and ultimately contributing to a military coup that ushered in a communist dictatorship.
These historical patterns are not abstract statistics but lived trauma. Dugna Woyessa, an epidemiologist at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, experienced the 1970s drought as a child when his school converted a classroom into a grain store for aid. A decade later, the stronger 1982-83 El Niño forced his classmates to travel 150km to help with state farm harvests, culminating in a famine that garnered global attention through events like Live Aid, with Woyessa himself sharing meager bread rations with fellow students to assist people in shelters.
This re-emerging El Niño, feared by some to approach 'Godzilla' strength, reminds us that the phenomenon is one of the "most challenging climate phenomena," as noted by Woyessa. Its impact on human health, particularly through nutrition, is profound. As Woyessa highlighted, "Nutrition is everything for your capacity to withstand the challenges of its negative impacts on human health." The historical record offers grim evidence: the worst El Niño years in the 19th century saw famines in India, China, and Brazil claiming tens of millions of lives.
While scientists caution that climatic shifts are merely one factor in societal collapse, El Niño can act as a catalyst for apocalyptic suffering. Beyond modern history, theories suggest its erratic weather ruined 18th-century harvests, possibly setting the stage for the French Revolution, and even aided the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire in the 16th century by nourishing desert vegetation. The UN's joint appeal is a critical acknowledgment of this deep-seated vulnerability, urging proactive measures to mitigate impacts before they escalate from weather anomalies to full-blown humanitarian and political crises across already fragile regions.