In recent weeks, several floods have killed hundreds and displaced many people in Africa. Environmental activists warn that floods could claim many more victims indirectly by engulfing farmland, undermining food security, and worsening malnutrition on the continent. However, a new study suggests that this outcome is not a foregone conclusion, and that visible impacts of devastation could increase urgency for climate action on the continent.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by Connor Reed, warned that nearly six million people across several countries in western, eastern, and southern Africa (Nigeria, Niger, Kenya, Mozambique, and Malawi, among others) could be affected by food insecurity as a result of flooding. From 2009 to 2020, the researchers analysed how key flood characteristics such as location, duration, and extent, influenced the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale which is an independent food insecurity metric.
Floods’ impacts can be immediate
In the months leading to the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), consultations and statements by Africa’s climate change stakeholders suggested Africa would promote economic development and fighting poverty as an integral part of global climate goals, especially on the continent.
In their study, Reed, from the Center for Data Science, at New York University, and colleagues reported that the impacts of floods on food security are often seen almost immediately or within a few months. “In many flood events we assessed, there were substantial damages to infrastructure, croplands, and livestock, which compromised food production and access, as well as water resources and sanitation also critical to food security,” Reed says.
Existing gaps and cautious inferences
Andrew Kruczkiewicz, from Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, told Nature Africa that the goals of previous reports on floods in Africa were to raise the level of awareness and advocacy, as well as push for funding for response.
“There's very little done on understanding flood risk to take actions before a flood happens; to decrease and/or mitigate impacts on food security? That really hasn't happened much yet, but it's what we should be doing more,” he says.
There is a lack of clarity in the delineation of food insecurity and malnutrition caused by floods. One of the PNAS study co-authors, Weston Anderson, from the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, says these impacts are difficult to measure, and there is the need to scale up food security and malnutrition data being collected in Africa and across the world.
According to Anderson “food security and malnutrition are the result of human choices in human systems, so we can't stop at the ways in which climate affects crops. We need to also consider the entire system. It's not a foregone conclusion given the destruction of crops that we will then see food insecurity.”
Floods can also be beneficial
The researchers reported that for about 12% of those who experienced food insecurity in the studied areas, access to food was affected by flooding over the 2009-2020 period. When crops were destroyed, food insecurity increased for some, as expected, but depending on the time and region, the study found that humanitarian intervention and government assistance meant this was not universal.
Sonali Shukla McDermid, another co-author of the paper describes how farmers that received seeds and fertilizers during Nigeria’s 2012 floods, took advantage of the increased soil moisture in the period immediately afterwards. She says the next goal is to explore links the researchers discovered between flooding and food security.