At 56 years old, Soalay has seen more droughts than he can count in Ankily, his village in southern Madagascar. Like many, he has been forced to migrate to find work when the crops have failed, trading chickens in Mahajanga, a northern port city in Madagascar, where many southerners go in hard times.
The latest drought in southern Madagascar has proved especially difficult, and the father of 12, with six grandchildren, has struggled to keep his land and his oxen. “This drought was very hard. We adults ate only once a day. The children ate nuts they collected in the bush,” recants Soalay.
Worldwide, the intensity and frequency of natural hazards, like droughts, are increasing. Natural hazards, for example, now occur nearly five times as often as they did 40 years ago. In some of the worst-hit places, one crisis will follow another, each time stripping away more of the hard-earned but limited assets of the poorest and most vulnerable people.
As an island, Madagascar is particularly subject to extreme weather conditions such as cyclones, floods and droughts, all of which are intensifying with climate change. Smallholder farmers make up approximately 70 percent of the Malagasy population, and the challenges of farming in southern Madagascar’s dry, semi-arid climate are exacerbated by recurrent droughts, strong winds and silting. Poor harvests as a result of climate extremes create a vicious cycle of poverty.
Madagascar already has one of the highest poverty rates in Africa, with 75 percent of people living on less than USD 1.25 a day, the international poverty threshold.
Most farmers in southern part of the country cultivate very small parcels of land, less than a hectare, primarily to produce food for their families. Any loss in production makes even meeting household needs more difficult. Often in remote areas that lack roads or infrastructure, farming communities have limited access to basic services such as water and electricity, as well as markets to sell their products. Alternative ways of generating income in this area are almost impossible to find.
Since 2014, three successive agricultural seasons have failed in southern Madagascar because of repeated droughts. Many households were forced to rely on precarious survival strategies: selling their animals at low prices, migrating in search of temporary employment or living off wild foods, such as red cactus.