People forced to eat cattle feed and cacti in Madagascar due to climate-driven drought

The East African island is on the brink of becoming the first climate change-induced famine, reports Rory Sullivan

People in Madagascar have been forced to eat cattle feed and cacti to avoid starvation as the country’s worst drought in decades causes devastating food shortages.

The world must wake up to the climate crisis which is causing catastrophes like the current drought in southern Madagascar, charities have urged.

The warning comes in the run-up to the crucial Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, where world leaders will meet to discuss the most pressing issue of our time.

Since November last year, the south of Madagascar has been experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. Hundreds of thousands of people there are in urgent need of clean water and food.

Highlighting the severity of the situation on the world’s fourth-largest island, the UN said last week that the south of the country could experience the world’s first climate change-driven famine.

Florine Azefotsy, 55, would usually spend up to seven hours each day collecting water in the Androy region of Madagascar. However, this is now not possible because the nearby Mandrare river is almost completely dry.

“We used to be a great farming community, able to feed ourselves,” she said, adding that the lack of rain changed everything.

Neighbours started to borrow food from one another, then it all ran out. “We started to eat cactus and anything we could find for days,” Ms Azefotsy added.

She said elderly people in her village had died of hunger and thirst. As early as March, Amnesty International received separate reports of starvation.

Philomène Sana, 32, who lives in the same region, said she is surviving by eating dried cassava, normally only eaten by cattle.

“There is nothing you can do anymore in the village to survive. The land is totally dry. Nothing grows anymore. Most of the time we go to bed with empty bellies,” she said.

Alice Rahmoun, of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), said that people in some areas were surviving by eating locusts and cactus leaves. And to make matters worse, cacti are now dying from the lack of water, she added.

Hanta Rabesandratana, the head of policy at WaterAid Madagascar, said her country’s drought is “one of the starkest examples in the world today that the climate crisis is at heart a water crisis”.

At the Cop26 summit, Ms Rabesandratana hopes to add her voice to those demanding that world leaders help communities “already struggling at the forefront of the crisis” with grants.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, also called on the international community to fund recovery efforts in southern Madagascar.

“Going forward, countries that have contributed the most to climate change and those with the most available resources must also provide additional financial and technical support to help people in Madagascar better adapt to the impacts of climate change, such as increasingly severe and prolonged droughts,” she said.