El Nino Drought Called a National Crisis in Papua New Guinea as Rivers Dry Up and 8 Million Are Affected

Extreme drought driven by a historic El Nino is affecting as many as 8 million people in Papua New Guinea, creating problems from food and water shortages to electricity scarcity and disruption to schooling.

An influential coalition including churches, trade unions and business groups has said the Pacific nation is in the midst of a 'national crisis'. Yet there appears to be no coordinated plan to protect vulnerable communities from the worsening impacts of El Nino, it said.

Residents and community leaders said rivers and creeks have dried up and family food gardens, a vital source of food and income for many, have shrivelled. Schools and health facilities are being forced to close early because they lack enough water for basic services.

Emilly Meren, humanitarian projects manager at CARE International in PNG, said families in rural highland areas were rationing food to one meal a day, while food insecurity was leading to localised disputes between families.

She said women and girls are expected to do more to support their families, yet they are the last to eat because they have to serve others first. They have to travel three to four hours to source water and food and face a heightened risk of harassment. Stories are also being heard of transactional sex in the community, exchanging sex for money or food, she said.

The El Nino climate pattern is gaining strength in the tropical Pacific, with forecasts suggesting it will be the strongest ever recorded, its impacts worsened by global heating.

Some parts of PNG have had less than a quarter of their usual rainfall since August.

The PNG National Weather Service declared the onset of El Nino in June. Its assistant director, Kasis Inape, said at that point much of the country was already in drought and about 8 million people had been affected.

Inape said PNG was one of the wettest places in the world, with rain fed by warm tropical waters, but El Nino had seen those waters shift east and the country was starved of rain. Because PNG is a rain-fed country, many people are subsistence farmers who depend only on rainfall to survive and feed themselves, he said.

PNG's wet season runs from November to April. Inape said while some short-term relief was forecast, there were concerns El Nino would shorten the season. He said the place is so dry that just two months of rain is not enough to allow crops to grow and water levels to be comfortable.

In Morobe province's Bulolo district, smaller rivers have dried up, leaving families without water for drinking, cooking and washing. Resident Theophil Zarack said many schools and health centres were operating for only half a day, and some clinics were no longer accepting inpatients due to a lack of water.

Martha Zureno, a resident of Leklu village, said all their rivers have dried up, including the one behind her house. Now she and her children walk for miles every afternoon to fetch water for cooking and drinking from the other side. A well they dug themselves is used only for washing. All the crops in their gardens have dried up and died, and they cannot grow anything now.

Zureno said most local residents depend on panning for gold to earn an income, but without water even that has become increasingly difficult.

Meanwhile, a destructive hailstorm in parts of Enga province earlier this month, not blamed directly on El Nino, buried sweet potatoes under ice, exacerbating food scarcity, according to George Iki, president of the Sambe Unity Development Association.

In the capital Port Moresby, PNG Power has begun planned electricity blackouts after falling dam levels cut hydropower generation, and said disruptions could continue for up to 10 months. The company is managing dam releases to protect the city's water supply.

Peter Aitsi, a prominent PNG business figure and co-chair of the Community Coalition Against Corruption, said the government needed proper assessments of the unfolding impacts, particularly on rural communities. Last month the group called the drought a 'national crisis'. Aitsi said urban centres have mostly been shielded so far, but that could change with electricity blackouts and a shortage of fresh food from drought-stricken areas.

He said the capital had been covered in a smoke haze in the past week from fires elsewhere on the island and in Indonesia to the west, which scientists say have been fuelled by El Nino.

Prime Minister James Marape has directed provincial and district authorities to prepare for a prolonged dry season, saying his government was examining financial arrangements to support disaster responses. Marape said cabinet was looking at tailoring financial instructions to make sure districts and provinces are assisted to respond to disasters as they happen, where appropriate.