Tuesday, March 9, 2021
Germany Latest News
  • Sports
  • USA
  • Asia
  • Health
  • Life Style
  • Tech
  • Science
  • Latin America
  • Africa
  • Europe
No Result
View All Result
Germany Latest News
Home latest news

Guatemala’s children bear brunt of prolonged drought and rising heat

admin by admin
January 24, 2020
in latest news
0
Guatemala’s children bear brunt of prolonged drought and rising heat
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

by Anastasia Moloney | @anastasiabogota | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:14 GMT Image Caption and Rights Information

By Anastasia Moloney

Related posts

German Constitutional Court upholds ban on anti-lockdown protest

German Constitutional Court upholds ban on anti-lockdown protest

December 6, 2020
German police carry out raids over online child sex abuse images

German police carry out raids over online child sex abuse images

December 4, 2020

BOGOTA, Jan 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Rising numbers of children in Guatemala are going hungry as drought linked to climate change reduces food harvests, fueling child malnutrition rates in the Central American nation, the United Nations and charities said.

Guatemala, which has one of the world’s high rates of child malnutrition, recorded more than 15,300 cases of acute malnutrition in children under 5 last year, up nearly 24% from 2018, according to government figures.

The number of children acutely malnourished was the highest since 2015, when a severe drought hit Central America.

Guatemala’s farmers are reeling from a series of prolonged droughts in recent years and from a lengthy heat wave last year as climate change brings drier conditions and erratic rainfall, U.N. officials said.

Children living in poor highland farming communities and along the “Dry Corridor” – running through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – are bearing the brunt, they said.

“There is an increase in cases of acute malnutrition that are related to climate change and the long periods of drought from June to October (last year),” said Maria Claudia Santizo, a nutrition specialist at the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

Drought is also adding to the area of Guatemala suffering problems, she said.

“With climate change, the dry corridor has expanded,” Santizo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Poor harvests of staple crops such as beans and maize mean rural families are forced to eat fewer meals a day, and have less food to sell, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Families also are unable to store food to see them through the lean period before the next harvest, the U.N. agency said.

“We are seeing a high rate of child malnutrition that’s rising for two reasons – high temperatures which affect the crops and resulting crop losses, and rains that are more erratic and unpredictable,” said Amy English, a technical advisor at international aid agency Mercy Corps, which works in Guatemala.

She said worsening hunger in the region was a contributor to the caravans of migrants moving north toward Mexico and the United States.

To combat crop losses, rural development programs must include efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change, including planting more drought-resistant crops and better conserving water, she said.

Jose Aquino, a rural development manager in Guatemala for Mercy Corps, said more rivers in the region are running dry at least part of the year.

“2019 was one of the driest years in Guatemala. Rivers that didn’t used to dry up are now doing so,” Aquino said.

“All this basically affects the availability of food,” he said.

STRUGGLING TO COPE

Marc-Andre Prost, a WFP regional nutrition advisor, said three in every five people in Guatemala already live in poverty and rural communities are struggling to cope with the additional burden of extreme weather.

According to WFP, about one million people in Guatemala – 15% of the population – “cannot meet their food needs on a daily basis”, and hundreds and thousands rely on food aid.

“Climate change is not responsible for this situation but climate change and what we’ve seen in the last two years, these climate events, are definitely exacerbating a situation where people don’t have the capacity to cope,” Prost said.

Guatemala’s small-scale farmers are heavily dependent on rainfall and most lack alternative sources of water for their crops.

“As soon as there is a problem with the rainfall, we see the immediate consequences on households” as they try to earn an income and feed themselves, Prost said.

Climate change means it is likely extreme weather – from hurricanes to torrential rains and prolonged droughts – will become more frequent in the future, he said.

Like previous leaders, the new president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, has pledged to make combating stubbornly high rates of child malnutrition a national priority.

(Reporting by Anastasia Moloney @anastasiabogota, Editing by Laurie Goering. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Read from source

Previous Post

UN Emergency Fund releases $10 million for East Africa locust outbreak response

Next Post

Gay civil rights leader may finally be pardoned 67 years after he was arrested for having sex with men

Next Post
Gay civil rights leader may finally be pardoned 67 years after he was arrested for having sex with men

Gay civil rights leader may finally be pardoned 67 years after he was arrested for having sex with men

RECOMMENDED NEWS

Kid with a machete thwarts home invasion

Kid with a machete thwarts home invasion

2 years ago
Marriage May Make Heart Disease a Little Less Dangerous

Marriage May Make Heart Disease a Little Less Dangerous

3 years ago
Baseball team apologizes after including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with ‘enemies of freedom’

Baseball team apologizes after including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with ‘enemies of freedom’

2 years ago
In agencies’ relocation, EU’s East-West divisions laid bare

In agencies’ relocation, EU’s East-West divisions laid bare

3 years ago

FOLLOW US

  • 81 Followers
  • 108k Subscribers

BROWSE BY CATEGORIES

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Health
  • latest news
  • Latin America
  • Life Style
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Tech
  • USA

BROWSE BY TOPICS

2018 League Balinese Culture Bali United Budget Travel Champions League Chopper Bike Doctor Terawan Istana Negara Market Stories National Exam Pope Francis may mediate Gulf Crisis Solution Visit Bali
No Result
View All Result

Recent Posts

  • Google halts Play Store ‘review bombing’ by GameStop traders
  • Germany bans entry from the UK, Ireland, Brazil, Portugal and South Africa over COVID-19 variants
  • Biden warns of growing cost of delay on economic coronavirus aid plan
  • Nasa’s Perseverance rover is bearing down on Mars
  • India protests: Internet cut to hunger-striking farmers in Delhi

Categories

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Health
  • latest news
  • Latin America
  • Life Style
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Tech
  • USA

Tags

2018 League Balinese Culture Bali United Budget Travel Champions League Chopper Bike Doctor Terawan Istana Negara Market Stories National Exam Pope Francis may mediate Gulf Crisis Solution Visit Bali
German Constitutional Court upholds ban on anti-lockdown protest
latest news

German Constitutional Court upholds ban on anti-lockdown protest

by admin
December 6, 2020
0

An anti-lockdown group had filed an urgent court appeal hoping to allow 20,000 people to gather in Bremen. Despite the...

Read more

Recent News

  • Google halts Play Store ‘review bombing’ by GameStop traders
  • Germany bans entry from the UK, Ireland, Brazil, Portugal and South Africa over COVID-19 variants
  • Biden warns of growing cost of delay on economic coronavirus aid plan

Category

  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Europe
  • Health
  • latest news
  • Latin America
  • Life Style
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Tech
  • USA

Recent News

Google halts Play Store ‘review bombing’ by GameStop traders

Google halts Play Store ‘review bombing’ by GameStop traders

January 31, 2021
Germany bans entry from the UK, Ireland, Brazil, Portugal and South Africa over COVID-19 variants

Germany bans entry from the UK, Ireland, Brazil, Portugal and South Africa over COVID-19 variants

January 31, 2021
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact

© 2021 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Sports

© 2021 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.