Drought & Flooding : a story of extremes8/12/2024 climate change affects communities of all kinds Nangarhar province, Afghanistan; photo - Community World Service Asia Across the United States, and in every region of the world, the impact of climate change presents a dramatic and often dangerous challenge, as natural disasters increase in both frequency and severity. Populations are displaced from regions and even across borders. Health, wellbeing, and livelihoods are pressed to the limit against disruption from drought, flood, and storms. Week of Compassion and our ecumenical partners continue to name climate change as a significant contributor to the severity and frequency of weather-related disasters, human displacement and migration, and sustainable development. Over the spring and summer of 2024 we have been able to trace the growing impact of disasters on communities in the United States and globally. Now more than ever it is important to understand the intersectional nature of climate change, disaster and refugee response, and migration. Week of Compassion works with partners to provide comprehensive support for recovering communities' immediate needs, and for building a sustainable future. The reality of climate change means that regions are often beset by multiple impact events, sometimes even from opposite extremes of the disaster cycle. A nation dealing with significant drought may lose crops and landscape that then leaves terrain vulnerable to the next season’s downpour, causing landslides and flooding. A community impacted by destructive wildfire will also bear the local health impact of smoke, ash, and dust storms as seasonal winds move across devastated land. An area that is already caring for refugees displaced by war or weather may find those persons displaced again (and more with them) as storms compound issues of sustainability, shelter, and food security. As climate change intensifies around the globe, in the United States, late spring storms brought torrential downpours to often-waterlogged Houston TX, where some areas saw as much as 23 inches of rain in a week. Week of Compassion remains active in long-term recovery efforts from previous storm systems and hurricanes, even as this summer’s storms – Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Debby, and others – brought incredible rainfall to Atlantic coast states, tracking a path very similar to Hurricane Idalia only a few years ago. El Niño patterns brought catastrophic drought to the Philippines earlier this year, affecting more than 500,000 families (2.2 million persons) in more than 3,000 villages. The National Council of Churches in Philippines (NCCP), a Week of Compassion bi-lateral partner through Global Ministries and ACT Alliance, is focused on the urgent needs of providing food supplies and livelihood support to low-income farmers, fisherfolk, and indigenous people. Long-term sustainable development includes the building and placement of deep well or water pump systems, to provide safer water after El Niño-related water shortages in the spring, as well as prevent water-borne disease that often accompanies the water abundance and flooding the La Niña phenomenon carries through the summer.  Nangarhar province, Afghanistan; photo - Community World Service Asia In Afghanistan, with an estimated 24 million people already in need of humanitarian assistance, heavy rains and flash floods have devastated already tenuous provinces. Reports from the central highlands and eastern Afghan regions include significant loss of life and extensive injuries, as well as the loss of agricultural land, homes, bridges, and roads. Week of Compassion partners note that as spring rains are followed by summer downpours, this already decimated land is especially vulnerable to increasingly significant flooding, as there is no agriculture, infrastructure, roadway, or buildings to hold the land in place.  food distribution; photo - CWS/ACT Alliance Countries in the Horn of Africa are also witnessing widespread flooding attributed to the El Niño phenomenon. Extensive flooding has caused loss of lives and livelihoods and caused significant displacement in Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia, and Ethiopia, underlining the intense dangers of climate change in an already politically and economically challenged region. Week of Compassion partners are working to respond with food distribution (rice, beans, maize flour, vegetable oil) and support for more than 10,000 people, working through existing food security, livelihood, and resilience programs in local communities where the greatest displaced populations are located. Week of Compassion is inspired by the work of local communities and ecumenical partners, who continue to seek support and advocate for immediate response to emergent needs, while focusing on the long-term development that will strengthen and sustain communities well into the future, toward the vision of a world where God’s people transform suffering into hope. Comments are closed.
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