5.2 Disaster events

Introduction

In late 2019, humanity was severely hit by a highly contagious and rapidly spreading type of coronavirus named COVID-19, leading to a massive health crisis. Hence, a period of fewer than three months was enough time for the new virus to spread all over the world. A pandemic was announced by WHO on March 11, 2020. Under the current pandemic conditions, governments were forced to take unprecedented actions of border closures, quarantines, and restricting people’s movement. Up to mid-May, about 4.67M persons were infected by the virus around the world, and 1.71M persons had recovered, while 312,645 persons have lost their lives (Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1. Map of the COVID-19 verified number of infected per capita as of 18 May 2020. Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/COVID-19_Outbreak_World_Map_per_Capita.svg

Currently, scientists around the world are racing to find a vaccine for this new virus, and several specialized international organizations such as WHO, FAO and World Bank are attempting to assess the damage of COVID-19 on public health, economy, and food security. In this context, many scenarios for how COVID-19 could impact human life were introduced. All agree that the bill for this crisis will depend on the length of the duration of the lockdown until a vaccine has been developed. The most affected countries will be the poorest ones, where the public health systems are very weak to cope with the current situation. Vulnerable groups, including small-scale farmers, migrant and informal workers, will be extremely affected. They are in an urgent need for intervention and assistance to mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19.

The first quarter (January to April) of 2020 was warmer than average particularly over Russia, Europe, Central Asia, and southern America. The same period can be characterized as being drier-than-average, particularly over Europe, South-East Asia, and the southern part of North America. After intensive wildfires at the end of 2019, Australia received some rainfall by the start of 2020. It helped fight wildfires and even caused some floods in the northern part. Also, the West Indian Ocean area, Madagascar and eastern Africa experienced positive rainfall anomalies and flooding over the land areas.

COVID-19 impacts on food and agriculture

The current and prospective impacts of COVID-19 on food and agriculture sectors are primarily assessed by FAO. As of now, according to FAO analysis, the food market has been stable so far since the food demand was reduced due to the crisis and in the meantime, the food supply has been adequate. Global cereal stocks are at comfortable levels and the outlook for wheat and other major staple crops for 2020 is positive. The shortage of fruits and vegetable production was not noticeable due to the low demand during the lockdowns. As of early May, the world market prices of some major food staples, such as maize, wheat, and palm oil, have declined. The only staple food that has seen rising prices is rice, and that was linked to the export restrictions of a key exporter, i.e., Vietnam.

A particular concern raised by FAO is to have a long duration of lockdowns waiting for vaccines. As demand for food will decrease over the next months, prices should go down in 2020, and this will harm farmers and the agricultural sector. Countries that depend on primary commodity exports (food, raw materials, fuels) will be affected by the significant reduction of demand from import countries. The restrictions of movement in the medium and long run are expected to impede farmers from accomplishing their farming process (e.g. fertilizing and harvesting) which finally must affect agricultural production, such as what happened in Sierra Leone (2014-2016) during the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak.

In the same context, the CropWatch analyses based on Big Earth Data (Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, and survey data) revealed favorable crop conditions over the major winter wheat-producing areas of China, mostly distributed in the Provinces of Hebei, northwest Shandong, central and northeast Jiangsu, and Shaanxi (Figure 4.8 and Figure 4.94). The conditions over Hebei were the most favorable (75% of the cultivated area was above 2019's crop conditions), except over Jingzhou and Puyang municipal region, accounting for 8% of the province's winter crop cultivation area. Overall, the outbreak of COVID-19 in China has limited impacts on the production of winter crops. Furthermore, remote sensing observations revealed that the land preparation for early rice sowing and transplanting started earlier than last year in the Province of Guangdong, one of the major early rice-producing areas in China.

Food security of vulnerable communities already grappling with hunger or other crises (e.g. the Desert Locust outbreak in the Horn of Africa, insecurity in Yemen, or the Sahel) is also another important concern raised by FAO since these current crises are overlapping with the pandemic’s impacts. In the absence of timely and effective policies, millions more are likely to join the ranks of the hungry as a result of the COVID-19-triggered recession which will be a setback to global Zero Hunger efforts. Vulnerable groups including small-scale farmers, migrant, and informal workers will be hard hit by lockdowns since accessing markets to sell their products or buy essential inputs will be challenging.

To reduce the negative impacts of COVID-19 on agriculture and food production, FAO is urging all countries to keep international trade open and take measures that protect their food supply chain. Seeds and planting materials must continue to flow to smallholders; animal feed to livestock breeders; and aquaculture inputs to fish farmers. Also, countries should focus on the needs of the most vulnerable communities and groups, and scale up social protection programmes including cash transfers.

Desert locust

Vast regions in Africa, the Middle East and Asia are now under the threat of Desert locust. The threat started when large swarms were on the move, traveling over the Red Sea to Ethiopia and Somalia. Aided by uncommonly heavy rains that buffeted East Africa from October to December 2019, the insects spread south to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. During the last four months (January to April 2020) and up-to-now, the locusts were migrating to other areas in Africa, the Middle East and southwest Asia (Figure 5.2). Isolated locust swarms in Algeria, Morocco, and northern Mali were reported with very limited breeding possibilities due to the low rainfall in those regions during April. However, the possibility was higher at limited agriculture irrigated perimeters in the Adrar valley (Algeria) and the Draa Valley (Morocco). The situation is more serious over Kenya, Ethiopia, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. All these countries have received light to moderate rains in April, while heavy rains fell over Yemen, Ethiopia, and Kenya. The moderate or heavy rains could be helpful to new-generation swarms such as what is currently happening in Kenya and Ethiopia intensively, with fewer numbers over other countries (Figure 5.3). As reported by FAO, the total area treated in April was more than 302,000 ha compared to 182,000 ha in March.

Figure 5.2. Desert Locust Data Explorer for January – May 2020 issued by FAO/ESRI locust Hub. Source of image: https://locust-hub-hqfao.hub.arcgis.com/.

Another aspect of concern is the overlapping between COVID-19 and Locusts threat over some regions. Over East Africa in particular, the pandemic is disrupting the supply chains for pesticides and other equipment necessary to control the spread of locusts. Also, border closures and delays posed by quarantine measures are imposing restrictions on the movement of personnel and equipment to aid in the locust response. The aid teams and control officers themselves are under the risk of getting infected by the virus or even to spread the virus to remote rural locations where locust control operations take place. These issues need to be considered by governments and funding organizations to financing responses and taking the measures to protect teams and the communities they engage with are required.

Drought

In the lower Mekong River Basin, rice is cultivated in two different seasons. The main season is the rainy season from May through December. The second is the dry season from December through July. The production in the dry season is irrigated and thus depends on an ample supply of water. The current reporting period is corresponding to the second season when extensive dryness continued throughout the lower Mekong River Basin. According to the Ministry of Agriculture in Thailand, the extremely dry weather particularly over the North region resulted in near-historic low water levels in the top two reservoirs, Bhumibol and Sirikit. These reservoirs are essential for the dryland cultivated rice crop –predominantly irrigated – as the reservoirs provide approximately 80% of the irrigation water supply to rice areas in the lower North and Central Plains regions (refer to the section 4 in this chapter for details of the impact of drought on the crop yield).

The drought was the main driver for delaying the planting progress of soybeans (from Dec. 2019 to early January 2020) in Northeast Brazilian states in addition to the Rio Grande do Sul this year. The Northeast recovered due to favorable rains in January, but Rio Grande do Sul experienced another drought in late February which reduced production by 30% below the 5-year average, according to USDA. However, Brazil is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s leading soybean producer despite weather-related production losses in the Rio Grande do Sul. Also, USDA estimates Argentina soybean production for 2019/20 to be 6% down from last year due to dry conditions in the last half of February and into March (Figure 5.3). In Australia, a large decline in Cotton production (72% from last year) occurred due to the reduction of cotton cultivated area by 84% compared with last year. This was due to below-normal precipitation during the first half of the growing season and a subsequent lack of soil moisture for dryland sowing operations.

Figure 5.3. The Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) estimated globally for the months; January to April of 2020, https://spei.csic.es/map/maps.html#months=1#month=3#year=2020.

Many African regions have received a significantly below-average cumulative rainfall during the period from January to March 2020. In south-western Morocco, close to harvest, vegetation conditions are worse than in the drought-affected 2019 season. Hence, the High Commission for Planning of Morocco forecasts a 4.3% drop in the agricultural value-added economic growth because of the drop in cereal production this year. In southern African countries, particularly in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, in addition to the western parts of Madagascar, 45 million people are food insecure as the region enters the peak of the lean season (January-March 2020), as reported by WFP on Jan. 14th, 2020. The most affected country by drought was Zimbabwe where 4.1 million people are facing acute food insecurity.

Floods

Since the beginning of the season in February/March, significantly above-average rains affected west, central and south-east Kenya, parts of Ethiopia and parts of Uganda. Since mid-April heavy rains triggered floods, mudslides, flash floods, and river overflows in parts of East Africa, particularly in south Ethiopia, north Tanzania and most of Somalia States (Figure 5.4). These heavy rains led to casualties, displacement of people, and destruction of infrastructure and loss of standing crops. According to government officials, 214 people have lost their lives in floods and 185,600 have been displaced in Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

In general, East African countries are confronted with multiple crises. The exceptional rainfall conditions created favorable conditions for desert locust development, adding pressure to the multiple crises caused by COVID-19 containment measures, pests, and previous drought seasons. Above-average rainfall is expected to continue across most parts of the region according to forecasts for May, with average to above-average rains concentrating in northeastern Tanzania, Kenya, eastern Ethiopia, and Somalia.

Figure 5.4. 90-day rainfall anomaly map showing above-average rainfall received between February to April 2020 in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania (Source: CHIRPS, data mapped by JRC).

Another affected region by floods is in the north of Argentina which was hit by earlier floods immediately after peak flowering of soybeans which are expected to affect crop production. In Southern Africa, localised production shortfalls are expected in areas affected by floods in Zimbabwe, southern Zambia, and southern Mozambique.

 Fires

Many fire alerts were recorded by global forest fires watch over Central Africa (Central African Republic, South Sudan, DRC Congo, and Nigeria) from January to April 30 of the current year, in addition to south and southeastern Asia (Myanmar, India, and China), Russia, and Australia (Figure 5.5). Over these regions and during the period (January to April) the temperature was warmer than average and precipitation was drier than average, except in January when Australia received some rainfall by the start of 2020 to help fight wildfires.

Figure 5.5. Number of fires alerts by countries (Jan. 2020 – April 30, 2020) Source: https://fires.globalforestwatch.org/