Hundreds of thousands face food shortages in PNG

Transcript

The Papua New Guinea Highlands provinces, home to several million people, are on the edge of a catastrophe caused by drought and frosts.

Many parts of Enga, Southern, and Western Highlands provinces have been affected by frost which have laid waste to vegetable gardens, especially critical foods such as sweet potato.

Drought is also a factor across all of the Highlands provinces, with some areas not seeing rain for more than two months.

Koroi Hawkins spoke with the assistant country director for Care International PNG, Blossum Gilmour, whose organisation has been monitoring the worsening drought conditions in the country.

BLOSSUM GILMOUR: I think that last week and the frost have really triggered us in terms of thinking ok, we need to start planning for a response. Care has been monitoring the situation for a couple of months already, keeping our eye on water levels, food prices in the markets, trying to see if there is a trend towards the need for some kind of intervention. And we have now decided that yes, that is the case. However, there hasn't been a thorough assessment of the current needs, and that is going to happen in the near future. There was a meeting of the national disaster team down in Port Moresby and they are planning to do assessments in the areas that have been affected so far in the near future to assess the extent of the current need but also to look at forward planning and look at how can we plan to meet the needs that are going to develop over the coming months. And so they're engaging Care and other partner organisations to take part in the assessments around the country.
 

KOROI HAWKINS: And which are the most affected regions or provinces at the moment?

BG: So far the most affected regions are the Highlands provinces. The frosts were in the Highlands in Southern and Enga Province, as well Western Highlands province has been affected to date. The Eastern Highlands province, where Care International's office is based, has also seen incredibly dry conditions and lots of grass fires, so the air quality is very poor - but we haven't seen frosts yet.

KH: And in terms of the population density, how many people are we talking about in terms of being affected by this?

BG: Well the numbers vary quite dramatically. I can't give you an exact population number. we've heard anywhere from 300-thousand people being affected to up to 800-thousand being affected. So that is quite a huge range and it would take a proper assessment, people going out and seeing who is living in the affected areas, how many people are still living there; if not, where have they gone, and what are they doing to cope with the loss of their food gardens themselves. But yes, it is in the hundreds of thousands at this point.

KH: I'm assuming these are heavily subsistence-reliant communities. How have you dealt with situations like this in the past?

BG: In the '97 drought, there was a large scale response which did food distributions into these areas because as you say, these are predominantly subsistence farmers. So the government actually did as response in '97 which was the last significant drought, and they did a large distribution of rice and tinned fish which will likely be repeated, if it gets to that point. At this point, what we're doing is talking to communities about their own mitigation strategies, things like planting greens and fast-growing crops right next to the water so they'll be able to water them and get some food growing. Usually people don't plant close to the river because it's likely to be washed away when there's a heavy rainfall. But we're encouraging them to do that now, talking to them about hygiene and sanitation in low-water environments, and ho9w to prevent forest fires and grass fires; talking about their mitigation strategies so their lives and their crops are unaffected as can be for as long as possible.

KH: You said two months so far with no rain. How long left in the dry season?

BG: Well, traditionally, if it's a normal dry season, we start to get rains in October, but we've heard predictions that this dry season could go well into February or March and that even when rains come, that will mean another six months before people can get crops. So it could be another ten to... or twelve to fourteen months before people start to get their crops back. It's going to be a long, long process, this one. And as people know, droughts are slow to take hold and so it's very difficult to raise awareness and build momentum around support or response to drought. and so it;s great that some of the (provincial) governments in PNG have already started to cry out and say there's going to be need, we see needs now and they are only going to increase. So that makes us hopeful that there is time for the response efforts to be well coordinated and make sure that everyone who is affected and actually needs support to get through the drought can get that support.