The southeast African nation of Mozambique has been devastated by Cyclone Idai in recent days. According to the country’s President, Filipe Nyusi, as many as 1,000 people may have been killed by the cyclone, which made landfall in Mozambique on Friday March 15th with winds up to 120 miles an hour and a storm surge over 20 feet high.
At least 2.6 million people could be affected across Mozambique and neighbouring Malawi and Zimbabwe, with 100,000 people at risk due to severe flooding, at least 400,000 homeless and hundreds still missing. Cyclone Idai may be the worst ever weather-related disaster to strike the Southern hemisphere, according to the UN; it is certainly “the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced”, according to Celso Correia, Mozambique’s Environment Minister.
Most of the deaths in Mozambique occurred in the port city of Beira, which has a population of half a million people and is almost entirely cut off from Mozambique after flooding burst a large dam, cutting off the last remaining road to the city. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), 90 percent of Beira has been destroyed.
ACTSA Advisory Council member and Secretary of the Bristol Link with Beira, Dave Spurgeon, said:
“We are devastated at the loss of life and destruction of Bristol’s twin city, Beira. Bristol has been twinned with Beira since 1990 – a friendship that brings benefits to both cities and communities. We know the resilience of the people of Mozambique and Beira. We will work with them as they look to rebuild their lives and their city.”
In Zimbabwe, 100 mile-an-hour winds swept away roads, bridges and destroyed 600 homes (damaging 20,000 others) in the eastern and southern parts of the country, whose 15 million people already live amid a protracted political and humanitarian crisis. The UN estimates that 5.3 million people will require food aid because of the cyclone; the worst since Cyclone Eline struck in 2000.
Malawi’s government has confirmed at least 56 deaths and 577 injured. Some 11,000 households are estimated to have been displaced in the southern district of Nsanje. The total number of affected people in Malawi is estimated at 920,000.
The cyclone will have devastating consequences for some of the world’s poorest people. Farmers across the region were preparing to harvest their maize crop when the cyclone struck and, with significant areas of land ravaged by the cyclone or otherwise submerged, it is believed that widespread hunger will soon follow. Farmers in the Chimanimani district of Zimbabwe, who had already been affected by a severe drought, are now contending with the ruin left behind by the cyclone, which destroyed crops, caused landslides, collapsed homes and cut off roads. Farmers in Manicaland Province, most of whom engage in substance farming of maize, lost all their expected and stored harvest, according to the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU).
Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe rank among the very poorest countries in the world and lack the essential infrastructure necessary to withstand or recover from such a natural disaster. Mozambique is in debt crisis following the lending of $2bn in illegal loans by UK based banks; the repayment of these loans will further cripple the country’s failing economy, causing rampant inflation and cuts to vital public services.
This latest disaster should serve to remind all governments, especially those of wealthy nations like the UK, of their responsibility to enact comprehensive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transition to a low-carbon society and to ensure that climate change is central to trade and development policies. These governments must also support the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change to become more resilient to its effects, creating an enabling environment for climate change resistant infrastructures and food systems.
All government must heed the call of the many millions of climate scientists, human rights and environmental organisations and concerned citizens who have long warned of the dangers of human-made climate change. These citizens include over a million children in 128 countries around the world who are participating in the ongoing climate strike, and correctly protesting the complicity of their governments and global greed in the creation of a climate catastrophe which will hit impoverished nations, like Mozambique, the hardest.