Bangkok--Nov 18--WFP
PHNOM PENH — As rural Cambodians struggle through their annual “hungry season” before the December rice harvest, the United Nations World Food Programme is giving out emergency rice rations to 50,000 people hardest hit by a drought in the southern provinces.
WFP is distributing nearly 1,000 metric tones of rice to families whose main source of income — daily labour in the rice paddies — is drying up because of the current drought, the organisation’s Country Director for Cambodia, Thomas Keusters, said today.
“These people are living hand to mouth under the best of circumstances,” said Keusters. “So they are in truly a hardship situation now when their domestic food supplies have run out and they have almost no opportunity to make money to buy food.”
WFP began the emergency food aid distribution last week and will have it completed by the end of November.
WFP and Cambodia’s National Committee for Disaster Management conducted a joint assessment of four southern provinces in September, investigating both household food security and the effects of the drought on the December rice crop, which accounts for 85% of the total harvest. (The smaller “dry season” crop is harvested in April.)
Preliminary findings show that the rice harvest will be lower than last year by as much as 20 percent, Keusters said, adding however that recent rains may soften the blow of the drought. WFP and the Royal Government of Cambodia’s Committee for Disaster Management will undertake another joint assessment in December to determine the full extent of the damage to the rice crop from the drought.
Over the last four years, Cambodia has seen an extraordinary combination of drought and flood, a phenomenon of global climate change that is expected to produce persistent food shortages in the years ahead.
Keusters noted that these food shortages must serve as a “wake-up call” about the startling weather patterns that have affected the Cambodian rice crop of vulnerable farmers.
Like many countries in southeast Asia, Cambodia has an annual “flood season” starting in August when torrential rains drive the rivers beyond their banks. Since 2001, the country, which is one of the highest disaster-prone countries in southeast Asia, has been first hit by severe drought before the floods arrive, a combination that in some areas of the country knocked out two planting seasons in a row. The majority of small-scale farmers in Cambodia rely on rainfall to water their crops.
A study by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies shows that the number of people in the Pacific rim region affected by natural disasters increased by 65 times over the past 30 years. The study quotes scientists who predict that the El Nino phenomenon will spawn even more cyclones and droughts.
WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: in 2003 we gave food aid to a record 104 million people in 81 countries, including 56 million hungry children.
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For more information please contact:
Thomas Keusters
WFP Country Director/Cambodia
Tel: 855 23 210 076
E-mail: [email protected]
Heather Hill
Regional Public Affairs Officer, Asia
Tel: + 662-6554115 ext. 2020
Cell: + 661-7019208
E-mail: [email protected] End.