UN agencies appeal for aid as El Niño could bring more hunger to 50 million people

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN's emergency relief chief appealed on Wednesday for immediate assistance for communities already affected by El Niño, the weather pattern the WMO says is the strongest on record. Tom Fletcher, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said some 50 million people could face increased hunger because of it. He spoke in Geneva alongside Celeste Saulo, the WMO's Secretary-General.

The WMO's latest Global Seasonal Climate Update says sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific may rise to 3.8℃ above average between November 2026 and January 2027. The agency says an anomaly of 0.5℃ is enough to trigger an El Niño alert. Ms. Saulo said earlier El Niños linked to anomalies of 3℃ brought “very substantive impacts across the world”, but “we are beyond that limit, out of our records, out of our statistics of what we can expect”. She said the event will peak towards the end of 2026 and its impacts will be felt long after that.

Ms. Saulo said the outcome is not fixed. “We have the science forecasts, the early warnings to save lives and protect livelihoods,” she said.

Mr. Fletcher described the El Niño as a “behemoth…a wrecking ball that will likely tear through Latin America, eastern and southern Africa, Asia and the Pacific with extreme heat, droughts and floods”. He said the next two weeks will be critical. Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya urgently need funding and emergency supplies in place before heavy rains arrive, he said. In southern Africa the priority is seeds and protecting livestock. Central America needs immediate support to protect livelihoods.

Mr. Fletcher cited an African Development Bank estimate that the event will cost African countries between $10 and $20 billion. He said the bank also estimates it will “drive down GDP by between one and two per cent”.

He announced that he has released more than $50 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund to help 11 countries on the front line. They include Chad, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan.

The UN News Arabic service reported that Mr. Fletcher asked governments, development banks and international financial institutions to pay for preparations before damage occurs. He said this means getting cash to families before a shock and helping farmers and herders protect crops and livestock. He also asked countries with disaster-response capacity to put it on standby.

Mr. Fletcher said the humanitarian system cannot cope alone with a threat of this scale, according to the briefing by the Secretary-General's spokesperson. He said the regions in the El Niño's path are already hit by conflict, displacement, soaring food, fertilizer and fuel prices, and aid cuts. He also pointed to strains from the supply chain crunch in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea. He linked these to the war between Iran and the United States and to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“It would be an extraordinary failure to see this crisis coming, to hear the predictions from the experts, and yet still squander the opportunity to protect people in its path,” Mr. Fletcher said.

The UN News Arabic report also carried a WMO forecast of above-normal rainfall in the north-west United States. The sources give no total sum the agencies are seeking. The appeal comes from UN bodies, and the emergency fund Mr. Fletcher drew on is a UN fund.