Pakistan is among 20 countries facing a high risk of dry conditions because of the impending La Niña weather phenomenon, expected to start late this year and persist into early 2025. This weather event could lead to extreme weather conditions, causing significant damage to agricultural production and exacerbating food security concern.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has issued a report highlighting that some countries are already experiencing La Niña-like conditions, despite the phenomenon not being officially declared. Recent floods have affected large areas of West and Central Africa, Sudan, South Sudan, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan, while early signs of drought are evident in southern South America, including Argentina and Chile
Anticipated between September and November 2024 and expected to persist through January to March 2025, La Niña is expected to bring weather extremes with severe consequences for food security, particularly as around 282 million people already face acute food insecurity and urgently need assistance.
La Niña, a climate phenomenon characterized by the cooling of central and eastern Pacific waters, disrupts global weather patterns. It occurs every 2 to 7 years and lasts between 9 to 12 months. Climate change is driving an intensification in the frequency and impact of climate extremes such as those induced by El Niño and La Niña.
How to Over Come La Nina Challenge
In order to mitigate the impacts of La Niña, the FAO has launched an Anticipatory Action and Response Plan with the objective to protect rural communities through anticipatory actions, such as distributing drought-tolerant seeds and protecting livestock health, offset losses by supplying seeds to flood-affected farmers and providing veterinary medicines and deliver early response to affected areas, including cash assistance to severely affected families.
To cope with drought conditions, the FAO recommends to the countries world over to distributing farming tools and seeds of drought-tolerant crop varieties, providing animal health support and feed, rehabilitating irrigation systems, promoting water-harvesting techniques, develop the capacity on post-harvest management and processing ¹
La Niña's impacts will worsen the already critical food insecurity situation in areas affected by the 2023-2024 El Niño event, which caused significant crop losses, disrupted livestock production, and led to food price spikes.
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