First published August 30, 2021.
In 2021, more than 1.14 million people in the Grand Sud, the far south of Madagascar, did not have enough to eat after two rainy seasons in a row brought only about 60% of normal rainfall. Children were hit hardest, with malnutrition rates rising sharply. United Nations officials called it a climate-driven famine, and headlines described it as the world's first famine caused entirely by climate change.
The suffering was real and severe. The headline claim, however, did not hold up when scientists studied the drought in detail: they found that poverty and dependence on rain-fed farming, not mainly climate change, turned a rare drought into a hunger emergency.
How severe the crisis was
By mid-2021, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) counted about 1.14 million food-insecure people in southern Madagascar. Around 14,000 were already in IPC Phase 5, the "catastrophe" level on the international hunger scale, and that figure was expected to double to 28,000 by October.
A joint UNICEF and WFP warning in July 2021 said at least half a million children under five were expected to be acutely malnourished, about 110,000 of them severely, roughly four times the level found in late 2020. In the worst-hit Ambovombe-Androy district, global acute malnutrition reached 27%. Government data showed that admissions of children for severe acute malnutrition in the Grand Sud from January to March were four times the five-year average.
The UN described "famine-like" conditions. The figures put pockets of people in Phase 5 rather than declaring a formal Famine across the whole region, a distinction that matters for how such crises are classified.
What daily life looked like
WFP head David Beasley visited a nutrition centre in Ambovombe in June 2021 and described families surviving for months on "raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts". Sandstorms had covered fields with sand, wells had dried up, and the next planting season looked bleak.
WFP's accounts from the region give a sense of scale. One mother of seven in Amboasary walked 4 km to find water. Another household cut its rice down to 14 handfuls a week. A standard WFP ration for a family included 50 kg of maize, 10 kg of beans and 2 litres of oil, and the agency said it had helped up to 750,000 people since the 2020 lean season.
How unusual the drought was
In December 2021, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, an international team that studies how climate change affects extreme weather, published an analysis of the rainfall. It looked at the 24 months from July 2019 to June 2021.
The researchers found that both rainy seasons delivered only about 60% of normal rain, and estimated the two-year shortfall as roughly a one-in-135-year event. Only the 1990–92 drought had been worse in the record.
Was it really a climate-change famine?
At the height of the crisis, UN officials framed it in stark terms. Beasley said: "This is not because of war or conflict, this is because of climate change." UN Humanitarian (OCHA) made the same point on Twitter:
Drought after drought after drought.
— UN Humanitarian (@UNOCHA) July 26, 2021
Southern Madagascar is the only place in the world with famine-like conditions that are NOT driven by conflict, but the #ClimateEmergency.
pic.twitter.com/kFsEZIefXR
The WWA study reached a more careful conclusion. Human-caused climate change had not significantly increased the likelihood of this drought. Models showed a small shift towards drier conditions, but natural variability dominated. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report suggests that clear changes in drought in this region would only be expected if global warming passes about 2°C.
What made the drought so deadly were factors on the ground. Around 90% of Madagascar's people live below the poverty line, and most families in the south depend entirely on rain-fed crops and livestock. With no irrigation or savings to fall back on, two failed seasons were enough to wipe out food supplies. Covid-19 restrictions and pest outbreaks made things worse.
This does not make the crisis less urgent, and it does not mean climate change poses no risk to Madagascar in the future. It means the most effective responses are those that reduce poverty and vulnerability, alongside cutting emissions.
A crisis the region did little to cause
One point in the UN's message stands regardless of attribution. Madagascar contributes almost nothing to global warming: in 2024 it produced about 0.01% of global CO₂ emissions, roughly 0.14 tonnes per person, according to Our World in Data.
The southern communities hit hardest are among the poorest people on Earth. When droughts do become more likely in a warmer world, they will be among the least able to adapt unless investment arrives first.
What helps in a crisis like this
In the short term, aid agencies asked for money. In June 2021 WFP said it needed about $78.6 million to provide life-saving food through the next lean season. UNICEF stressed that preventing and treating child malnutrition early saves lives and protects children from lasting harm to their growth.
In the longer term, experts point to water and resilience: reliable wells and irrigation, drought-tolerant crops, better roads and markets, and safety nets that reach families before they are forced to eat cactus fruit and locusts. Those measures help whatever the cause of the next drought.
The Grand Sud's 2021 crisis is a reminder to read big claims carefully. The drought was rare and the hunger was devastating, but poverty was the factor that turned bad weather into disaster.
Sources: WFP: Invisible crisis, WFP chief appeals to world (23 June 2021); WFP and UNICEF: Malnutrition among children expected to quadruple (26 July 2021); ReliefWeb / WFP: Madagascar in the grip of drought; World Weather Attribution: Factors other than climate change are the main drivers of food insecurity in southern Madagascar (1 December 2021); Our World in Data: Madagascar CO₂ profile. The story was first shared here via IFL Science, August 2021. Tweet: UN Humanitarian (@UNOCHA).
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