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War and climate change are creating a perfect storm for the global South

The global South must stop labouring under the illusion that those who once enslaved and colonised us have a remotest interest in “saving” us writes ROGER MCKENZIE.

WE ARE in a perfect storm of war, extreme weather and Covid-19. Not my words but the warning from the United Nations.

It’s a perfect storm that will, according to David Beasley, head of the UN World Food Programme, last week, drive global food prices to levels that will cause social unrest in some parts of the world.

As food prices soar and supply lines are disrupted by wars, the UN confirmed last week that decisions are already being taken about who gets food and who doesn’t. 

In theory this means diverting food away from hungry children to feed starving children. But this is far from the reality given what we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the virus spread we saw the rich nations of the world hoarding vaccines at the expense of people in the global South who were left to fend for themselves.

The richest nations, led by their masters the United States, went so far as to side with the big pharmaceutical companies to block the sharing of the vaccine technology. 

The US even stopped Cuba from sharing the life-saving drugs they had developed by continuing to enforce their illegal blockade of the island nation. So much for defending the sovereignty of nations!

There is no reason to believe that the richest nations will prioritise saving the lives of black men, women and children abroad when they clearly don’t value them within their own borders unless they have wealth.

The war in Ukraine is clearly stoking an already catastrophic global food crisis leaving up to 50 million people, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, likely to be facing hunger in the coming months.

The war in Syria and the Arab Spring uprising in 2011 came about because people couldn’t buy bread. The current situation seems far worse.

As of about five years ago, the UN estimated that roughly 80 million people around the world were on the brink of starvation. But that number, according to the UN, had soared to 135 million before Covid-19 erupted, largely due to conflict and extreme weather.

Now, a staggering 276 million people are at that critical level, including nearly 49 million people in 43 countries that are on the brink of famine.

But the climate emergency is also playing its parts in bringing the globe into serious unrest territory.

The north of India, especially Delhi and Rajasthan, has seen some of the world’s hottest temperatures.

Temperatures in the mid-to-high 40s, in degrees Celsius, are not usually seen in north India before May.

But this year it started in the second week of April, stretching the hot season by weeks.

In the western state of Gujarat, already reeling under severe heatwave conditions, a red alert has been issued in the city of Ahmedabad where temperatures have registered in excess of 46°C.

Health officials in Gujarat have had to issue advisories to hospitals to set up special wards for heat stroke and other heat-related diseases due to the soaring temperatures.

India experienced its hottest March on record and power cuts have become frequent across the country.

According to one survey, just 12 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion population have access to air conditioning, which means hundreds of millions of people have no means of cooling themselves when their bodies reach the point of heatstroke.

Dozens of people are thought to have died, schools have been forced to close, and many water taps have simply run dry.

India’s western state of Maharashtra has recorded 25 deaths from heat stroke since late March, the highest toll in the past five years.

The climate emergency is the overwhelming cause of these brutal heatwaves. 

On the African continent a fourth season of failed rains is causing one of the worst droughts East Africa has seen in decades.

The UN's World Food Programme says up to 20 million people in East Africa are at risk of severe hunger.

Ethiopia is battling the worst drought in almost half a century and in Somalia 40 per cent of the population are at risk of starvation.

Experts say that Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate emergency. This is despite the fact it contributes only 4 per cent of global carbon emissions.

The ongoing conflicts taking place in both Ethiopia and Somalia are also worsening the already precarious conditions.

Whether it’s Africa or parts of Asia that are suffering the most is immaterial. The fact is that the capitalist class will continue to prioritise profits over people even though they have it within their power to take decisive action to curb food prices, tackle the climate emergency and stop the funding of wars through the sale of weapons.

The predicted global social unrest will not necessarily bring about socialist change because, as we know, the far right and their authoritarian agents, such as the Tories, are on the move across the globe. 

Socialist change will come about through the graft of organising and taking our message into communities and workplaces.

Nations of the global South must stop labouring under the illusion that those who once enslaved and then colonised us and who now treat us as cheap disposal labour in their countries have the remotest interest in “saving” us. 

They will not. We are the ones we have been waiting for! We must organise nationally and internationally, for revolutionary socialist change because nothing else will do.

Roger Mckenzie is a journalist and general secretary of Liberation.

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