Eight Million People in Papua New Guinea Face ‘National Crisis’ as Historic El Niño Dries Rivers
“The place is so dry – just two months of rain is not enough to allow crops to grow and water levels to be comfortable,” says Kasis Inape, assistant director of the PNG National Weather Service. An extreme drought driven by a historic El Niño is currently affecting as many as 8 million people in Papua New Guinea, triggering a cascade of food and water shortages, electricity scarcity, and the disruption of essential schooling and health services.
The scale of the disaster has prompted an influential coalition of churches, trade unions, and business groups to declare the situation a “national crisis.” According to reporting from The Guardian, this coalition warns that there is currently no coordinated plan to protect the nation’s most vulnerable communities from the worsening impacts of the climate pattern. The crisis is compounded by global heating, with forecasts suggesting this El Niño could be the strongest ever recorded.
The crisis in Papua New Guinea serves as an indicator of how extreme climate volatility in the tropical Pacific disrupts resource security and creates a national crisis. While the immediate humanitarian crisis is local, the broader pattern of El Niño—which shifts warm tropical waters eastward—impacts global weather patterns, agricultural yields, and commodity prices.
Subsistence Farms Fail and Basic Services Collapse
Because Papua New Guinea is a rain-fed country, the majority of its population relies on subsistence farming. When the rains fail, the food supply vanishes. Since August, some regions have received less than a quarter of their usual rainfall. In the rural highlands, the impact is visceral: family food gardens have shriveled, and families are rationing food to a single meal per day, per The Guardian.
In the Bulolo district of Morobe province, smaller rivers have completely dried up. This has forced schools and health centers to operate for only half a day. Some clinics have stopped accepting inpatients entirely because they lack the water necessary to provide basic medical services.
The human cost is falling disproportionately on women and girls. Emilly Meren, humanitarian projects manager at CARE International in PNG, reports that women are often the last to eat after serving others and must travel three to four hours to find water and food. This desperation has increased the risk of harassment and reports of transactional sex, where women exchange sex for money or food.
Water Scarcity Stifles Local Economy
The drought is also erasing livelihoods. In Leklu village, resident Martha Zureno told The Guardian that her children must walk miles every afternoon to fetch water for cooking and drinking. While her family dug a private well, the water is only fit for washing. Zureno noted that many locals depend on panning for gold for their income, a task that has become increasingly difficult without flowing water.
Adding to the misery, some regions have faced erratic weather extremes. In Enga province, George Iki, president of the Sambe Unity Development Association, reported that a destructive hailstorm buried sweet potato crops under ice. While not directly blamed on El Niño, the storm exacerbated an already dire food scarcity issue.
Low Dam Levels Cause Electricity Blackouts in Port Moresby
While rural areas suffer the most immediate hunger, the crisis is migrating toward urban centers. In the capital, Port Moresby, PNG Power has implemented planned electricity blackouts. This is the result of falling dam levels that have crippled hydropower generation. The company warned that these disruptions could continue for up to 10 months as they struggle to balance power needs with the need to protect the city’s remaining water supply.
Peter Aitsi, co-chair of the Community Coalition Against Corruption, argues that urban centers have been mostly shielded thus far, but that protection is evaporating. Aitsi noted that Port Moresby has been covered in a smoke haze recently, caused by El Niño-fueled fires across the island and in neighboring Indonesia.
Prime Minister James Marape has directed provincial and district authorities to prepare for a prolonged dry season. According to Marape, the Cabinet is currently examining financial instructions to ensure that districts and provinces can be assisted to respond to disasters as they happen.
The Strategic Conflict of Response
While Prime Minister Marape speaks of “tailoring financial instructions,” the Community Coalition Against Corruption is calling for “proper assessments” of the actual impacts on the ground.
The wet season typically runs from November to April, but Kasis Inape warns that El Niño may shorten this window. Even if rain returns, two months of precipitation will not be enough to restore the water tables or the crops necessary to end the national crisis.
