O’Beichoan commune chief Soung Meurng.
For the United Nations World Food Program, which was a chief coordinator of the humanitarian responseto the drought, the medium to long-term effects of last year’s El Niño are still being assessed, but the first of a three-part national survey of 2,400 households published late last year gives a sense of the scope of the disaster.
For Jonathan Rivers, a mapping and vulnerability officer at the WFP, another El Niño coming so soon “would be potentially quite problematic.” Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology spokesman Chan Yutha, meanwhile, dismissed the possibility of such an event, predicting that the rainy season would actually start in the first week of May this year.
“We have to assume, differently from the government of Donald Trump, that climate change is coming,” he said. “Up until now it’s been half-hearted … We’ve not been serious about this.” Part of the problem, he said, is that solutions are coming from the donors and not from the government.