According to a report by the United Nations, one-quarter of the world’s population–more than 1.8 billion people–lived under drought conditions at some point during 2022 or 2023, impacting everything from increasing consumer prices to the spread of disease to warfare, the New York Times reports.
While drought directly or indirectly caused an average of 12,000 deaths per year over the last half-century, the impact of droughts stretches from a lack of water in the Panama Canal leading to some larger ships being unable to fit into the waterway; to India banning the export of certain strains of rice; to food crops being decimated around the world.
And it’s not going to get better: according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a research group funded by the US government, the current El Nino weather pattern may lead to drought conditions on as much as 25% of the globe’s key agriculturally productive lands. To prep in case the radical weather strikes vulnerable crops, countries like India and Indonesia are stockpiling rice supplies.