The Ministry of Agriculture and Fishers (MAF) has published the final report on the El Niño Rapid Drought Impact Assessment.
Executive Summary
The impact of the 2015/2016 El Niño is one of the most widespread in the history, with an estimated 60 million people affected by drought, floods and extreme cold weather (FAO, 2016). Those impacted the most are the already vulnerable population, resulting in food insecurity and malnutrition. In Timor-Leste, rainfall has been erratic since May 2015 with an intense dry season from August towards the end of March 2016 and has resulted in serious impact to agriculture, the main income source in the rural communities.
Following the activation of the Human Country Team (HCT) in September 2015, an assessment of the potential impact of El Niño was carried out in November 2015 that included a desk review of the historical events of El Niño and a rapid community assessment in Liquica, one of the badly impacted municipalities. The assessment sited the immediate impact of El Niño such as the drying of springs, animals struggling to find water and fodder, and delayed first cropping season. Also discovered were crops under severe water stress, where rainfall was below 100mm – the threshold mainly for cereal crops to have a minimum yield.
Based on this evidence and to have a better sense of the scale of the El Niño impact, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) conducted a nation-wide rapid assessment with the specific objectives to: (i) Assess the impact of the drought on agriculture and household food security; (ii) Identify the most affected populations; and (iii) Provide evidence based recommendations for the Government of Timor-Leste and other stakeholders for immediate assistance and medium to long term actions. The inclusion of households’ perceptions on their food security in the survey was specifically done to capture the impact of drought on the majority of rural populations who normally suffer annual food shortages – for at least 2.5 months, concentrated in the lean season from November to March.
The household survey covered 6,919 households in 381 villages (sucos) in 12 municipalities except Oecussi, the special economic zone and urban communities in Dili, conducted mainly by the suco-based Extension Officers of MAF, with strong monitoring by the Municipal-level of MAF, and with technical assistance by the National Food Security and Cooperation Directorate and the National Technical Directorates.
This report offers a picture of the direct impact of the El Niño to the agriculture sector (i.e crop production, livestock and aquaculture) in addition to highlighting the major issues and revealing the vulnerabilities of the drought affected households to food insecurity and malnutrition.