Article by Lauren Kent: “A vital, US-run monitoring system focused on spotting food crises before they turn into famines has gone dark after the Trump administration slashed foreign aid.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) monitors drought, crop production, food prices and other indicators in order to forecast food insecurity in more than 30 countries…Now, its work to prevent hunger in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and many other nations has been stopped amid the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
“These are the most acutely food insecure countries around the globe,” said Tanya Boudreau, the former manager of the project.
Amid the aid freeze, FEWS NET has no funding to pay staff in Washington or those working on the ground. The website is down. And its treasure trove of data that underpinned global analysis on food security – used by researchers around the world – has been pulled offline.
FEWS NET is considered the gold-standard in the sector, and it publishes more frequent updates than other global monitoring efforts. Those frequent reports and projections are key, experts say, because food crises evolve over time, meaning early interventions save lives and save money…The team at the University of Colorado Boulder has built a model to forecast water demand in Kenya, which feeds some data into the FEWS NET project but also relies on FEWS NET data provided by other research teams.
The data is layered and complex. And scientists say pulling the data hosted by the US disrupts other research and famine-prevention work conducted by universities and governments across the globe.
“It compromises our models, and our ability to be able to provide accurate forecasts of ground water use,” Denis Muthike, a Kenyan scientist and assistant research professor at UC Boulder, told CNN, adding: “You cannot talk about food security without water security as well.”
“Imagine that that data is available to regions like Africa and has been utilized for years and years – decades – to help inform divisions that mitigate catastrophic impacts from weather and climate events, and you’re taking that away from the region,” Muthike said. He cautioned that it would take many years to build another monitoring service that could reach the same level…(More)”.