We are sleepingwalking into catastrophy

by Mark Goldring 

Resurgence and Ecologist Magaizine 

“Slow onset emergency” is one of the most terrifying phrases you can hear in the Oxfam offices. Tsunamis and earthquakes scare us all, but the threat of a gradual, developing crisis like that posed by the El Niño weather system raises a different fear – that we will see suffering in slow motion. It’s hard to raise the alarm that millions of people face drought and hunger when the crisis builds cumulatively. Yet failed harvests that push families into poverty, communities forced to leave home, and conflict over limited resources all combine to spell disaster on a massive scale. It seems that as humans we find it all too easy to sleepwalk into a catastrophe until it is upon us.

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