Eight Million Face Papua New Guinea Drought as El Niño Breaks Food and Water Systems
Papua New Guinea’s worst drought in years now reaches nearly every province, emptying water sources, killing food gardens and forcing schools, clinics and power stations to cut services. A new national assessment puts as many as eight million people in the crisis zone.
The scale is staggering in a country of roughly 12 million. A Papua New Guinea–Australia ministerial communiqué last week confirmed that 20 of 22 provinces are affected and more than 5.5 million people are already at risk. New reporting published Friday, drawing on the National Weather Service and communities across the country, estimates the wider affected population at up to eight million.
Those figures measure different stages of exposure, but they point in the same direction: the state is losing its race against a strengthening El Niño.
Some districts have received less than one quarter of their usual rain since August. Rivers, wells and rain tanks have dried up. Family gardens—the main source of food and income for much of rural Papua New Guinea—have withered. In the Southern Highlands, roughly 300,000 people lack reliable safe water, while sweet-potato yields have fallen 60 to 75 percent. More than 95 percent of schools there have felt the impact.
Health and National Disaster Services Minister Billy Joseph declared a national humanitarian emergency on October 7. “Families are running out of safe drinking water, gardens have failed, children are missing school, and our health workers are under increasing pressure,” he said.
The crisis stretches beyond hunger. Falling dam levels have cut hydropower generation, triggering planned blackouts in Port Moresby that could last months. Water shortages have reduced school and clinic hours. Dry vegetation has fueled bushfires, while frost and hail in the Highlands have destroyed crops that survived the heat.
Relief money is not yet a relief system
The government says it has released PGK10 million to each province and PGK5 million to each district for water, food and health support. Australia has pledged another AUD7 million for water infrastructure, supplies, agricultural assistance and humanitarian logistics.
Money matters. Coordination decides whether it reaches a village before a child goes hungry.
The Community Coalition Against Corruption—a network of churches, unions and business groups—warned that Papua New Guinea is facing a “national crisis” but still lacks a clearly communicated plan to protect vulnerable communities. It called for public reporting on relief funds, supplies, responsible agencies and beneficiaries, especially before the 2027 national election creates new incentives to politicize aid.
Prime Minister James Marape has pushed provincial governments to lead local operations and urged districts to identify water sources, vulnerable communities and food risks. Decentralized action can move quickly, but it can also transfer responsibility to authorities with sharply unequal staff, transport and administrative capacity. Remote mountain and island communities pay the price when a national emergency becomes 22 separate logistical battles.
The National Weather Service’s October 28 outlook offers no easy exit. It expects strong to very strong El Niño conditions to continue into early 2027, with below-normal rainfall and higher temperatures likely across much of the country. A brief shower cannot restore a ruined garden, refill a depleted reservoir or replace seed stocks already eaten by a hungry household.
A climate shock becomes a class crisis
Papua New Guinea contributes little to global heating, yet its rural workers and subsistence farmers absorb the damage first. Families ration meals. Women and girls walk farther for water, taking on more unpaid labor and greater personal risk. Farmers lose both food and cash income. Children miss class because a school cannot supply a toilet or a drink.
That suffering is not inevitable. Authorities can publish a single national response plan, open the books on relief spending, prioritize safe water and nutrition, and use church and community networks that already reach places the state does not. They can also invest beyond emergency water trucks—in storage, irrigation, resilient crops and rural health systems.
El Niño started the drought. Weak infrastructure and fragmented government turn it into a disaster. Eight million people cannot wait for the rain to expose which officials planned and which merely promised.
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