2026 El Nino Development Threatens Water Security and Food Systems Globally

An El Nino event is developing in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean in 2026, raising the risk of severe droughts across South Asia and southern Africa and destructive flooding in western South America, according to Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Madani warns that the world is operating in a state of global water bankruptcy where chronic over-extraction of groundwater leaves communities with little buffer against sudden climate shocks.

El Nino events shift weather patterns away from their typical geography, triggering multi-season droughts that decimate staple crop yields in southern Africa and parts of South Asia while forcing farmers into groundwater over-extraction that depletes aquifers faster than they can naturally replenish. In western South America, the same event can produce destructive flooding that overwhelms irrigation and urban water infrastructure. The 2015-2016 El Nino, which coincided with one of the hottest periods on record, affected approximately 60 million people through disease, displacement and severe socio-economic insecurity.

Madani identifies a critical gap in understanding the compounding socio-economic and political effects of El Nino beyond its well-understood physical mechanisms. Global market impacts, human migration patterns and links to political instability remain insufficiently studied. As baseline global temperatures continue to rise, El Nino events are expected to bring more severe impacts than historical precedents suggest, with El Nino-driven hydrological extremes acting as threat multipliers that worsen underlying vulnerabilities far beyond what was seen in the 20th century.

Viable responses require a shift from reactive crisis management to proactive climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction. In the short to medium term, this means strengthening early warning systems, investing in water-efficient irrigation and upgrading agricultural infrastructure. At a macro level, diversifying national economies is essential so that agricultural failures do not collapse entire economic systems. Governments must provide economic transition options and social safety nets for populations most dependent on rain-fed farming, and international coordination on water governance must accelerate to manage the worsening state of global freshwater systems.

Key figure — 60 million people affected by the 2015-2016 El Nino event