The UN has called it the world’s first climate-change-induced famine. Madagascar’s government agrees it is a result of the west’s carbon-fuelled lifestyle. A number of scientists and experts disagree, saying it is actually a consequence of poverty and poor governance.
For the people of southern Madagascar, unaware of the international furore, it is known simply as kere — the hunger.
Soanavorie Tognemare, a resourceful 22-year-old who lives with her husband and two toddlers in a village near Ambovombe, did everything she could to keep her children alive. “I fed cactus fruit and wild leaves to my children,” she says, holding her two-year-old daughter, Haova, who was at one point diagnosed as being severely malnourished. “We boiled the leaves and added salt. It had no taste but it filled our stomachs,” she says. “Kere means hunger. No food every day. That’s kere.”