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Climate Change Fueling 'Most Widespread and Damaging' Droughts in History: UN Report
"This is not a dry spell," said the co-author of a new U.N. report. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe."
Jul 03, 2025
Climate change is driving "some of the most widespread and damaging drought events in recorded history," according to a report published Wednesday on global drought hotspots.
Over the past two years, droughts have fueled increased food insecurity, dehydration, and disease that have heightened poverty and political instability in several regions of the world, according to research by the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
"This is not a dry spell," says Dr. Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC Director. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on."
The report examined conditions in some of the globe's most drought-prone regions. They found that the economic disruption caused by droughts today is twice as high as in 2000.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, which have been blighted with dangerously low levels of rainfall, more than 90 million people face acute hunger.
Somalia has been hit particularly hard, with 4.4 million, more than a quarter of the population, facing "crisis level" food insecurity in early 2025. Zambia, meanwhile, faced one of the world's worst energy crises last year when the Zambezi River dried up, causing its hydroelectric dams to run critically low.
Other drought-plagued regions have seen wide ranges of ecological and economic disruptions.
In Spain, low levels of rainfall in 2023 devastated olive crops, causing olive oil prices to double. In the Amazon Basin, low water levels caused a mass death of fish and endangered dolphins. The Panama Canal became so depleted that trade vessels were forced to re-route, causing multi-week shipping delays. And in Morocco, Eid celebrations had to be cancelled due to a shortage of sheep.
Recent studies of drought have found that they are increasingly caused not by lack of rainfall, but by aggressive heat, which speeds up evaporation. The areas hit the hardest over the past two years were ones already suffering from the most severe temperature increases. It was also exacerbated by a particularly severe El Niño weather cycle in 2023-24.
"This was a perfect storm," says report co-author Dr. Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC Assistant Director and drought impacts researcher. "El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits."
Though the effects of droughts are often felt most acutely in areas already suffering from poverty and instability, the researchers predict that as they get worse, the effects will be felt worldwide.
In 2024, then the hottest year on record, 48 of the 50 U.S. states faced drought conditions, the highest proportion ever seen. Drought in the U.S. has coincided with a dramatic increase in wildfire frequency and severity over the past 50 years.
"Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks," Smith said. "No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse."
The researchers advocated for investments in global drought prevention, but also for broader measures to address the existing inequalities that make droughts more severe.
"Drought has a disproportionate effect on those with few resources," Smith said. "We can act now to reduce the effects of future droughts by working to ensure that everyone has access to food, water, education, health care and economic opportunity."
The researchers also emphasized the urgency of coordinated action to confront the climate crisis.
"The struggles...to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming," said Svoboda. "No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent."
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'There Will Be Many More': Citing GOP Medicaid Cuts, Rural Nebraska Clinic Announces Closure
"Republicans haven't passed their bill yet, but if you live in Nebraska you can thank them for making you less healthy," wrote Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.).
Jul 03, 2025
The devastating cuts to Medicaid contained in Republicans' budget bill have not yet gone into effect but are already having negative consequences for American healthcare.
Nebraska Public Media reports Thursday that the Curtis Medical Center, a clinic located in a rural Nebraska community with a population of under 1,000 residents, will soon shut down thanks in part to the expected impact the GOP's cuts to Medicaid will have on its finances.
Troy Bruntz, the president and CEO of Curtis Medical Center owner Community Hospital, said in a news release that the coming Medicaid cuts are tipping many financially challenged health clinics into insolvency.
"The current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years," he explained.
Nebraska Public Media notes that the Curtis clinic is likely just the first domino in the state's rural healthcare system to fall thanks to the Medicaid cuts and it speaks to recent warnings from people like Jed Hansen, executive director for the Nebraska Rural Health Association, about how many other hospitals are in real danger.
"We currently have six hospitals that that we feel are in a critical financial state, three that are in an impending kind of closure or conversion over to the rural emergency hospital model," Hansen said earlier this week during an online forum about the state's crisis. "We would likely see the closures within a year to two years of once [the Medicaid cuts are] fully enacted."
Other experts have sounded similar alarms on the budget bill's impact on rural hospitals. Sharon Parrott, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), wrote earlier this week that Senate Republicans' efforts to create a fund of money earmarked for rural hospitals would prove woefully inadequate to the problems these institutions will face in the coming years.
"Senate Republicans know the bill would hurt rural hospitals—that's why they added a face-saving temporary fund, but it won't rescue rural providers when the funding runs dry and the permanent cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace coverage remain," explained Parrott. "This is particularly true because the revised Senate fund gives the Health and Human Services secretary significant discretion in how the funds would be allocated. Rural providers need people in their communities to have health coverage they can count on. Without that, more rural hospitals will close and more people with and without coverage will be cut off from care they need."
In an analysis released last month, the American Hospital Association (AHA) estimated that 1.8 million individuals in rural communities would lose their Medicaid coverage under the Republican Party's plan while rural hospitals would receive $50.4 billion less in Medicaid funds over the next decade, putting many of them at severe risk of shutting down completely.
"The Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would devastate rural hospitals across the country" if the bill became law, warned AHA president and CEO Rick Pollack. "Many rural hospitals would be forced to choose between maintaining services, keeping staff and possibly closing their doors. Patients would be forced to travel hours for basic or emergency care, and communities would suffer."
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) cited the story about the Nebraska clinic on X Thursday morning and predicted it was just the beginning of bad things to come for rural hospitals.
"Republicans haven't passed their bill yet, but if you live in... Nebraska you can thank them for making you less healthy," he wrote. "There will be many more."
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the GOP budget bill would slash spending on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program by more than $1 trillion over a ten-year-period and would result in more than 10 million Americans losing their health insurance coverage.
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The Senate GOP's Big Ugly Bill Is Even Worse Than the Earlier Cruelty Passed by the House
Republicans in the House, many of whom looked to the Senate to craft a bill that was less damaging than the House bill, must stand up for their communities and reject it. Now is their chance.
Jul 01, 2025
Following a series of middle-of-the-night backroom deals, and less than an hour after the final language was unveiled, Senate Republicans voted to pass a bill that would raise food and health care costs on families, increase poverty and hunger, and take health coverage away from millions of people while doubling down on costly tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
The Senate Republican bill’s federal Medicaid cuts are even deeper than the massive House cuts, making it more likely that states would cut their programs and putting rural hospitals and other community health providers at even greater long-term risk of closure.
House Republicans, many of whom looked to the Senate to craft a bill that was less damaging than the House bill, must stand up for their communities and reject it.
The more people have learned about the bill, the more opposition has grown. Now we will learn whether House Republicans, with time to reflect on the damage this agenda would cause and the ways the Senate made the bill worse, are as thoughtful as the people they serve.
Just days ago, some House Republicans expressed opposition to the additional Medicaid cuts the Senate was considering. Those additional cuts are in the Senate Republican bill that the House is expected to vote on as soon as tomorrow.
The Senate Republican bill would cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, compared to $800 billion in the House Republican bill. The deeper cuts translate into larger harmful impacts.
The bill also would expand the House Republican bill’s provision that takes Medicaid coverage away from people who don’t meet a red-tape-laden work requirement by applying it to parents enrolled through the Medicaid expansion who have children older than 13.
Working parents who get tripped up by red tape, parents who get laid off and are looking for work, parents who lose their jobs when they get sick or need to care for a sick child — as well as adults without children who have disabilities, are between jobs, or are working — would lose access to the health care they need to work, to care for their children, and to beat treatable illnesses.
Relative to the House Republican bill, the Senate version would make it even harder for some states to finance their Medicaid programs. Senate Republicans know the bill would hurt rural hospitals — that’s why they added a face-saving temporary fund, but it won’t rescue rural providers when the funding runs dry and the permanent cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace coverage remain. This is particularly true because the revised Senate fund gives the Health and Human Services secretary significant discretion in how the funds would be allocated. Rural providers need people in their communities to have health coverage they can count on. Without that, more rural hospitals will close and more people with and without coverage will be cut off from care they need.
The Senate Republican bill also would take health coverage away from even more immigrants living and working in the U.S. lawfully than the House bill would. The Senate bill would take away federal funding of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage for refugees, people granted asylum, certain victims of sex or labor trafficking, and certain victims of domestic violence, among others. This ban includes children, and as in the House bill, it also would take away Medicare, ACA premium tax credits, and food assistance through SNAP from these groups. Despite countless misleading statements, immigrants in the country without a documented status are already ineligible for all of these programs; everyone who would lose health coverage and food assistance because of this bill is living lawfully in the U.S. (One anti-immigrant health provision in the House bill was not included due to a parliamentarian ruling.)
The Senate Republican bill would also raise families’ grocery costs, taking food assistance away from millions of people, including children and veterans, and forcing unaffordable costs on states. When states can’t pay those costs, they would be left with two choices — take SNAP benefits away from large numbers of people or end their SNAP programs entirely.
Again, it is clear that at least some Senate Republicans understand how damaging the provision is — they created a preposterous carve out to delay implementation of the cost-shift for states with the highest error rates in the country as a way to secure the votes they needed. But delaying for a handful of states a harmful provision that could unravel our most important anti-hunger program as a national program would not undo its damage.
Even as the Senate Republican bill would make deeper health care cuts, it continues the House’s approach of large tax cuts for the wealthy, including raising the amount heirs can inherit tax free from the largest estates to $30 million per couple and extending a deduction for business owners that would deliver more than half its benefits to millionaires.
The Senate bill would cost about $3.3 trillion when you remove the gimmick of assuming it is free to extend tax cuts. That is basically the same cost as extending all of the 2017 tax law’s expiring tax cuts for families — including millionaires — without any cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
House Republicans should step back and find the courage to say no to any bill that would raise costs and take health coverage and food assistance away from people struggling to afford the basics — all while making deficits and debt soar and exposing our economy to more long-term risk.
But at the very least, as House Republican leaders seek to jam the Senate bill through the House, concerned House Republicans should follow through on their promise not to support a final bill that threatens access to Medicaid coverage and reject it.
If they don’t, they, along with their Senate counterparts, will own its impacts. Unfortunately, it is their constituents who will pay the price for their poor leadership.
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