Impoverished living at the sharp end of climate change

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa. Its population of largely subsistence farmers contribute almost nothing to the pollution associated with global warming. And yet this is a nation in a continent at the sharp end of climate change.

This year is as bad as anyone can remember. It began with catastrophic floods that left hundreds of thousands homeless and washed away entire crops.

It continued into the new planting season with a drought some say is the worst for more than 20 years.

As a result, the World Food Programme (WFP) is feeding almost three million people.

"We’re standing here in the blazing heat when in a good year we should be drenched with rain," one WFP official tells me at a feeding station where a thousand families queue patiently under the midday sun for grain and oil that will keep them alive for another month.

Farmers hope for rain due weeks ago but their weather prayers have still not been answered.

The fields all around are brown and barren. A river bed, in full flood back in January, is dry and dusty.

Each morning, farmers look to the skies but the rain - due weeks ago - refuses to fall.

The weather system El Nino is to blame but the phenomenon seems more extreme and to come round more often as the world has warmed up.

Feeding stations have helped feed the nation after flooding destroyed crops earlier this year.

In Malawi, the situation has been exacerbated by the destruction of woodland for illegal export and for charcoal. When it rains, the land is simply washed away.

"We blame ourselves for what is happening, we have chopped down too many trees," says Mayi, a mother of four.

She’s an elder of a village forced to move en masse when their homes disappeared under this year's floodwater.

Mother-of-four Mayi said 12 people drowned in January's flooding.

She says she saw 12 people drown. Now a slower tragedy is unfolding.

They’re rebuilding on higher ground; their tents are being replaced by brick and mortar homes.

But the nearest water pump is a long walk away and they are surrounded by arid bush land they are unable to farm.

Their one meal a day, ground maize, is provided by donors.

Already impoverished people in Malawi are being pushed to the limits of endurance.

If the scientific consensus is correct, Malawi provides a depressing vision of the future. Already impoverished people pushed to the limits of endurance.There’s a second alarming lesson too.

According to one UN projection, for the world to make a significant difference to global warming, developed nations need to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases to levels in the least developed world by the final quarter of the century.

Even with advances in clean fuel technology, it seems an almost impossible task.

Indeed Malawi is planning to build its first coal-fired power stations. Its own emissions are due to rocket.

Malawi is a long way distant from Paris. And the journey to a sustainable climate is even further and even tougher.