Ankilibevahavola — Every morning, residents of this village in southern Madagascar’s Amboasary Sud district set off on an eight-hour round-trip walk to collect water from the nearest river. Along the way, some give up and instead use plastic jerry cans to scoop up whatever they can find in potholes along the road – muddy liquid aid workers jokingly call "chocolate water". This region of Madagascar has been chronically poor for decades, but a series of droughts, which government officials say are driven by climate change, have left close to a million people struggling to cope. Drought is increasing the risk of malnutrition and could cause deaths in children younger than five, half of whom already suffer from stunting, said Norohasina Rakotoarison, a spokeswoman for Madagascar’s ministry of the environment. In the south of the island, where many people farm for a living, the rainy season is getting shorter and shorter, they say. Rains that once stretched from October to March now fall...
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