More than one million people in southern Madagascar are going hungry in what the World Food Programme (WFP) believes could become the first-ever famine brought on by climate change. 

Successive years of drought have forced people in rural communities to eat locusts, fruit and cactus leaves because they have been unable to plant or harvest sweet potatoes, tomatoes and other crops. 

Alice Rahmoun, WFP Communications Officer in the capital, Antananarivo, was in the region recently. She said families have been selling prized assets, such as cattle, farmland and even homes, to survive.   

Ms. Rahmoun spoke to Dianne Penn about the UN agency’s support to some 700,000 people, with plans to reach more, and hopes for the COP26 climate change conference which opens later this month in Glasgow, Scotland.