Climate change 'hitting Africa'



Droughts are becoming more frequent, the report says

Climate change is already affecting people across Africa and will wipe out efforts to tackle poverty there unless urgent action is taken, a report says.

Droughts are getting worse and climate uncertainty is growing, the research from a coalition of UK aid agencies and environmental groups says.


Climate change is an "unprecedented" threat to food security, it says.


It calls for a "climate-proof" model of development and massive emissions cuts to avoid "possibly cataclysmic change".


The report, Up In Smoke 2, updates previous research from the organisations - Oxfam, the New Economics Foundation and the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, an umbrella group of aid and green groups.


Global warming is set to make many of the problems which Africa already deals with, much, much worse


Andrew Simms
New Economics Foundation


It says that although climates across Africa have always been erratic, scientific research and the experience of the contributing groups "indicates new and dangerous extremes".


Arid or semi-arid areas in northern, western, eastern and parts of southern Africa are becoming drier, while equatorial Africa and other parts of southern Africa are getting wetter, the report says.


The continent is, on average, 0.5C
warmer than it was 100 years ago, but temperatures have risen much higher in some areas - such as a part of Kenya which has become 3.5C hotter in the past 20 years, the agencies report.


Andrew Simms, from the New Economics Foundation, said: "Global warming is set to make many of the problems which Africa already deals with, much, much worse," he said.


"In the last year alone, 25 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa have faced food crisis.


"Global warming means that that many dry areas are going to get drier and wet areas are going to get wetter. They are going to be caught between the devil of drought and the deep blue seas of floods."


He added that the "great tragedy" was that Africa had played virtually no role in global warming, a problem he said was caused by economic activity of the rich, industrial countries.


Mr Simms said unless climate change was tackled all the "best efforts" to help Africa could come to nothing.


One of the biggest threats is growing climate unpredictability, which makes subsistence farming difficult, the report says.


The average number of food emergencies in Africa per year almost tripled since the mid 1980s, it points out.


But it says that better planning to reduce the risk from disasters, together with developing agricultural practices that can withstand changing climates, have been shown to work and could help mitigate the impact if used be more widely.


'Overwhelming'

Up in Smoke 2 also laments the failure of industrialised governments to help developing countries adapt to climate change.


Between $10bn (£5.2bn) and $40bn is needed annually, the report says, but industrialised countries have given only $43m - a tenth of the amount they have pledged - while rich country fossil fuel subsidies total $73bn a year.


The agencies say that greenhouse emissions cuts of 60% - 90% will ultimately be needed - way beyond the targets set in the Kyoto agreement.
"Climate change is overwhelming the situation in Africa... unless we take genuine steps now to reduce our emissions, people in the developed world will be condemning millions to hunger, starvation and death," said Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth.


The report comes two weeks before a key summit on climate change in Nairobi, where delegates will look at the progress made on the Kyoto agreement that requires industrial nations to cut their emissions by an average of 5.2% from 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012.


Delegates will also consider what system should be adopted when the current period ends.

Jeez. How do you 'climate proof' a country that was already in ruin?

Not sure but if it keeps going like this, it isn't going to be a very pretty future but hey we are not there yet so ^_^

I wonder what the largest thing that was bad we did that caused it... was it cars, factories, or hmm.. and also having a LARGE hole in the... that one thingy in the sky... hmm trying to think of the name of it... Oh well I will edit it when I think of it... hehe sorry JUST woke up

But yeah with it not being there... OH yeah! It is the Ozone layer! yay I remembered!

Okay anyway... with it not being there that is not helping block out some of the sun... the warmth comes in more intently and some how the sky prevents the warmth from escaping... I am sure some of it gets through... but then again if there is a layer that prevents things from getting out how does it get in the first place through that layer? Well somehow it works...

Man I hope you guys understand that hehe

There was a quote up there, "The dry places are just going to get drier and the wet places and just going to get flooded." What does this mean for the regions experincing all four seasons? It can be rainy here at times and it can have its drouts too. We actually see snow (winter), the leaves turning colours (fall), the trees budding (spring), to much heat (summer), I mean not all places in the world experiences all 4 seasons... some only experince 1 or 2... of course the world goes through the same but some never see well defined changes like that... So for people that have all seasons would we be dried out of rainy?

Africa I do not know what to say for them, other than I feel bad, they were struggling enough and now the climate is making it worse but this world heating it we will not beable to stop or slow it down so easy... will take time but it might be to late for some by the time we get a handle on things but I am not sure what they are going to do to slow it down...

-RMS Carpathia-

I'd just like to know what numbers everyone of these climatologists are using, where they are getting it from, and where the people that got those numbers got them from. Which instruments were used, who made those instruments, how effective those instruments were/are. What factors are involved, what factors are not involved. Do they take in account what the earth does to itself, are there any outside influences accounted for, is the distance from earth to sun the same as it was the last time records were taken.

I'm sorry, I won't believe that the "man-made" destruction or deterioration of the climate theories is correct unless it's proven without a doubt.