posted by System Administrator on 11/16/06

"Africa might very well experience the greatest human tragedy due to climate change. Although it has contributed less than any other region to the greenhouse gas emissions that are widely held responsible for global warming, the African continent is the least equipped and the most vulnerable to variations in temperature. The African savannahs – broad grasslands with scattered trees - which are both economically important and ecologically unique, are in danger of disappearing.

Biodiversity, which is inextricably linked to climate, will be seriously affected and Africa’s thousands of plant species, including its medicinal plants that so many Africans rely on, will be seriously degraded. All the predictions indicate that places like the Kalahari desert will get hotter and drier, sand dunes will become unstable and vegetation for grazing will become scarce. This loss of vegetation as a result of climate change will be disastrous for African farmers, whose livestock depend on plants for grazing. Sir Nicholas Stern’s report (Oct. 2006) on the economics of climate change suggests that world output could be up to a fifth lower as a result of climate change, and nowhere else would this be greatest felt than in Africa.

Many researchers have already warned that a three-degree Celsius rise in temperature over the next century will increase the risk of drought, wildfires and forest loss in many parts of the developing world. They also warn that the increased periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean known as El Niño and a similar phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation effect threatens food supplies for millions of Africans by reducing crop yields.

According to the data: “…in terms of GDP, India and Africa together are expected to loose 10 times more from climate change than the US and 20 times more than China…”. Furthermore, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth indicates that the US - which contributes 30.3% to global warming compared to 2.5% by Africa - is responsible for more greenhouse gas pollution than South America, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Japan and Asia, combined.

The two ways that climate change has already affected sub-Saharan Africa and costal regions along the Indian and Pacific Oceans are: directly through heat waves and droughts; and indirectly by increasing the spread of infectious diseases. So its not just a threat to the future, a 2003 World Health Organisation report claims that 150,000 people are dying now from the effects of global warming.

Global energy use is climbing and its scarcity means that prices are rising fast and it is this hike in prices that will affect the UK’s poorest and those who live in our most deprived neighbourhoods’ worst, whom paradoxically have the least green spaces and major polluted roads running through them. Through our daily human activities we are routinely releasing methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and some industrially produced gases into the atmosphere. Increased emissions of all these gases are leading to a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time over the past 20,000 years. And in the immediate future, rates of increase in global temperatures are expected to be the greatest for the last 10,000 years. Put simply, global warming represents the greatest single threat to humanity and time is running out. Our superficial needs and desire for luxury, comfort and anything fast, is literally killing the earth once Africa is gone, its only a matter of time for other countries to follow suit as the maps of the world will literally have to be redrawn."

Excerpted from The Voice "Africa: the Most Vulnerable to Climate Change" by Claudia Webbe 11-15-06 with some editing by dcb