Climate change ‘hitting Africa’
28/10/2006 BBC Global warming is set to make many of the problems which Africa already deals with, much, much worse. Droughts are becoming more frequent, 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. 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 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. ”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. 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. The average number of food emergencies in Africa per year almost ripled 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. 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.