Africa
Demand for action to curb climate change in Africa

afrol News, 20 August - Six days before governments convene in South Africa for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), a new WWF report says that the choices that world leaders make on energy at the WSSD will have widespread implications for biodiversity, water supply and food security in Africa. 

The WWF report, entitled Impact of Climate Change on Life in Africa, outlines the extensive effects of climate change on Africa, and highlights that if carbon pollution continues at current rates, people, animals and plants will suffer serious consequences. 

- As natural resources become scarce or disappear, many African communities will suffer the effects of climate change-induced alterations of agriculture, water supply and disease, the conservation group concludes. "At the same time, climate change will exacerbate the already numerous stresses on biodiversity in Africa, possibly even causing some ecosystems to go extinct." 

The group says coral reefs off the eastern coast of Africa have already experienced massive bleaching due to climate change, resulting in the death of over 50 per cent of the corals in some regions. Damage to coral reef systems has far-reaching implications for fisheries, food security, tourism and marine biodiversity. 

- If carbon pollution is left unchecked, climate change will have a pervasive effect on life in Africa, said Dr. Paul Desanker, Co-Director of the Centre for African Development Solutions in Johannesburg and environmental science professor at the University of Virginia in the United States. "It will threaten the people, animals and natural resources that make Africa unique. World leaders have an opportunity now to help slow climate change and protect Africa by reducing carbon pollution and supporting sustainable land use that promotes conservation." 

According to the report, shifts in annual and seasonal rainfall variations due to climate change are to impact ecosystems and the migration patterns of some birds, large mammals and nomadic people. 

The prolonged drying trend in the semi-arid region south of the Sahara since the 1970s had "demonstrated the vulnerability of nomadic people to climate change." The result of this change in climate had been widespread loss of human life and livestock, and substantial changes to the social system, the group notes. 

However, migrations were not without problems: "When the more fertile migratory destination is already densely occupied and permanent water points fail at the more arid end, changing the migratory path and destinations is difficult and frequently impossible." 

Wild animals, birds and plants were to face similar difficulties in finding alternate migratory routes and destinations in a world of intense human land use, the group says. 

In a statement, WWF says it believes that the Johannesburg Summit provided "a timely opportunity for governments to make commitments that can ensure development and poverty alleviation while at the same time reducing the carbon pollution that causes climate change." 

The group therefore was asking governments to "commit to the provision of clean and affordable energy services to the two billion people without access to energy, and to a global new renewable energy target to increase the share of new renewables to 10 percent by 2010." 

Using renewable energy instead of burning dirty fossil fuels was a key step in reducing carbon pollution. "This report shows that without responsible leadership on energy, Africa and its peoples will pay a dramatic cost," said Jennifer Morgan, Director of WWF's Climate Change Programme. "World leaders must seize the opportunity at the WSSD to increase the use of clean, renewable energy and slow climate change." 

Sources: Based on WWF and afrol archives

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