African countries must adapt to climate change or face destruction: UN
Pastor Dale Morgan
African countries must adapt to climate change or face destruction: UN*
NAIROBI, Nov 5 (AFP) Nov 05, 2006
African countries must adapt to the effects of global warming to stem
further impact climate change may wreak upon the continent's more than
800 million inhabitants, UN officials said Sunday.
Sub-Saharan Africa must improve its current weather monitoring systems
and closely link environmental research and government policy, UN
officials said on the eve of the 12th session of the Conference of the
Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)
beginning Monday in Nairobi.
"Part of the adaptation response ... must include significant
improvements in Africa's climate and weather monitoring capabilities,"
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director Achim Steiner told a
press conference.
"Then countries on the continent can better tailor their response in
areas from agriculture to health care and international donors can
better understand Africa's needs now, and in the future," Steiner said.
Africa, home to about 800 million people, accounts for more than a fifth
of the world's total landmass and its people are the most severely
affected by the impacts of global warming despite emitting the least
amount of greenhouse gases that lead to climate change.
Extreme droughts, floods and rising sea levels are among the many
threats facing Africa, which is home to 1,150 weather observation
stations - eight times fewer than the World Meteorological
Organization's recommended level.
Unless programmes are implemented to help African countries adapt to
climate change, approximately 480 million people in Africa may be facing
water security issues by 2025, according to a UN report released Sunday.
In addition, the report estimates that between 25 and 40 percent of
species' habitats in Africa could be lost by 2085.
"Activating the adaptation agenda is critical," UNFCCC executive
director Yvo de Boer said in a statement.
"It is time to move from establishing the principles to real action on
the ground."
Among the programmes suggested by UN experts is the protection of small
island states against rising sea levels, which can lead to coastal flooding.
Officials estimate that more than 70 million Africans could be displaced
by flooding by 2080, up from one million in 1990.
The UN conference also coincides with the Second Session of the
Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol - an international
treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - being held at UN offices in
Nairobi from November 6 - 17.
Many environmental activists have lambasted the United States and
Australia, two of the world's leading emitters of greenhouse gases which
lead to the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming, for their
refusal to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's
foremost experts on the subject, published a report in early 2001
suggesting that by 2100, the mean global temperature will have risen by
between 1.4 and 5.8 C (2.5 and 10.4 F).
The IPCC was set up by the WMO and UNEP in 1988 to provide neutral,
scientific assessments on climate change every six years. Their next
report is due in early 2007.
A study released last week in Britain by former World Bank chief
economist Sir Nicholas Stern, said global warming could cost the world's
economies up to 20 percent of their gross domestic product.
But combatting global warming now would cost about one percent of GDP,
20 times less than the potential cost of doing nothing.