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Connecting To Advance
By Dr. Kwabena Amponsah-Manager
It is estimated that by 2030, 40% of the world GDP and 85% of the world population will be in regions where water resources exceed supply. Scary? Alarming? I think so. But there are actions we can take now to save the planet for ourselves, our children and their children, or we can bury our heads in the sand. Saving the only planet which offers us home, responsible capitalism, politics and religion should not be at odds with one another. Why should they?
HARARE, Zimbabwe — As she surveys her small, bare plot in Zimbabwe’s capital, farmer Janet Vambe knows something serious is happening, even if she has never heard of climate change.
“Long ago, I could set my calendar with the date the rains started,” the 72-year-old said. Nowadays, “we have to gamble with the rains. If you plant early you might lose and if you plant late you might win. We are at a loss of what to do.”
Paramu Mafongoya, a University of Zimbabwe agronomist, says Vambe’s worries and those of millions of other poor farmers – most of them women – across Africa are a clear sign of the impact of climate change on a continent already struggling to feed itself. Changes have been noted in the timing and the distribution of rainfall on the continent. Zimbabweans say the rainy season has become shorter and more unpredictable, Mafongoya said.
Climate change “is a serious threat to human life,” Mafongoya said. “It affects agriculture and food security everywhere.”
International climate change negotiators meet in the South African coastal city of Durban starting Monday. Their agenda includes how to get African and other developing countries the technology and knowledge to ensure that people like Vambe can keep feeding their families without looking for emergency food aid.
A Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries to help them fight climate change and its effects was agreed on at last year’s climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. Durban negotiators hope to make progress on addressing questions such as where the money will come from and how will it be managed.
Climate change specialist Rashmi Mistry said her anti-hunger group Oxfam will be in Durban lobbying to ensure that women have a voice in managing the Green Fund, and that their needs are addressed when its money is spent. Most small-scale farmers in Africa are women, and they also are the ones shopping for the family’s food. But tradition often keeps them out of policymaking roles.
Mistry said when yields are low and market prices are high, women are the first to suffer.
“She’s the one usually who will feed her husband first and feed her children first, and she will go hungry,” Mistry said.
Across Africa, said Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s special envoy on climate change, farmers need to triple production by 2050 to meet growing needs.
“At the same time, you’ve got climate change lowering average yields by what’s expected to be 28 percent,” Steer said. He called for more investment in such areas as agricultural research and water management.
Experts already are working on solutions. For example, Africa Harvest, a think tank that uses science and technology to address poverty and improve livelihoods among some of the poorest people in Africa, is working with farmers in an arid stretch in eastern Kenya who were finding it harder and harder to grow their usual crops of corn and beans. Africa Harvest got farmers to switch to sorghum. They have seen bumper harvests as a result because they are focusing on the right crop and the right practices for the climate, said Moctar Toure, chairman of Africa Harvest, who will be in Durban for the talks.
“The way we do agricultural development has to change,” Toure told The Associated Press. “We need to balance the need to increase farm productivity with environmental conservation. We will also work towards broad policy changes in our target countries in order to address endemic problems (affecting women) such as land right security, access to credit and knowledge.”
Experts worry that one consequence of resources becoming scarcer will be more frequent conflict. Already, Zimbabwe has seen aid used as a political weapon. Those who can prove their loyalty to longtime President Robert Mugabe’s party have been seen to be favored when it comes time to hand out seeds or food.
Modern techniques of growing drought-resistant crops like sorghum and millet, staggering planting programs, irrigation and harvesting rain and river water in dams help minimize the risk to farmers. But Zimbabwe’s modern agricultural infrastructure has been disrupted by a decade of political and economic turmoil.
Acute food shortages eased after Zimbabwe adopted the U.S. dollar to end world-record inflation in 2009, but local farm production continues to decline. This month, the U.N. food agency said more than 1 million Zimbabweans needed food aid and poor families, especially households with orphans and vulnerable children, can’t afford much of the food that is available. Most of that food is imported.
Climate change, like the political problems linked to poverty in Zimbabwe, is manmade, though over a longer term.
Scientists say the accumulation of carbon dioxide traps the Earth’s heat, and is causing dramatic changes in weather patterns, agricultural conditions and heightened risks of devastating sea-level rise. Industrialized nations bear the bulk of the blame, since they have been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for 200 years.
Africa emits only about 3 percent of the total greenhouse gases per year, but its fragile systems and impoverished people are hardest hit by the consequences.
Weather experts say Zimbabwe’s average rainfall has decreased over the decade and October temperatures this year soared to above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), the highest since 1962.
Harare meteorologist Jephias Mugumbate said rains in January and February – crucial for the ripening of crops – can no longer be relied on.
It was often said drought in southern Africa recurred every 10 years.
“But now it has become more frequent and intensified. Temperatures show an upward trend and instead of being cooler our nights are becoming hotter,” Mugumbate said
Like Vambe, tens of millions of Africans rely on rain-fed agriculture.
Vambe’s corn crop has supported her family for more than five decades. But her yields have been steadily falling.
She walks at daybreak to her nearly bare field 10 miles (15 kilometers) from her home in the impoverished western Harare township of Highfield. She has finished planting her seed with the help of her two grandchildren. The dusty brown soil beckons for rain.
Maize, the nation’s staple food, needs 60 days of moisture to reach maturity.
“The rains have become erratic. We can no longer rely on the seasons,” Vambe said.
She has had to replant on several occasions because of a “false start” to the rainy season.
“This is what has been affecting our yields since 2000. We are no longer getting good yields because the rain comes and goes away,” she said.
In the past, the growing season ended in March and harvests were gathered through April.
“Today, nothing is definite. You get rain in April then our maize rots in the fields,” Vambe said. “If we are not respecting our spirits and if they are angry, there will be no rain.”
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Associated Press Writer Donna Bryson in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
JOHANNESBURG — Imagine the savannas of South Africa’s flagship Kruger Park so choked with brush, viewing what game is left is nearly impossible. The Cape of Good Hope without penguins. The Karoo desert’s seasonal symphony of wildflowers silenced.
Climate change could mean unthinkable loss for South Africa, which hosts talks on global warming that will bring government negotiators, scientists and lobbyists from around the world to the coastal city of Durban next week.
Guy Midgley, the top climate change researcher at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, said evidence gleaned from decades of recording weather data, observing flora and fauna and conducting experiments makes it possible for scientists to “weave a tapestry of change.”
Change is, of course, part of the natural world. But the implications of so much change happening at once pose enormous questions, said Midgley, who has contributed to the authoritative reports of the United Nations’ Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In the Karoo, for example, where plants found nowhere else in the world have adapted to long, dry summers and winter rainfall, the weather pattern is changing.
Scientists have noted large die-offs linked to the stress of drought among one iconic Karoo denizen, the flowering quiver tree, a giant aloe that often is the only large plant visible across large stretches of desert. Quiver trees attract tourists, and insects, birds and mammals eat their flowers.
“Any change in climate is going to affect the flowers,” said Wendy Foden, a southern African plant specialist with the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Barend Erasmus, an ecologist at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand, worked on some of the first efforts to model how Africa might be affected by climate change. He led a 2001 study that raised the possibility that up to two-thirds of the species studied might disappear from Kruger National Park.
Research done since has made Erasmus less fearful for Kruger’s animal population. But he predicts profound effects should a changing climate encourage the growth of thick shrubs, squeezing out zebra, antelope and cheetah.
Already, he said, zebra and wildebeest numbers are declining in Kruger as their grazing areas disappear. The question is how much of the cause is due to high concentrations of carbon dioxide, and how much depends on other factors, including man’s encroachment.
Offshore, penguin expert Rob Crawford has looked at changes in the breeding grounds of African penguins and other seabirds, noting South Africa’s northernmost penguin colony went extinct in 2006. Crawford and his colleagues wrote in a 2008 paper that the movements “suggest the influence of environmental change, perhaps forced by climate.”
The African penguin, also known as the jackass penguin because of its braying call, is found only in southern Africa. A colony near Cape Town has long been a tourist draw.
One penguin parent stays behind to nest and care for offspring, while the other seeks food for the family. If the hunting partner is away too long, the nesting parent has to abandon the chick – or starve. Species like sardines, on which the penguins depend, have been displaced.
“If they don’t have sardines, they can’t feed their chicks,” Erasmus said. “And eventually the colonies just disappear.”
The numbers of African penguins have plummeted from up to 4 million in the early 1900s to 60,000 in 2010, according to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. Researchers blame humans, who collected penguin eggs for food until the 1960s. More recently, a new threat came with oil spills and commercial fishing’s competition for anchovies and sardines.
Erasmus said more research needs to be done, including studies on how plants and animals react to extreme conditions.
A colleague at his university, Duncan Mitchell, has taken up the challenge by tracking and studying antelope living in one of the hottest and driest corners of South Africa.
“We’re hoping to find that they have a capacity to deal with water shortage that they’re not having to use at the moment,” Mitchell said.
“Climate change is going to happen,” Mitchell said, adding it’s already too late to influence temperatures and water levels over the next four decades. “What needs to be researched is coping with unmitigated climate change.”
Coping might involve moving vulnerable animals to cooler habitats – or ensuring they’re not so hemmed in by human settlements that they cannot migrate on their own. Park rangers may have to work harder to remove trees to protect savannas. The South African government has called for expanding gene banks to conserve vulnerable species.
Sarshen Marais, a policy expert for Conservation International, says the work her organization is doing to eradicate foreign plants and help farmers better manage their land and water has gained importance.
Climate change experts fear water could become even scarcer in the future, but farmers can take steps that will help cash crops as well as wildlife. Conservation International has encouraged local communities to cut down thirsty foreign plants and sell the debris for fuel, allowing impoverished South Africans to earn while they save native species that are losing in the competition for water.
Researcher Erasmus acknowledges that in a developing country like South Africa, it can be hard to prioritize the plight of plants and animals. But he said an economic argument can be made, including the impact on people living in savannas who supplement their diets with small birds, other animals and wild greens, and who make money selling native fruits.
Tourism also is a consideration.
“Kruger is a cash cow for the whole of SANParks,” he said, referring to the national parks department.
Foden, the plant specialist, said that when she thinks of her native South Africa, she thinks of wide spaces filled with a stunning diversity of plants and animals.
“If we were to lose that,” she said, “we would lose so much of our identity.”
GENEVA — The Western Black Rhino of Africa has been declared officially extinct, and two other subspecies of rhinoceros are close to meeting the same fate, a leading conservation group said Thursday.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature said a recent reassessment of the Western Black Rhino had led it to declare the species extinct, adding that the Northern White Rhino of central Africa is now “possibly extinct” in the wild and the Javan Rhino is “probably extinct” in Vietnam, after poachers killed the last animal there in 2010.
A small but declining population of the Javan Rhino survives on the Indonesian island of Java, it added.
“A lack of political support and willpower for conservation efforts in many rhino habitats, international organized crime groups targeting rhinos and increasing illegal demand for rhino horns and commercial poaching are the main threats faced by rhinos,” the group said in a statement accompanying the latest update of its so-called Red List of endangered species.
About a quarter of all mammals are at risk of extinction, IUCN said, adding that some species have been brought back from the brink with successful conservation programs.
The Southern White Rhino numbered just 100 animals at the end of the 19th century, but has since flourished and now has a population of over 20,000.
The Przewalski’s Horse, a type of wild horse from Central Asia, has come back from extinction after a successful breeding program in captivity.
The Red List now contains almost 62,000 species of plants and animals, whose status is constantly monitored by conservationists.
31 March 2011 –Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today officially opened the new energy-efficient United Nations office complex in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, calling it a model for environmentally sustainable architecture in Africa and beyond.
“This building is beautiful, comfortable and efficient. But more than any of that, this building is a living model of our sustainable future,” Mr. Ban said at the opening of the facility at Gigiri, which houses the new offices of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT).
According to UNEP, buildings are responsible for more than one third of global energy use and are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in most countries. The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that emissions from buildings will rise to 11.1 billion tons by 2020.
The manufacture of building materials contributes a further 4 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, a figure that is increasing with the continuing rise in construction globally, most of it in developing countries.
“If our growing population is going to survive on this planet, we need smart designs that maximize resources, minimize waste and serve people and communities,” said Mr. Ban. “This facility hits all of these targets.”
From the 6,000 square metres of shimmering solar panels to the environmentally-friendly paint on the walls, the new UN offices – which comprise four buildings that can accommodate 1,200 staff – boast myriad environmental features, while capitalizing on the natural benefits of Nairobi’s climate.
The features of the energy-neutral complex include automated low-energy lighting for workspaces, energy-efficient computers and water-saving lavatories. Rainwater is collected from the roofs to feed the fountains and ponds at the four entrances, and sewage is treated in a state-of-the-art aeration system and recycled to irrigate the landscaped compound.
“This facility embodies the new, green economy I have championed for years now. An economy that can usher in a cleaner future, create jobs and spur economic growth,” said Mr. Ban, who was joined at the inauguration ceremony by Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner and UN-HABITAT Executive Director Joan Clos, as well as other UN officials and dignitaries.
Calling the facility a “model for green architecture in Africa and beyond,” Mr. Ban said he hoped all UN offices will reach the very high bar set by those in Nairobi.
He added that the Organization is aiming to make its Headquarters complex in New York, which is currently undergoing major renovations after 60 years of existence, one of the cleanest, greenest buildings in the world.
While in Nairobi, Mr. Ban also held separate meetings with Mr. Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga. He also had a range of meetings with senior UN officials either based in Nairobi or visiting for the Chief Executives Board (CEB) gathering. That meeting, held twice a year, brings together the heads of the specialized agencies, funds and programmes in the UN system.
Also today, he launched his report on HIV/AIDS ahead of the high-level meeting on the topic at the General Assembly in June.
Last week the Republicans in the House of Representatives decided to eliminate a global warming committee created by Democrats. Apparently some politicians continue to deny that human beings are leaving an indelible footprint around the globe.
Vicious hate-mailers which frequent my inbox on the subject of global warming seem also to be in denial, yet a recent survey published in July 2010 in The Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences found that of 1,372 scientists involved in climate research 97 to 98 percent supported anthropogenic (or human-induced) climate change (ACC).
Twenty-four climate models including Japan’s Earth Simulator super-computer predict that if a carbon-cap is not firmly in place by 2020 Earth’s temperature will rise by at least 5.5 degrees F and perhaps as high as 10 degrees F by the end of this century.
And while the delegates for 193 nations meet at the U.N. climate summit in Cancun and argue for who pays for what; this year (2010) will go down as a record year for the amount of coal burned in one year on our planet. It will easily exceed 6.25 billion tons and China’s galloping economy will have contributed at 54 percent of the global emissions.
Each of their coal-fired power plants is consuming 2.2 billion gallons of fresh water and worldwide burning coal is adding as much as 7,500 tons of mercury vapor — a potent neurotoxin — to our stratosphere. It’s winding up in our food chain and drinking water here in America.
Let’s take a look at what Earth’s ecosystems are telling scientists about rising temperatures, acidifying oceans, droughts, intense rainfalls, dying forests and melting ice caps.
Rising temperatures have significantly impacted Hawaii. Surface temperatures are rising, rainfall and stream flow has generally declined, rain intensity has increased, sea level and sea surface temperatures have increased, and the ocean is acidifying.
Around the world jellyfish populations are on the rise as the oceans acidify. Shellfish, on the other hand, like mussels, shrimp, or lobsters are at risk since they will find it considerably more difficult to build their protective shells.
Oceans are naturally alkaline and had a pH level of about 8.2 in 1750. Since the Industrial Revolution, the acidity has increased by 30 percent. Earth’s oceans absorb about 25 percent of the global CO2 emissions. In this process, CO2 is converted into carbonic acid. Rising CO2 levels are unequivocally causing the oceans to become more acidic.
Canada experienced its warmest and driest winter on record. Abnormally dry conditions in British Columbia combined with higher temperatures resulted in poor snow conditions for some events at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler. Winter temperatures on average across the nation were 8 degrees F above normal. Springtime temperatures were also 5 degrees F above average.
Canada experienced the largest spring Arctic sea ice retreat ever recorded as well as registering the largest missing summer sea ice. To experience the warmest winter and spring, back to back, is extraordinary. The year 2010 will go on record as the hottest year ever recorded in Canada.
In Moscow the July mean temperatures were almost 10 degrees F above normal; and the heat wave that gripped the nation killed in excess of 11,000 people in Moscow alone.
Japan and China had their hottest summers ever recorded.
Extreme heat affected northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula during the summer of 2010 with temperatures of 126 degrees F measured in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and 123 degrees F at Doha (Qatar).
After 13 years of being parched the drought in Australia (except for the southwest) broke. Rainfall arrived, farmers rejoiced, grain crops grew and then the rain kept on falling.
A bumper grain crop of 45 tons was predicted. It was the wettest September since the inception of record keeping in the 1850s in Australia. So far at least 15 tons of grain have rotted on the fields. Global grain prices, already at a two-year high after a drought in Russia, have soared again due to persistent rainfall ruining Australian crops and fueling fears of a global shortage.
October was the driest month in Mexico since 1941. November was the driest month in Israel since 1950 and its just suffered the worst-ever forest fire incinerating about 13,000 acres or 60 percent of the Carmel forest, killing 42 people and destroying over 250 homes.
Droughts have been relentless in the Amazon. In 2005 the northwest jungle experienced a one in 100 year drought. In concert with an intense storm 620 miles long by 124 miles wide at least 500 million trees were killed.
Usually the Amazon can absorb about 2 billion tons of CO2 a year. In 2005 the massive die-off of trees released 3 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, therefore an additional 5 billion tons of heat-trapping gases accumulated that year – more than the combined annual emissions of Europe and Japan.
This year the drought in the northwest Amazon is forecasted to be more lethal than that of 2005. The mighty Negro River — a tributary of the Amazon River — is at its lowest since records began in 1902. Over 60,000 people are now without food and fresh water.
Almost 900 miles southwest of the Negro River over 36,600 fires are alight in the forest over four times the number burning at this time last year.
Unless we reduce our global greenhouse gases around the globe researchers from Carnegie Institution for Sciences predict rising temperatures will alter rainfall in the Amazon by at least 37 percent; many plants and animals now living there with either move but more likely die. Let me remind you that the Amazon accounts for about a fifth of Earth’s annual oxygen output.
Droughts, wild fires and a plague of indigenous bark beetles have leveled the western forests of the United States. Instead of Arizona, Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming forests absorbing CO2 they too are now emitters of CO2.
In the last 60 years the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than perhaps any place on Earth. Winter temperatures have soared by 11 degrees F, and 90 percent of the 244 glaciers are in retreat. The ice-dependent Antarctica krill which feeds millions sea birds and marine mammals has declined in some cases by as much as 80 percent.
The natural world is in a tailspin from the speed of rising temperatures; there is no debate about human-induced global warming amongst field scientists working in marine or terrestrial ecosystems. Global warming is a citizen’s issue therefore we all are required to lend a helping hand — the time is now.
Dr Reese Halter is a Science Communicator: Voice for Ecology, conservation biologist at Cal Lutheran and author of Wild Weather – The Truth Behind Global Warming. Contact him through www.DrReese.com
Africa has struggled to make accurate and detailed predictions of the impact of climate change on its countries, but the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) which began earlier in 2010, will see the continent take a “quantum leap” in climate change projection, says Bruce Hewitson, the project’s Africa coordinator.
“The priority area for CORDEX is Africa, as it is historically under-researched,” said Hewitson, who is also the co-lead author of the chapter on regional contexts in the report by IPCC Working Group II, which will look at impact, adaptation and vulnerability.
Scientists use climate models that simulate the possible impact of variables like radiation, moisture content, and the movement of air and temperature over a given period of time to help project what could happen.
To make forecasting the possible effects of climate change as comprehensive as possible, and also make the connection between current events and future consequences clearer, scientists and academics have been expanding the list of variables to include sea level rise and even food price increases and malnutrition statistics.
A climate model works by calculating what the climate is doing, say, in terms of wind, temperature and humidity at a number of points on the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere or ocean, according to an explanation on the website, climateprediction.net. The website is backed by the University of Oxford, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and The Open University, all based in the UK.
Previous climate change models for Africa have typically worked at 200 km resolution – the distance covered by each box in the grid – said Hewitson, who heads the Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa.
The target for Africa is to predict climate changes for every 50 km, but some modellers might take it down to even 25 km, said Hewitson.
Fourteen climate modelling groups have already begun work, taking into account climate data from as far back as 1950 and looking beyond into 2100. Because of a lack of capacity in Africa, only two groups – one at UCT, led by Hewitson, and the other being the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa – are based on the continent
Climate models are systems of differential equations based on the basic laws of physics, fluid motion, and chemistry.To “run” a model, scientists divide the planet into a 3-dimensional grid, apply the basic equations, and evaluate the results. Atmospheric models calculate winds, heat transfer, radiation, relative humidity, and surface hydrology within each grid and evaluate interactions with neighboring points
The 12 other groups are led by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, the Danish Meteorological Institute and the University of Iowa, which are among the world’s foremost climate modelling institutions.
The climate data generated by the modelling groups will be processed by regional teams in Afrca led by African scientists, as part of the CORDEX initiative. They will be mentored by top global climate modellers such as Bill Gutowski of Iowa State University, who has been involved in efforts to build a climate research community in Africa for the last decade.
“The focus [of the modeling in Africa] is on areas that are urban, agricultural, water catchments, and other regionally important aspects,” said Hewitson.
The regional teams will be finalized by the end of 2010 and data processing will start in 2011.
Generally when people talk about needing to slow down and stop climate change they point to the world’s most egregious emission offenders. While countries like the United States and China have the ability to make the largest impact on emission reduction, every country must do its part. Africa has one of the lowest carbon emissions per-capita largely due to its status as underdeveloped. In fact, by using African counties as a test bed for sustainable technologies, we can both help bring sustainability to the forefront and aid developing countries.
To make real progress we need a massive investment in sustainable infrastructure in Africa. Part of the major carbon emitters responsibility is to help developing countries ease into industrialization, but in a sustainable manner. At the same time Africans must take it upon themselves to come into the future with sustainability in mind. I do not mean to gloss over this and pretend this is going to be easy. This will necessarily be a long process with a need to address political and security issues. While there are stable African governments, there are many with dictatorial regimes and even more that are that are war torn. These forms of government certainly stand in the way of the progress of sustainability.
The use of Africa as a test-bed for sustainable technology, albeit on the periphery of its mission, has been tried by the Earth Institute. One of the biggest problems I believe this institution strives to solve, as should the powers of the world if they are serious about this issue, is how to approach Africa. For years, Africa has been looked upon as a continent riddled with tribal war dating back to ancient times. Many do not hesitate to classify this society as primitive and thus, believe that the “solution” to the “problem” is supplanting infrastructure and industrialization. If we can see that Africa is a continent which was controlled through colonization and was demoralized, split up and forced to hate, we can see that the “solution” is not so clear. Aid to Africa is not a mere imposition of our beliefs on their culture, but it is working together with their culture to bring sustainable technology to them. Once we set them on the path, they will have the tools to “fish” for themselves.