Africa struggles to cope with climate anomalies

Climates Anomalies

Despite a recent admission from the IEA that their findings on climate change may have arisen from ambiguous data, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny that Earth's climate is changing or that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased as a result of human activity.

There is now significant evidence to support the theory that human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is to blame for the observed changes in our globe's climate and much of this activity has occurred in the world's more developed countries where industrialisation is well established. Yet in a rather cruel twist of fate it is the world's poorer nations where the worst of the effects have been felt. China, the US and much of Europe are notorious for being the world's biggest contributors to carbon emissions and where as these countries are not spared by the climatic changes that bring serious meteorological anomalies, it is the less developed world, with its inefficient infrastructure and limited resources, where the effects of severe weather changes are felt the most.

Africa's carbon contribution

But this doesn't mean Africa itself doesn't contribute to the growing levels of GHGs in the earth's atmosphere, it's just that the continents fossil-fuel CO2 emissions are low in both absolute and per capita terms.

Total emissions for Africa have increased by 11.2 percent since 1950, reaching 291 million metric tons of carbon in 2006, still less than the emissions for some single nations including Mainland China, the US, Russia, India, and Japan. Furthermore, although per capita emissions, 0.30 metric tons of carbon, were three times those in 1950, they were still only 5.9 percent of the comparable value for North America.

For countries like Mozambique, ravaged by flooding and lying in perpetual danger of further serious floods and much of sub-Sahara Africa, where some of the worst droughts on record have occurred in recent years, it is difficult to watch the rest of the world produce more and more carbon (despite efforts to curb emissions since Kyoto in 1990) whilst they themselves sit vulnerable, unable to invest heavily in means to protect themselves from the effects of climate change.

What's more is that in regards to Africa's own carbon emissions, only a small number of nations are largely responsible for the CO2 produced from fossil fuels and other activities such as cement production; South Africa accounts for 39 percent of the continental total, and another 47 percent of the carbon comes from Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Libya and Morocco combined. These are the only six countries on the continent with annual carbon emissions in excess of 10 million metric tons of carbon.

Immediate danger from climate anomalies

It's little wonder why the developing nations that descended on Copenhagen for the UN climate change summit last December were determined to get compensation from the western developed world. However, the fact that poorer nations gave very little room for negotiation while attempting to broker a deal meant that a comprehensive global agreement on climate change was never achievable, thus deepening the plight of the nations in more immediate danger from climate anomalies.

However, a group called The Africa Group, whose spokesperson is Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi, has made a demand for N30 billion to be granted to African countries to help tackle environmental damages caused by climate change. According to the plan, the start up funding will span three years from 2010 to 2012 with yearly release of US$10 billion.

But it doesn't all come down to money. African leaders must look to themselves and those around them for thoughtful and committed leadership when helping their people deal with the dangers presented by climate change. Richer countries are willing to help, as are NGOs such as the World Bank, but Africa must show itself to be willing to work with other world leaders and take the lead in installing hope and resilience in their own people.

Related Article:

Mozambique: A climate change case study | Spain give Kenya wind power cash | Copenhagen: The outcome

Daniel Jones

Daniel is a Politics and Philosophy graduate from Cardiff University where he also worked as a section editor on the award winning student newspaper. After university he joined an IT support company where he was a B2B online writer. He loves anything to do with sport and joined GDS in July 2009.

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