Climate Change, For Better or Worse!

Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, its common sense—Ronald Regan

    

Africa has few industries as compared to the western world, but that doesn’t change the effect of climate change. It seems like Africa will receive a higher dose. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) states that “Africa is one of the continents most vulnerable to global warming. This situation is made worse by Africa's low capacity to adapt to climate change. Poor access to loans, markets, technology, machinery, and the likes make Africa more vulnerable to climate change. A variety of disasters and conflicts already plague the region, including wars, over-grazing and other forms of ecosystem degradation, and AIDS.”

The climate is a very important aspect of the average African’s life because it accounts for our food, health and about 60% of livelihood as stated by brookings.edu. But in many parts of Africa negligence toward climate change is an issue. Although the education system is poor and haven’t completely been accepted or reached some places to let us be aware or even understand happenings such as climate change, I believe we should still recognize these changes because we use or depend on the climate more than other continents. In some parts of Africa no matter how the weather is - air condition is luxury, so it’s not only about the farmer.

                    

 

African farmers have been adapting to current climate change, but these adaptations may be overwhelmed by future climate change. Food production may be “severely compromised” (in the words of IPCC) in many African countries. Drought is a key factor behind the declining productivity of Africa. There is a strong correlation between rainfall and GDP, and between land degradation and the incidence of poverty. Agriculture fed by rain could drop 50% in some African countries by 2020. This is very serious but seriously neglected. Why? I asked a relative recently what he understood by climate and He said weather!, I was once like that too but, we need to understand that the weather is not the same as climate.

“The change in climate over many years can be hard to perceive because of the way our weather changes from day to day. Some days are hotter, and some cooler. But don’t confuse weather with climate. When people talk about the weather, they refer to day-to-day, hour-to-hour fluctuations in the atmosphere. The temperature, humidity and rainfall increase and decrease continuously depending on location and season. When people talk about climate, they are talking about how the atmosphere behaves year-to-year or during decades or centuries in a particular place. Climate describes long-term patterns, and these patterns show that Earth is getting warmer.” (YALI website).

The preservation of our environment should be a primary commitment but how many of us (Africans) are even aware, that we are the world largest and youngest continent. But now you have an idea of the problem what are the possible solutions? Am sure you thought to yourself “Planting tree” but that my friend would not be enough According to business insider “ there isn’t enough space on earth to plant the amount of trees it would take to prevent the climate from warming…” so we don’t need to just plant trees we also need to avoid or completely stop some things. Be aware!

     

 Reference; Google, Encyclopedia, Yali website, Businessinsider.com, Foresight Africa.

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