Experts probe links between urban growth and climate change in Africa

The Cutting Edge News: A new project has united researchers exploring the connection between rapid urban growth in Africa and climate related emergencies, in an effort to safeguard vulnerable urban populations from the effects of climate change. The Climate Change and Adaptation in Africa program, or CCAA, aims to increase the capacity of African people and organizations to cope with the effects of climate change.

Sponsored by Canada's International Development Research Center and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, the project hopes to indentify strategies to help the urban poor in Africa's largest cities to adapt to challenges posed by the changing environment, says project manager Francois Gasengayire.

"The program supports research that helps reduce poverty by improving the environment. And the goal is to harness the capacity of the poor to reduce environmental degradation as it relates to natural disasters, and enhance the use of natural resources for food, water, and income generation," he said.

…Experts say the effects of climate change are already being felt across the continent, and fear that incidences of flooding and drought, and the frequency and intensity of severe storms, will continue to increase in coming decades. Gasingayire says recent shifts in familiar weather patterns, caused by climate change, have made traditional agriculture across Africa less profitable, and driven Africans from rural areas to cities in unprecedented numbers.

The resulting population growth of urban centers, in turn, places stress on natural resources, such as arable land, natural fuels, and fresh water supplies, according to Liqa Raschid-Sally, program manager in Ghana and Ethiopia for Sri Lanka based International Water Management Institute…Sally says increasing numbers of poor migrants to an urban area also heavily tax infrastructure, placing higher demand on already inadequate water and sanitation systems, and creating a challenge for urban planners. She says her work is aimed at giving policy makers some tools to employ in their planning….

A street in Lagos, Nigeria, taken by Zouzou Wizman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License