Saturday, January 23, 2010

Fighting climate change impacts in Burkina Faso

AllAfrica.com via IRIN: Disappointed by the "failure" of the Copenhagen talks to adequately help poor countries adapt to climate change, the Burkina Faso government and farmers are working to adjust farming techniques to changing weather patterns. "Despite the failure of Copenhagen we must follow adaptation at our own cost because we have been experiencing the impacts of climate change in Burkina for several years, and they are getting worse," Bassiaka Dao, confederation of farmers in Burkina Faso (CPF) president, told IRIN.

Dao said the US$10 billion that rich nations agreed to provide annually to developing countries to help mitigate climate change effects was insufficient. The UN said at the Copenhagen meetings that $25 billion to $50 billion per year would be required.

Over recent years the rains have begun and ended later than usual in Burkina Faso, continuing into October though September is traditionally harvest time, according to Dao. The rains are also increasingly heavy, leading to soil erosion and flash floods, according to World Bank natural resource management specialist Emmanuel NikiĆ©ma. Some 22,200 hectares of land were flooded in 2009 according to the Ministry of Agriculture. "The rain comes in torrents, with the capacity to flood a field in 15 minutes," Dao told IRIN…..

Locator map of Burkina Faso, Vardion, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

No comments: