Agriculture vital to tackling effects of climate change

Sam Otieno in SciDev.net: Agriculture should receive more attention as climate change could affect rainfall rates and patterns, resulting in more droughts and increased catastrophic flooding that could affect food production across the world, according to experts.

At a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) panel last month (1-11 June) in Bonn, Germany, the experts discussed the need to make agriculture more prominent in a global treaty on climate change expected to be signed in Paris, France in November-December this year.

Scientists have warned that Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to the threat of El Nino as 95 per cent of its crop production area relies entirely on rainfall. Under climate change, this means that multiple stresses such as drought interact, causing large decreases in productivity.

The UNFCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) that marshals scientific evidence to support countries’ decisions to be included in the treaty, says that a central objective of agricultural research, extension, education and rural credit systems must be to help farmers and producers successfully adapt to changing climatic conditions.

....“It is difficult to be prescriptive on adaptation and mitigation strategies because options and needs vary largely in space and time,” said Julian Ramirez-Villegas, a, who researches in climate change impacts and adaptation at CIAT. “Something that is clear is that for most countries in Africa adaptation is a priority, but we need to understand the mitigation impacts of any implemented adaptation actions....

Climbing beans growing in the province of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, shot by Neil Palmer (CIAT), Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

Africa: Indigenous knowledge key to climate change adaptation

Michel Nkurunziza in AllAfrica.com via the New Times: Scientists have called for the integration of indigenous knowledge to combat global warming and enhance adaptation to climate change. According to researchers from East Africa, on-farm experiences by smallholder farmers and pastoralists and indigenous knowledge can contribute effectively to coping with climate change.

The scientists made this proposal while presenting their findings at the UNESCO scientific conference currently taking place in Paris, France, under the theme, "Our Common Future under Climate Change." "We need to harness indigenous knowledge and revive traditional natural resource governance of landscapes.

There is less appreciation of pastoralists' ideas, for example. Being connected to environmental resources the pastoralists' society is sensitive to climate change and, therefore, responds to th
e change as they deal with pasture and water," Benoit Hazard, an anthropologist from Institut National des Sciences Humaines et Sociales in Kenya, who is currently conducting research on resilience in East Africa said.

"We have traditional societies with specific knowledge to link things with ecological conditions, who know where water sources are and how to adapt. They need to be supported to mix their knowledge with agriculture practices. In Kenya, some have become agronomists."...

Animal husbandry in the Congo, USAID photo by L. Rose

Water security vital to unlocking African prosperity says SAB Miller

Business Day Online: With coordinated action, better water provision in Africa will strengthen economic growth and unlock the path to prosperity for millions, according to SABMiller’s Chief Executive Alan Clark.

Speaking today at the W
orld Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa in Cape Town, Alan Clark highlighted that water security and resource efficiency have become and will remain a priority for SABMiller in Africa as climate change exarcebates competition for resources. This year’s WEF Global Risks Report ranked water scarcity as the biggest single risk to societies and economies.

While growing production volumes, SABMiller has cut its global carbon emissions by 35 percent since 2008, reducing absolute emissions by nearly one million tonnes. Over the same period it cut water use per litre of beer by 28 percent, now using 3.3 litres of water to make one litre of beer, exceeding its 2015 target. In the last year alone, the company reduced its water use by 29 million hectolitres – the equivalent to the water used by over 116,000 Africans each yeari.

This has translated into tangible gains for the company –  SABMiller saved US$117million in the last financial year compared with 2010 through water and energy related initiatives as a key part of its overall cost reduction plans.

Leading a panel discussion on the Future of Water, Alan Clark said: “The business case for conserving water both within our own operations and in the communities where we work is clear and compelling. Companies from all sectors are facing up to the risks that water scarcity poses to their business – even more so with the impact of climate change. Now is the time to step up and make clear commitments to reduce overall water use and improve efficiency.”...

An oasis in Libya, shot by Sfivat

Clearly identify risks Africa faces

Rowena Hay in Business Day (South Africa): It is time for Africans to speak coherently about the environmental and social threats they face, building on and adapting established global risk models. Individual efforts in disaster risk reduction do make a difference and can eventually secure political will and public support.

It is about how we manage the risks to the environment, taking into account social and economic demands — if we don’t take them into account, they will trigger worse environmental risks.

There is a view of the world that risk can be quantified once-off, but this does not factor in compound disasters and cascading risks. We have been living in a world of uncertainty and constant change since the financial crisis of 2008. So we need to talk about adaptation. Coping capacity is based on the recognition that some communities cope better than others, and recognise the need to adapt to change. You look not only at vulnerability, but also people’s strengths.

...The 2014 World Economic Forum global risk report was released and the third UN World Conference on disaster risk reduction led to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30. The Hyogo framework was developed by a small group of scientists, sociologists and disaster management practitioners and was a practical, useful document. It was far-sighted in its approach to civil society and using ordinary people as volunteers.

Preparation for the post-2015 process started in 2011, with conversations about setting new goals. However, African representatives argued that many priority areas were only starting to be addressed in certain parts of the continent and the agenda should not be changed.

This was a triumph for the African voice, showing that the regional nature of some environmental issues should be further addressed. The growing nexus of environment, government and instability is often glossed over and that is a factor in Africa we simply can’t afford to ignore....

Photo of a 2006 flood in Algeria, shot by Astonar, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Benefits of adapting Africa's infrastructure to climate change outweigh the costs

FinChannel: The impact of climate change on Africa’s water and energy infrastructure will be costly, according to a new World Bank report, and immediate action is needed to reduce these risks.

"Enhancing the Climate Resilience of Africa’s Infrastructure" quantifies the impacts of climate change on hydropower and irrigation infrastructure and identifies adaptation options as well as recommendations for increasing climate resilience.

Investment in infrastructure is fundamental to sustaining growth in Africa. In 2012, the Region’s Heads of State and Government laid out a strategic program (PIDA) for closing Africa’s infrastructure gap. Much of these investments will support the construction of hydropo
wer dams, power stations, and irrigation canals, which will be vulnerable to the potentially harsher climate of the future.

“Climate change requires new approaches that will help make infrastructure investments in Africa more resilient to the uncertain climate of the future. No action is not an option,” said Jamal Saghir, the World Bank's Senior Regional Adviser for Africa.

Launched during the Africa Climate Resilient Infrastructure Summit in Addis today, the report uses for the first time, a consistent approach across river basins and power systems in Africa, and wide range of state-of-the-art climate projections to evaluate the risks posed by climate change to planned investments in Africa’s water and power sectors. It further analyses how investment plans could be modified to minimize those risks; and it quantifies the corresponding benefits and costs....

African islands meet to address climate change and disaster risk challenges

ClimDev-Africa: Representatives of African Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have convened here for a two-day workshop to develop a collaborative framework for support to address the challenges of climate change and manage disaster risks.

The workshop is being held at the UNECA Headquarters under the auspices of the Climate for Development Africa (ClimDev-Africa) Programme, a joint initiative of the African Union Commission (AUC), the Africa Development Bank (AfDb) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)  ‘s  African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) a unit of the UNECA’s Special Initiatives Division (SID), which serves as the Secretariat for the ClimDev-Africa programme responsible for establishing the policy basis of the joint initiative.

The workshop aims to provide African SIDS with support to address the urgent challenges posed by climate change and seize opportunities in emerging areas related to the transition towards blue and green economies that are aligned to development aspirations.

The gathering is a follow up to a scoping mission to Cabo Verde, Union of the Comoros, Guinea Bissau, Mauritius, Seychelles and, São Tomé and Príncipe, undertaken by ACPC upon request from the African SIDS. The mission assessed their climate change adaptation and mitigation needs; identified priority interventions aimed at building country resilience to climate change and the means to address residual loss and damage. Africa’s six SIDS are highly vulnerable to climate change and related extreme weather-induced disasters that make it difficult for them to attain their development goals....

Shot of the Seychelles by Anse Takamaka, Mahé, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Cropping Africa's wet savannas would bring high environmental costs

A press release from Princeton University (the Woodrow Wilson School): With the global population rising, analysts and policymakers have targeted Africa's vast wet savannas as a place to produce staple foods and bioenergy groups at low environmental costs. But a new report published in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that converting Africa's wet savannas into farmland would come at a high environmental cost and, in some cases, fail to meet existing standards for renewable fuels.

Led by researchers from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the study finds that only a small percentage of Africa's wet savannas (2-11 percent) have the potential to produce staple crops while emitting significantly less carbon dioxide than the world’s average cropland. In addition, taking land conversion into account, less than 1 percent of these lands would produce biofuels that meet European standards for greenhouse-gas reductions.

"Many papers and policymakers have simply assumed that Africa's wetter savannas are expendable from an environmental standpoint because they aren’t forests,” said co-lead author Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton's Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP), which is based at the Woodrow Wilson School. "Governments have used this assumption to justify large leases of such lands to produce food for the outside world and large global targets for bioenergy. But when you actually analyze the realistic potential to produce food or bioenergy relative to the losses of carbon and animal biodiversity, the lands turn out not to be low cost."

Even if these lands are converted for agricultural use, the only way Africa could become an exporter of crops is by depriving its own people of food, the researchers report. Farming a large expansion of Africa's savannas — nearly half of the world's remaining savannas — would also have negative impacts on the rich and diverse population of tropical birds and mammals....

On the Cameroon savanna, shot by Amcaja, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Predicting which African storms will intensify into hurricanes

A press release from the American Friends of Tel Aviv University: Hurricanes require moisture, the rotation of the earth, and warm ocean temperatures to grow from a mere atmospheric disturbance into a tropical storm. But where do these storm cells originate, and exactly what makes an atmospheric disturbance amp up full throttle?

A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters by Tel Aviv University's Prof. Colin Price and his graduate student Naama Reicher of the Department of Geosciences at TAU's Faculty of Exact Sciences finds most hurricanes over the Atlantic that eventually make landfall in North America actually start as intense thunderstorms in Western Africa.

"85 percent of the most intense hurricanes affecting the U.S. and Canada start off as disturbances in the atmosphere over Western Africa," says Prof. Price. "We found that the larger the area covered by the disturbances, the higher the chance they would develop into hurricanes only one to two weeks later."

Using data covering 2005-2010, Prof. Price analyzed images of cloud cover taken by geostationary satellites, which orbit the Earth at the precise speed of the earth's rotation and take pictures of cloud cover every 15 minutes. This enab
led Prof. Price to track the variability in cloud cover blocking the earth's surface in West Africa between the months of June and November — hurricane season.

...According to Prof. Price, only 10 percent of the 60 disturbances originating in Africa every year turn into hurricanes. And while there are around 90 hurricanes globally every year, only 10 develop in the Atlantic Ocean.

..."If we can predict a hurricane one or two weeks in advance — the entire lifespan of a hurricane — imagine how much better prepared cities and towns can be to meet these phenomena head on," Prof. Price says. He is currently examining the thunderstorm clusters around the eyes of hurricanes to study the intensification process of those destructive phenomena....

Hurricane Fred in 2009, with Africa in the background. Via NASA

Pastoralism in Africa provides crucial services to humanity, can support green economy transition

AllAfrica.com via UNEP: Pastoralism-extensive livestock production in the rangelands-provides enormous benefits to humanity and should be supported as a key element of the global transition to a green economy, according to a new report released today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Released at the 3rd Scientific Conference of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Cancun, Pastoralism and the Green Economy - a Natural Nexus?, highlights pastoralism's role in safeguarding natural capital across a quarter of the world's land area.

The report findsthat sustainable pastoralism on rangeland ecosystems-such as desert grasslands, woodlands and steppes-maintains soil fertility and soil carbon and contributes to water regulation and biodiversity conservation. It also provides other goods such as high-value food products.

Pastoralism is practiced by up to half a billion people across the globe. Despite its clear benefits, decades of underinvestment have eroded the lifestyle in many developing countries. Reversing this decline and realizing pastoralism's full green economy potential will require leadership and the establishment of a global development framework for sustainable pastoralism, the report says.

"As our world becomes increasingly mechanized and industrialized in the pursuit of progress, it is easy to forget that there is much to be learned from traditional ways of life such as pastoralism," said UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "Yet half a billion pastoralists across the world are struggling to maintain a way of life that is far more consistent with green economy goals than many of our modern methods of rearing livestock."...

Livestock in Kenya, shot by USAID

A map of hunger in 2015 - where to watch

IRIN: Food shortages are often portrayed as random – the result of freak weather conditions or short-term political crises. Yet they are often deeply predictable – while short-term trends can exaggerate the impact, most of the causes are structural.

Last week the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS Net) released its latest forward-looking analysis of food needs in key countries. The data track not just which countries are likely to have food shortages this year but when they are likely to occur.

IRIN's interactive map highlights countries that are particularly prone to crisis. Click on a country to see how many people are at risk, the level of crisis and when the potential lean season is.

FEWS Net doesn’t cover all countries with food crises. Syria, India, and Iraq, for example are excluded. This is partly due to FEWS Net's  background - it was founded in Africa - and also partly because in the case of Syria and Iraq these trends are still new.

FEWS Net uses the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification to grade crises into five categories, from “minimal” to “famine.”...

Map of Sahel countries by , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Sub-Saharan African countries are failing to plan for climate change

Lindsey Jones in the Guardian (UK): Communities around the world are feeling the impacts of climate change already, but many of the most severe effects will be felt in the decades to come, particularly from mid-century onwards. Nowhere is this more apparent than in sub-Saharan Africa which will be one of the hardest hit regions of the world.

Right now, African countries are busy investing in infrastructure and development to help support current economic growth. Many of these long-lived investments – such as ports, large dams, and social infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools – will most likely last well beyond 2050. But by then, Africa’s climate may look quite different to what it does today. Factoring climate change into long-term investments and planning decisions is essential for supporting climate-resilient development – but it’s not happening.

New research, coordinated by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), shows that governments and businesses across sub-Saharan Africa are failing to consider long-term climate information in their investments and planning decisions. This includes studies from Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda, Ghana and Mozambique. The worst case scenario is that poor use of climate information could lock societies into patterns that make them highly vulnerable to droughts, floods, high temperatures or sea-level rise in the future.

Why do decision-makers have this blind
spot? First and most importantly, other challenges such as eradicating poverty and promoting access to primary and secondary education are extremely pressing, forcing decision-makers to think and act in short time frames.

Secondly, long-term climate information is often ill-suited to informing local economic, social and environmental contexts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Close-up aerial photo of Zambezi River at the junction of Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Shot by Brian McMorrow, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

NASA to study how African fires affect climate

Jan Piotrowski in SciDev.net: Climate scientists have received a boost of up to US$150 million from US space agency NASA for a five year campaign to probe how air pollution, manmade fires across Africa and warming oceans may affect our climate.

The money will be split equally among five projects under the umbrella of the agency’s Earth Venture initiative, which is designed to fill major knowledge gaps in earth sciences. A mixture of plane flights and surface measurements will shed light on processes that NASA’s satellite missions cannot pick up.

The projects are: Atmospheric chemistry and air pollution, Ecosystem chan
ges in a warming ocean, Greenhouse gas sources, African fires and Atlantic clouds, and Melting Greenland glaciers....  This is NASA’s second series of Earth Venture suborbital projects, recommended by the National Research Council in 2007. In 2010, the first series of five projects was selected.

"These new investigations address a variety of key scientific questions critical to advancing our understanding of how Earth works," said Jack Kaye, associate director for research in NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington in a NASA press release. “These innovative airborne experiments will let us probe inside processes and locations in unprecedented detail that complements what we can do with our fleet of Earth-observing satellites.”

Collecting hard data is the goal, but NASA scientist Hal Maring says that it is much more than an academic exercise — all projects were selected with a “heavy bias” towards their relevance for policy. “Our mission is to push the boundaries of field science to address weaknesses in our knowledge of Earth systems,” he says. “But behind these words is the assumption that the science better make a difference.”...

NASA image of fires in the Gambia in 2002

To conserve Arctic species, take action in Africa

Jacques Trouvilliez (Executive Secretary of AEWA, the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds) in IPS: So great are the contrasts between the frozen empty expanses of the far north and Africa’s baking deserts, steamy rain forests and savannahs that any direct connections between the two seem far-fetched – if they indeed exist at all.

In fact, migratory birds provide an environmental tie linking the Arctic and Africa and are the reason why the U.N. Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) and the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council, have entered a commitment to cooperate.

The Arctic Council is holding its first Arctic Biodiversity Congress in Trondheim, Norway and far from being of marginal interest to AEWA, its deliberations over the fauna inhabiting the regions around the North Pole could hardly be more relevant.

Following publication of the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment in May 2013, progress is being made in elaborating a strategy under the Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative (AMBI): a concrete example of where we can collaborate with practical work on the ground.

The habitats could hardly be more different and the distances between them are large, but the waterfowl, shorebird and seabird species – the predominant birds of the Arctic – find the conditions they require at different times of the year in the various habitats of the world.

The birds have adapted to develop the capacity to make their often arduous journeys from their Arctic breeding grounds to wintering sites and back. These wintering sites can be in Europe – but in some cases they even lie as far as in Southern Africa, as is the case for the Red Knot....

A Red Knot, shot by Ron Knight, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Nearly 25 million food insecure in Sahel

IRIN: Food security and malnutrition rates across the Sahel are deteriorating, due in large part to ongoing conflict and instability in the Central African Republic (CAR), northern Mali, and northeast Nigeria, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Nearly five million more people have joined the ranks of the food insecure since the beginning of the year, bringing the estimated total to 24.7 million - more than double the number in 2013, says OCHA.  "The dramatic rise in insecurity across the region over the last year has generated a tremendous number of people that need to be fed and housed and given health care, because they've been ripped from their livelihoods, as well as their homes," said Robert Piper, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel. "It has also, of course, had an impact on the market and some food prices."

Some 6.5 million people have crossed the emergency threshold from being moderately food insecure to facing an acute food and livelihood crisis. This is four million more people in this category than in January.

"There's a big difference between Phase 2 [moderately food insecure], where you are food insecure but using coping mechanisms to deal with it, and Phase 3 [acute food and livelihood crisis], where you have started to use negative coping mechanisms that have potentially very long-term negative consequences," Piper said.

Negative coping mechanisms include taking out a loan that must be repaid from profits from the following year's harvest, eating seeds that should be saved for next year's planting season, and reducing the number of daily meals from three down to two, or even one....

The road to Timbuktu in Mali, shot by Annabel Symington, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Ebola workers urge safety, solidarity

IRIN: Hanna Majanen summed it up best: "It is the things you do automatically that are difficult. People will touch their face, rub their eyes and bite their fingernails. These are the things you forget.”

As medical focal point for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Liberia, Majanen is well-versed in the rules and recommendations laid down by the organization for its frontline workers treating Ebola patients.

MSF, along with organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has urged health workers to get as close as they can to a "zero risk" working environment. That means not only following strict procedures on wearing personal protection equipment (PPE) and ensuring maximum standards of hygiene in every aspect of work, but ensuring psychological back-up for those treating Ebola patients, and limiting rotations.

The US-based NGO International Medical Corps (IMC), expanding its Ebola activities in Liberia, provides a five-day pre-deployment training programme for recruits with a strong focus on PPE, emphasizing that IMC prides itself on taking care of the "wellness, safety and security of all individuals".

 Health workers have always been among the fatalities in Ebola outbreaks, notably in Sudan and the then Zaire where the virus first came to light in 1976. But the West Africa epidemic highlighted their extreme vulnerability. According to WHO, in its Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report for 8 October, some 401 health workers had contracted Ebola, with 232 confirmed or suspected deaths…

A new Ebola isolation war in Lagos, shot by Bryan Christensen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Nile River monitoring influences North-East Africa’s future

A press release from Curtin University (Australia): Curtin University research that monitors the volume of water in the Nile River Basin will help to level the playing field for more than 200 million North-East Africans who rely on the river’s water supply.

Despite being arguably the longest river in the world, winding through nine different countries, the Nile River is shallow and has a low volume, making its water precious, particularly to those countries located downstream.

Curtin Associate Professor Joseph Awange, Department of Spatial Sciences, has been monitoring extractions or additions of water to the Nile River, and reporting the results to affected countries to allow them to plan for sustainable use of its resources in the future.

“Water levels can be affected by both man-made and natural causes, and our research separates the effects of rain downpours, drought and environmental degradation, so that we can learn about the effects of human uses,” Associate Professor Awange said.

“The difficulty is that human uses – including increased population and domestic water consumption, hydroelectric power and increased agriculture – are all tied to the economic growth of the country implementing it.

“Our project, which was undertaken with Associate Professor Michael Kuhn, also from Curtin’s Department of Spatial Sciences, in conjunction with German researchers, has provided independent, factual understandings which the countries involved can then use to make better decisions, and hopefully plan for sustainable use of the river’s resources for the whole region.”

The project uses data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, which uses two satellites to detect spatio-temporal changes in the Earth’s gravity field, combined with mathematic techniques to isolate the total water storage (surface, groundwater, and soil moisture) of specific areas....

Aerial view of the Nile at Luxor

Globalization threatens benefits of an African ‘green revolution’

A press release from the University of British Columbia: A prospective “green revolution” in Africa could boost land use and carbon emissions globally, according to a study co-authored by a University of British Columbia researcher. The term “green revolution” typically describes the use of agricultural innovations – such as the development of new seeds – to increase yields, particularly in developing countries.

Past green revolutions in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East have spared land and carbon dioxide emissions. However, in an increasingly globalized economy, an African green revolution could lead to opposite outcomes, finds the study.

“Africa happens to be a carbon-rich region that has a large share of agriculture today and low yields. Innovation results in farmers responding by expanding land faster than in other regions,” says UBC Professor Navin Ramankutty.

The research showed that ramping up agricultural productivity in Africa from 2025 to 2050 could increase global cropland expansion by 1.8 million hectares and global carbon emissions by 267 million metric tonnes.

The study also contributes to a long-standing debate on the environmental impacts of green revolutions. While many researchers claim that agricultural productivity is inherently harmful to the environment, others believe it can be environmentally beneficial if additional crops can be grown on the same amount of land. Despite the concerns, agricultural innovations in Africa could produce long-term benefits such as cheaper food, improved farming returns and reduced poverty.

Sunflowers in South Africa, shot by Ossewa, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons license 3.0

Climate change adaptation can help promote sub-Saharan African livelihoods

UN News Centre: Investing in ways to adapt to climate change will promote the livelihood of 65 per cent of Africans, the United Nations environmental agency reported, warning also that failing to address the phenomenon could reverse decades of development progress on the continent.

Africa’s population is set to double to 2 billion by 2050, the majority of whom will continue to depend on agriculture to make a living, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). “With 94 per cent of agriculture dependent on rainfall, the future impacts of climate change – including increased droughts, flooding, and seal-level rise – may reduce crop yields in some parts of Africa by 15 - 20 per cent,” UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said. “Such a scenario, if unaddressed, could have grave implications for Africa’s most vulnerable states,” he added.

In a new graphical report, Keeping Track of Adaptation Actions in Africa (KTAA) - Targeted Fiscal Stimulus Actions Making a Difference, UNEP details the implications of climate change, and provides examples of adaptation projects that range from forest ecosystem management to aquatics and agriculture.

The report describes sustainable examples of how countries in sub-Saharan Africa enhanced environmental and ecosystem resilience through the use of native plants and natural infrastructure, land plans and rainwater harvesting, among other examples.

The projects are integrated into national development policies which can strengthen and enhance the resilience communities against the impacts of climate change, while also contributing to the realization of the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to the report authors....

Race to electrify rural Africa could help the West too

Lisa Grossman in New Scientist: Turning on the lights in Africa may help to power up the rest of the world sustainably. New investments in mini grid systems aimed at bringing power to rural Africa and other remote areas may provide a test bed for the rural energy infrastructure of the future.

Rich nations are taking an increasing interest in electrifying the rest of the world. At the Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC this month, US president Barack Obama announced an additional $12 billion in funding for his administration's Power Africa initiative, which aims to help bring power to at least 60 million households and businesses across the continent.

But 85 per cent of the 1.3 billion people lacking electricity worldwide live in rural areas. That means powering Africa won't be as simple as hooking up villages to a centralised power grid. Localised "micro-grids" are beginning to take off. They can generate anything from a few watts to a few megawatts and provide power for tens to thousands of households at a time.

An increasing amount of this power is coming from renewable sources, such as wind, solar and hydro. "It creates an opportunity," says Subhes Bhattacharyya at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. "You don't have to follow the old-fashioned way of doing things. You can jump the queue to new technologies."

For instance, international group Practical Action is building micro-hydro-power plants in Zimbabwe and Kenya, which harness falling water such as that in mountain rivers.

Another group, a Kenyan start-up called Access:energy, developed a model to teach Kenyans to make parts of wind turbines out of scrap metal and car parts, reducing the need for outside help should a part of the system break. A single turbine can generate about 2.5 kilowatt-hours per day, enough to power a micro-grid for 50 homes....

Solar panels in Malika, Dakar, shot by Fratelli dell'Uomo Onlus, Elena Pisano, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Food security alarm for east, central Africa

IRIN: Some 20 million people are facing acute food insecurity in eastern and central Africa, with most of them being at “crisis” and “emergency” levels, according to aid agencies. This figure compares unfavorably with 15.8 million people in July 2013.  The affected countries include Somalia, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Central Africa Republic (CAR), Sudan, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania.

“The overall nutrition situation in the region has deteriorated precipitously and, according to survey results, the Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) levels are higher than 20 percent, exceeding the World Health Organization’s emergency threshold of 15 percent, especially in parts of South Sudan, CAR, Somalia and northern Kenya,” said the East and Central Africa Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG), a multi-stakeholder regional forum chaired by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

FSNWG warned that the situation could deteriorate further in the absence of quick action.  “FSNWG strongly believes that in the absence of an increased and immediate multi-sectoral response, the food and nutrition status of affected populations is likely to deteriorate further.”...

Kenya food aid, image by USAID