Climate deal crucial for Africa food security

Climate experts say data for the first decade of the 21st century will likely show it to be the warmest on record, with 2009 its hottest year. The World Meteorological Organization released those findings today on the second day of a 192-nation climate conference in Copenhagen. For African countries, harvest yields are already forecast to decline up to 50% within the next decade due to climate change.

Twenty-five years since the Ethiopian famines of the 1980’s, the country has come a long way. The economy has  boomed, education enrolment gone up, malaria death rates have dropped and HIV/Aids is on the decline. But across Africa, too many people still depend on food aid. Villagers in Ethiopia say they first started noticing the effects of climate change in the 80s and since, many say that the drop in rainfall has made farming less profitable. And this in turn is creating social problems. “Thefts are becoming more common and children are forced out of school to work,” said Sir Bob Geldof, writing about his recent return to the country in The Daily Telegraph newspaper. Calling for more investment in agriculture across the continent, sir Bob, who led the original 1980s famine appeal said: “If allowed to spread and worsen to its logical conclusion, the kind of social disintegration we’re now seeing in Ethiopia could have a chilling trajectory.”“It is all too easy for extreme poverty and climate change to feed a vicious cycle, making communities more vulnerable to extreme politics,” he said.

Aid organisation ActionAid’s description of how climate change is affecting harvests in some African countries is similar. “There are a lot of droughts, especially in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Somalia, and we’ve had floods in parts of west Africa like Niger, Nigeria and Mali, said the organisation’s Dominic Walubengo Wandera , based in Kenya. “And so we attribute all of this to climate change and this drought and floods are affecting crops, livestock and of course food security,” he said.Echoing Sir Bob’s comment, the activist said he would like to see industrialized nations provide Africa “with proper technology that can help us to survive drought and floods.”The organisation is hoping that out of this week’s climate change conference there will be agreement on adaptation and using emissions.