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Warming may outstrip Africa's ability to feed itself: study

Ethiopian PM foresees more economic woes for Africa
Africa is unlikely to see a let up in economic woes next year mainly due to depressed commodity earnings and high energy costs, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned on Tuesday. "We seem to be destined to face all the negative consequences of 2008 and 2009 without any of their limited benefits for the foreseeable future," Meles said. Meles told a UN-organised pan-African conference of experts and government officials from 45 countries examining the impact of global economic downturn that the crisis would create "uniquely unfavourable" conditions. He said "very high and growing oil prices" coupled with perhaps similar growth in food prices combined with weak commodities prices would point to a "generally depressed growth prospect". In May, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said Africa's growth rate would slow to a 20-year low of two percent in 2009, in contrast to the 5.1 percent rate achieved in 2008 and six percent the previous year. Climate change, Meles warned, was likely to hit hard Africa's fragile agriculture sector and further depress the prospects of growth. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s official Helen Clark "no continent is as dangerously vulnerable as Africa" to climate change. Before the global crisis, the continent was home to some of the world's fastest expanding economies. But the UNDP, which organised the Addis Ababa gathering, said signs of hard times were already evident with Africa's traditional export giants beginning to feel the pinch of falling prices and lower demand. In the diamond-rich Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 60 percent of enterprises have shut shop laying off more than 300,000 workers. In South Africa, over 5,000 workers lost their jobs in February this year alone. The continent's economic powerhouse released figures last month that showed it had entered its first recession since apartheid as the global crisis pounded demand for its main exports. Liberia's rubber exports -- its main source of revenue -- declined to 88,000 tonnes last year from 135,000 tonnes the previous year due to slowing demand. UNDP predicts the west African state could see a further decline in 2009 and 2010. Meles said the international community was obliged to compensate Africa for the "damage caused by global warming".
by Staff Writers
 Paris (AFP) June 17, 2009
 By mid-century, climate change may have outrun the ability of Africa's farmers to adapt to rising temperatures, threatening the continent's precarious food security, warns a new study.

Growing seasons throughout nearly all of Africa in 2050 will likely be "hotter than any year in historical experience," reports the study, published in the current issue of the British-based journal Global Environmental Change.

Six nations -- Senegal, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone -- are especially at risk because they will face conditions that are today unknown anywhere in Africa.

As a result, even the hardiest varieties of the continent's three main crops -- maize, millet and sorghum -- currently under cultivation would probably not tolerate the conditions forecast for these countries in four decades.

A trio of researchers led by Marshall Burke, a professor at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment, said urgent measures must be taken to stock seed banks and develop new varieties to stay a step ahead of Africa's shifting agricultural map.

"When we looked at where temperatures are headed, we found that for the majority of Africa's farmers, global warming will rapidly change conditions beyond the range of what occurs anywhere in their country," he said.

The study is based on a mid-range projection from the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) that forecasts an increase in average global temperatures by 2100 of 2.8 degrees Celsius (5.0 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

More recent research, however, suggests that the impact of global warming could be even worse.

MIT climate modelers, averaging 400 possible scenarios, have calculated that Earth's surface temperatures will jump 5.2 C (9.4 F) by century's end in the absence of rapid and massive measures to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

"This is not a situation like the failure of the banking system where we can move in after the fact and provide something akin to a bailout," said co-author Cary Fowler, head of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

"If we wait until it's too hot to grow maize in Chad and Mali, then it will be too late to avoid a disaster that could easily destabilize an entire region and beyond."

Over 40 percent of Africa's population lives on less than a dollar a day, and 70 percent of these poor are located in rural areas and thus largely dependent on agriculture for survival.

The authors note that "adverse shifts in climate can cause devastating declines in human welfare, and have been implicated in everything from famine to slow economic growth to heightened risk of civil conflict."

Burke and colleagues found that while most African nations will face unprecedented climates by 2050, they could anticipate future needs by stockpiling seeds from neighbouring countries with similar conditions today.

By mid-century, for example, local varieties of the staple maize in Lesotho -- which has one of Africa's coolest climates -- will be wilting in the heat.

Varieties that thrive in hotter climes grown in Mali today may well be adapted to Lesotho's future needs, and so should be set aside.

But that still leaves the six most vulnerable countries without any apparent solution.

"For these nations, there is a much smaller potential pool of foreign genetic resources in which to seek heat tolerance, at least within Africa," the authors caution.

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Climate change hits China's poor hardest: activist groups
 Beijing (AFP) June 17, 2009
 Climate change hits China's poor the hardest and also forces some of those lifted out of hardship back into it, activist groups Greenpeace and Oxfam said Wednesday. The two urged the Chinese government to review its existing poverty alleviation policy to take climate change into account, in a report compiled with experts from the nation's Academy of Agricultural Sciences. "Climate change ... read more






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