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Africa: Satellite Images Show Climate Change Toll
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
11 June 2008
Posted to the web 11 June 2008
Michael Bleby
Johannesburg
THE fynbos on Cape Town's northern edge has shrunk in size since 1978. Satellite images released yesterday by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) show that development around the Mother City has now extended to the borders of the Blouberg Nature Reserve, putting at risk the 6210 species of plant found only in that shrubland.
"Although the region is relatively small, its plant biodiversity is the richest per unit area on Earth," the UN's environment arm says in Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment.
The kind of environmental damage depicted in stark photographs from 1978 and last year showing the reduction of fynbos in the area around Tableview, is not unique to SA.
The UNEP's atlas of Africa documents similar changes across the continent, graphically illustrating how the face of the continent is changing as a result of climate change, population growth and development.
[Scroll down to see AllAfrica's photo essays of selected images]
From Cape Town to Cairo, the appearance of Africa is changing. In Egypt, the closure of the Aswan High Dam in 1964 set in train a process of erosion of the Nile Delta that has seen the shoreline of the Damietta Promontory shrink.
In 1972 it was there, but by 2005 the top of the delta that extends into the Mediterranean had disappeared.
The atlas should encourage decision makers across the continent to consider the implications of policies they put in place, UNEP head Achim Steiner said yesterday.
"What we are trying to show is the importance of good science as a basis for good policy making," Steiner said.
Images in the atlas show the break-up of large farmland tracts in Zimbabwe over the past decade, into smaller parcels dominated by subsistence agriculture.
Other changes are less the result of decisions made on the ground and more a consequence of globally induced climate change.
Africa accounts for only 4% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, but is highly vulnerable to a changing climate.
Lake Faguibine in Mali, which in 1974 covered 590m' in area, has completely dried up as a result of less rain and reduced water flow from the Niger River.
The glaciers that cover the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda halved in size between 1987 and 2003 due to increased air temperature and reduced snow accumulation.
The need to protect Africa's natural resources like forests -- deforestation accounts for 20% of all greenhouse gas emission -- is not just the responsibility of Africa.
While African decision makers needed to realise the effects of the policies they made, the developed world needed to come up with incentives not to conduct business as usual by, for example, logging woodlands for short-term gain.
The world is due to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto treaty on climate change in Copenhagen next year.
Steiner said that getting rich countries to recognise their responsibility to protect the natural resources in Africa that benefited the world in general, and to fund those, remained a challenge.
ALLAFRICA PHOTO ESSAYS:
THE BAD NEWS: Environmental Change Threatens Africa
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THE GOOD NEWS: Africa's Environment Can Be Rescued
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