Although Africa has contributed little to global warming, the continent and other parts of the developing world are bearing the brunt of the resultant climate change, according to scientists and development specialists. The question now is what to do about it before the fallout has disastrous consequences.
The snow atop Mt. Kilimanjaro is receding. Lake Chad is evaporating. Increased flooding, drought, water shortages, rising sea levels and food insecurity are only some of the consequences of climate change across Africa. Already these shifts are having an impact on livelihoods.
"We see frequent crop failures due to droughts and untimely rain leading to crop failures. We also see livestock fatalities, resulting in people losing lots of cattle," Professor Pius Yanda, director of the Institute of Resource Assessment at the University of Dar es Salaam, recently told a panel on climate change and climate justice in the Tanzanian city. "We see flooding destroying infrastructure, settlements, leaving crops in the field. These are vivid examples of impacts which are taking place already."
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Heightened competition for dwindling resources, such as water and arable land, increases chances for conflict, which has its own consequences: violence, deaths, displacement, disease and violations of human rights.
Climate Justice
Former Irish president Mary Robinson told the audience at the panel, which was a centerpiece of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Forum on climate change, food security and regional economic integration last November, that climate change is a human rights issue.
"The phenomenon of climate change will undermine progress on almost all of the human rights guaranteed in the universal declaration of human rights and other international human rights instruments - and also undermine achievements, particularly for the poorest countries, of the "Millennium Development Goals" to reduce poverty and boost development, said Robinson, former United Nations high commissioner on human rights.
She said climate change was a classic human rights struggle about power: those with the greatest power - mainly developed nations - produced most of the greenhouse gases that have contributed to global warming, while those in developing countries, with the least power, were most at risk from the consequences.
Katherine Sierra, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank, said, for example, that if all the SUV's in the United States were replaced with European standard emission cars, that would largely account for the emissions that would give 1.6 billion people – the world's poorest - minimum access to energy. "You could afford to provide 1.6 billion people worth of basic energy to those people who don't have any emissions today, so it's a basic fairness," she said.
Governance Seen as Central
Regardless of who is more responsible for global warming, the panelists emphasized that the time to act was now. Yanda said the way forward is to integrate climate change in the development agenda because it is a crosscutting issue like poverty and Aids. Like the presenters on food security and economic integration, the climate panelists spoke in the context of cell-phone entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim's conviction that good governance is essential to solving such pressing problems.
U.S. Representative Donald Payne (Democrat - New Jersey), agreed. Payne, chair of the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, quoted former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as saying industrialized nations must live up to the "historic responsibility" for the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
"But on the other hand, if all of the things were mitigated and unless there are changes in many countries in a manner in which governments deal with agriculture and its people and governance in general, the problem will not be solved," he said. "So it's a two-way street. We need to do what we must do there, but by the same token, leadership in Africa has to stand up and do a much better job than what it's done to date."
Clean Energy
African environmentalists point to the fact that the continent provided a unified position during recent climate talks in Copenhagen as a step forward in dealing with the challenges of global warming.
In fact, in the face of the potential for disastrous consequences of climate change, some stakeholders see opportunity, although it is not one that Africans can easily achieve without external assistance and private sector support.
"Whilst it's true you are not a large emitter [of greenhouse gases], there are opportunities to get access to some of the new technologies," said Sierra, of the World Bank. "Whether it's geo-thermal, whether it's wind, whether it's off-grid solar and the like, [you can] modernize your energy systems while you're growing."
Scientists who have been warning about the climate-fueled perils to come are struggling to find reasons to be optimistic. African officials, business leaders and civil society representatives who attended the Mo Ibrahim event acknowledged the daunting challenges of coping with the earth's overall warming. But they found ideas to explore, options to pursue and reasons to hope that Africans can be a part of the global solution - if, that is, the world community can find the political will and the financial resources to partner with the least culpable but most affected region.
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Every race needs a motherland that uniquely defines it. Where, its scattered children can return to renew ancestral bonds and minds. (This is despite the fact that no place on earth will go back to 100% homogeneity. And that may be a good thing for all)
Asia is ruled by Asians and that is good for the souls of the Asian Diaspora. Just as Europeans in the Americas like that their people still rule Europe, and maintain old customs their ancestors instilled. Arabs have long displaced Negroes from what is now called Mid-East. While Negro Africans even after ridding themselves of the destructive influences of colonialists, still have not re-instituted the older, wiser, simpler and greener ways that sustained them happily and healthily for millenniums, which colonial influences destroyed.
Unscrupulous African leaders, along with shortsighted elites continue to work with outsiders, to keep the majority of native Africans abjectly poor. Those despicable Africans act as mere puppet contractors to the highest foreign bidder. Whom, they allow to pillage and export Africas resources to benefit others all over the world. While crumbs from the great wealth they extract from Africa, is then returned in the form of high interest loans and Foreign Aid. Such money is not then used to build infrastructure for the happiness and prosperity of natives. But instead, to increase privileges for the elites and heartless clowns who rule.
Now after centuries of giving up indigenous African ways for unwise Western lifestyles, even nature seem to have ruled against you for remaining too meek, humble and compliant to outsiders, while quick to use their weapons and instructions weaken and destroy yourselves.
Now your land is parched and barren, and you're still suffering from: diseases, poverty and starvation, but still allowing your despicable leaders to continue selling off your best farmlands to billionaire outsiders who'll use up water already in short supply; and force many to flee to big cities to become beggars, because, in your own country, outsiders will not welcome you near their farms.
Its now accepted that no one escapes the cultural programming he was born into. And that, for 95-99% of our waking hours were being propelled by the good or bad in our powerful subconscious mind. Which for centuries the whole world have been programmed; that whites are superior to all others -especially Negro/Blacks. Therefore nowhere in the world, did any white need honor any rights of any Negro; even when the Negro obviously had higher pedigree. And even when whites are impostors in a black man's land.
This universally instituted White Supremacy/Black Inferiority was never properly reconciled after physical emancipation. Thus the same mindset that instituted the problem is now trying to implement change. In which, too many whites along with some blacks have convinced themselves that Africans cannot survive without whites. So they must work to do everything to bring about that outcome, rather than seek to find lasting good changes, by acknowledging and clearing out (where needed) programmed negative beliefs.
In terms of Africa's environmental problems; Negro Africans you know exactly what to do. Loose all fear and regain faith that you know what is best for yourselves and Africa. Then step out with confidence and renew you body, mind and land. In the absence of others, you survived successfully in Africa, as the first environmentalists, in harmony with land beasts and all else.
Return to your roots in mind body and ways of living. And the continent you nurtured and cherished will start to work with; and for you again. For too long you've stepped aside and allowed outsiders to convince you that they knew better, and that you were uncivilized while they were refined.
Its only your indigenous ways that Africa needs to return health to soil, plants and beasts. Return to your African ways of worship, laughing, dancing and respecting nature, and stop allowing what's left of your forests to be chopped down for foreign houses, while your landscape is over-mined and destroyed to cause landslides and erosion. So that the products mined can go abroad for the superficial benefits of those who wish you'd all die out of Africa, so that more land they can gain.