Windhoek — The Polytechnic of Namibia this week hosted the second international APEDIA Conference on Sustainable Land Use in Africa, themed, "Land Use and Climate Change: Challenges for Adaptation Strategies," on campus.

The Academic Partnership for Environment and Development Innovations (APEDIA) was established to stimulate academic collaboration and research in the field of sustainable land use, and environment and development in Africa.

Its primary mission is the development of higher education capacities in this field, not only to serve academic purposes, but to have a practical impact on the ground as well.

The conference was attended by scholars and experts from diverse backgrounds, who focused on adaptation strategies to fight climate change in Africa, with special reference to its implications for sustainable land use.

Attendees included representatives from universities in Uganda, Ethiopia, Germany, South Africa and India.

Participants to the conference were welcomed by Dr Tjama Tjivikua, Rector of the Polytechnic, who said urgent action was needed on climate change to safeguard the country's way of life and to preserve the earth and its natural resources for future generations.

"To these two great innovations we must add a third: Climate change is a defining global social justice issue for our generation. If we do not take the necessary action, we risk condemning the world's poorest people to generations of poverty, loss of livelihood and unimaginable hardship," Tjivikua said.

He also said great climate variability and climate change and, more importantly, our response to it, would increasingly define the international development agenda because development and climate change are inextricably linked.

According to Dr Tjivikua, people living in poor countries were increasingly confronted with the reality of climate change on a daily basis. For them, the majority of whom may never even have heard of the phenomenon, the consequences are very real.

"As a result of climate change, millions of people, mainly in developing countries, will face water and food shortages, as well as health risks. Production systems may be affected and the current land use patterns we know today may be completely altered. This then makes the call for adaptation and mitigation strategies even more urgent and inevitable," the rector said.

He concluded by saying: "The fact that between 65 and 80 percent of the African population live in rural areas and earn their livelihoods mainly from the land, make the conference even more topical and critically important as Africa chartered its future in the face of so many challenges, not least of which was climate change."