Cape Town — Sub-Saharan Africa is set to lose U.S. $2 billion a year as the viability of its maize crops declines as a result of changes in global weather patterns. Cash crops such as tea and coffee in East Africa will suffer. And Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania are likely to be the African counties hardest hit by climate change in the next decade.
These are among warnings issued by the international aid and advocacy group, Oxfam, ahead of the annual G8 Summit of the world’s major industrialized economies which begins in Italy on Wednesday.
“The livelihoods of millions of African pastoralists, responsible for some of the world’s most efficient and ecologically-friendly meat and dairy production, are under serious threat,” adds Oxfam. “In the mixed cultivation areas of Africa where pastoralists and agriculturalists exist side by side, ‘season failures’ are expected to extend from one year in six to one in three…”
Oxfam’s warnings are contained in Suffering the Science: Climate Change, People and Poverty, a briefing paper it released on Monday.
The paper combines an overview of the latest science on climate change with observations in communities around the world in which the agency works.
“Hundreds of millions of people are already suffering damage from a rapidly changing climate, which is frustrating their efforts to escape poverty,” the paper says. “For the poor countries in the tropics and sub-tropics particularly, almost every observation and prediction about health, food security, water shortage, natural disasters, famine, drought, and conflict is worsening at an alarming rate.”
Oxfam says it hopes to push the G8 leaders to contribute to “a fair and safe climate deal” at the United Nations climate conference to be held in Copenhagen in December.
“This deal must ensure that global carbon emissions peak by 2015, and then begin falling,” Oxfam argues. “Rich countries must commit to reduce their own emissions by at least 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020 and all countries must act to reduce global emissions by at least 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.
“As importantly, beginning immediately, developing countries will need at least $150 billion a year to cope with the effects of climate change and to pursue their own low-carbon futures.”
The agency accuses governments of coming “woefully short” in taking action: “Helping to climate-proof the developing world is comparatively loose change,” it says. “$150 billion is about the same amount that was spent on bailing out just one company, AIG, during the financial turmoil of late 2008.”
Citing experiences from Africa, the paper says:
- Southern Africa “will see severe threats to food supply, mainly because of the threat to their staple crops, although there are other hazards of higher temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns….”
- “Government scientists in South Africa are now advising that countries in the region should prepare to see a 50 per cent drop in productivity of all cereals by 2080.”
- The production of cash crops – such as coffee and tea in East Africa – is likely to be hit. Slight temperature changes affect coffee yields and tea production is “highly sensitive” to changes in heat and water.
Oxfam also quotes anecdotal evidence from African farmers such as Willington Wamayeye, the director of a Ugandan coffee co-operative, who said: “I have never known the weather to be so unpredictable. Rains now fall heavily for a short period and our dry season is much longer. The coffee plants are badly affected – flowering is stopped.”
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In western Uganda, Florence Madamu told Oxfam yields have plunged: “All this is a result of long spells of sunshine – the sun is prolonged until the end of September – and whenever it rains it rains so heavily it destroys all our crops in the fields. You can plant a whole acre or two and come out with nothing.’
Read excerpts from the report:
Climate Change Threatens Crop Yields
Losing Homes and Eating Ants – Floods in Zambia and Uganda
Beating the Effects of Climate Change
Read the full report >>
