CONTINENTAL CHANGES
Heat waves, droughts, floods and coastal erosion. Seven of the 10 most climate vulnerable nations in the world are located in Africa. By 2020, between 75 and 250 million people will be exposed to water stress and this will put over 50 per cent of the cont
MADAGASCAR IS, arguably, one of those countries on Earth that everybody will rush to protect. More than 80 per cent of unique flora and fauna species of the African continent are found here. But this biodiversity hotspot is staring at a meltdown. Recurring floods and droughts have taken a toll on not only its 26 million citizens, but also on its rich and rare biodiversity. The residents of Madagascar are paying for a crime they are not party to. With near zero per capita emission of greenhouse gases (ghg), the country is one of the worst victims of climate change.
“I can’t describe the situation,” says Nazaire Tsimanova Paubert, a social scientist based in Ambovombe city, who is overwhelmed by the severity of the three-year long drought that has gripped the southern region of the country. Most of the wells in villages have dried up. In 2017-18, the southern half of Madagascar received below average rainfall, says a forecast of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. “We predict that the water reserves will dry up shortly,” says Yves Rakotoarison, a water, sanitation and hygiene expert with Action Against Hunger, a French non-profit working in Madagascar. Residents in Ambovombe and adjacent districts are struggling to access water. They pay US $0.6 for a container of 20 litres. Over 81 per cent of Madagascar’s population subsists on the international poverty threshold of US$1.25/day. “Their food stocks are about to be exhausted as there is little scope to farm due to deficit rain,” says Paubert. Worse, the country simply doesn’t have the capacity to meet this unprecedented scarcity of water. “We can only meet 15 per cent of the total needs,” says Derry Mann Herindrainy, director general of Alimentation en Eau dans le Sud, the state-owned water supply company.
Drought has haunted southern Madagascar for centuries. But the impacts of climate change have aggravated the situation. Three years ago when the current spell of drought set in, the United Nations estimated that nearly 1.8 million people were food insecure. The poor people consume fruits of cactus which grows in the wild. The cattle too feed on cactus leaves. “Due to overexploitation, there has been a significant decrease in the cactus forests,” says Mahatante Tsimanaoraty Paubert, an ecological expert.
Madagascar is the world’s fourth largest island and has the highest risk from cyclones in Africa. Between 1984 and April 2018, it experienced 58 episodes of storms, torrential rains and strong winds—a three-fold increase over the previous 20 years—killing 2,102 people, displacing 1.5 million and affecting over 4 million people, according to the Bureau for Risk and Disaster Management. The country hasn’t regularly calculated the loss and damages from climate-related events. Way back in 2008, there was an estimate after three consecutive severe cyclones that hit the country. It snapped 4 per cent of the country’s gdp.
The recurrence of hailstorms that seriously devastate fields and plantations has shocked communities. “Hailstorms were rare in the past and it never happened twice in a single season and in the same place. Hailing is now frequent, hitting the same place multiple times and the whole year round,” observes Daniel Razafindrakoto, a farmer in Morarano Gare, Moramanga, part of Madagascar eastern highlands. Analysis of temperature for the last 70 years shows that winter is getting shorter. Huge difference between temperature at ground level and that of the atmosphere results in hailing or heavy rains within a short time. In effect, around three-fourths of Madagascar territory suffered from abrupt weather pattern changes due to the alternation of extended dry sequence and rainy season in 2016-2017.
Warming Africa
A churn is underway across Africa. An era of civil conflicts that followed centuries of colonial plunder across the continent seems like a thing of the past. Just as the majority of African nations were scrambling out of violent conflicts, the challenge of climate change has put the aspirations of the entire continent in serious jeopardy. The immediacy of
managing disruptive climate events has displaced governance priority of bridging the development deficit. More than 2,000 natural disasters have hit Africa since 1970 affecting 500 million people and killing 0.9 million.
People have one common query: why Africa? The irony is hard to miss. While Africa is responsible for barely 7 per cent of the total ghg burden of the world, climate change is both figuratively and literally reshaping the continent. Several reports have noted the particular vulnerabilities of African populations to climate change (see ‘Changing face of Africa’, p32). While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) says that the rate of increase in temperatures across Africa is surpassing the global rate of temperature increase, analysis by Washington DC-based Brookings Institution says that seven out of the 10 most climate vulnerable nations in the world are located in Africa.
Warming in Africa has exceeded the limits of natural variability. According to the ipcc’s Assessment Report 5 (AR5), the near surface temperatures have risen by 0.50 C over the past century. Despite the size and geographical spread of Africa, the only exception to the observed heating trend comes from the central and interior regions of Africa. But even here, there are problems. “It is very likely that mean annual temperature has increased over the past century over most of the African continent, with the exception of areas of the interior of the continent, where the data coverage has been determined to be insufficient to draw conclusions about temperature trends,” says AR5.
By the end of the century, most models show that temperatures across the continent under the “business-as-usual” scenario will be about 3-60 C higher than the average temperature observed at the end of the 20th century, which is already close to being 0.50 C more than average temperatures at the beginning. AR5 notes that the maximum change in temperature by the end of the century is likely to occur in the northern and southern parts of the continent. But the fastest rate of change is expected to occur on the western side. “However, in the tropics, especially tropical West Africa, these unprecedented climates are projected to occur 1 to 2 decades earlier than the global average because the relatively small natural climate variability in this region generates narrow climate bounds that can be easily surpassed by relatively small climate changes,” says the report.
While the AR5 regional profile has singled out Ethiopia and parts of eastern Africa for higher incidences of heat waves, more recent studies have suggested that the problem is likely to affect the entire continent. A study published in Environmental Research Letters in 2016 found that even modest warming of 20 C in global average temperatures would be enough to make heat waves a completely normal occurrence. Since Africa is situated between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, it is likely to be the worst affected.
THOUGH AFRICA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR BARELY 7% OF THE GHG BURDEN, CLIMATE CHANGE IS RESHAPING THE CONTINENT
In 2017, the European Commission conducted the most comprehensive analysis of the risks of heat waves in the continent. It found that equatorial and sub-equatorial Africa will be particularly badly affected. Under the business-as-usual scenario, “the Gulf of Guinea, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian peninsula, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to face, every 2 years, heat waves of length between 60 and 120 days. Once every 30 years heat waves are projected to be longer than 180 days over parts of central Africa and the Arabian peninsula.”
Reeling from the impacts
People in Africa are being introduced to the impacts of climate change in innumerable ways. Take the case of the Karamojong farming community in Katanga village near Moroto town in northeastern Uganda. Every morning farmers gather around an old radio set. They attentively listen to the latest weather forecast. The region’s landscape of lush grasslands has completely dried up. Most of the listeners belong to the local Farmer Field School, an institution initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) to sensitise communities on the perils of erratic weather events and also to equip them to prepare for it. Many of them say: “We wait for early warning about impending disasters more than rain”.
“We usually receive rain once a year from July to October. But this year, there was no rainfall,” says Gloria Ato, a farmer who grows sorghum. One can sense the depression of farmers like Ato who have come to know through the weather forecasts that the dry spell would be longer this year.
Lawrence Biyika Songa, chairperson of the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change, says, “We are reeling under the impacts of climate change. It is manifesting in the form of prolonged dry spell and flooding.” In Uganda, landslides have been reported in the mountainous areas in the east at the slopes of Mountain Elgon and in the west around Mufumbiro and Rwenzori ranges where there has been rampant deforestation. “Landslides
have become frequent. This has never occurred in Ugandan history,” says Songa.
Flash floods amid prolonged dry spells have caused soil erosion and this has degraded agricultural lands. What has made matters worse is disease and pest attacks on major food security crops such as cassava, banana, beans, rice and groundnuts among others. For instance, coffee, which is a key cash crop of the country, is affected by wilt disease and twig borer. On the other hand, heat waves are so severe that there are widespread local clashes over access to water resources. ipcc says that average temperatures in Uganda will increase by up to 1.50 C in the next 20 years and by up to 4.30C by the 2080s.
Rising temperatures are altering the landscape of Africa. In March 2018, a study published in the Journal of Climate shows that the largest desert in the world—the Sahara—has been expanding due to shrinking rainfall and extended dry conditions (see ‘Bone dry’). Armed with 93 years
MORE THAN 2,000 NATURAL DISASTERS HAVE HIT AFRICA SINCE 1970 AFFECTING 500 MILLION AND KILLING 0.9 MILLION PEOPLE
of field and satellite data, researchers say that the Sahara has expanded by about 10 per cent—close to a staggering 1 million sq km. If it were a nation, the expanded area itself would be the 30th largest country in the world. In southwest Africa, there are reports that the hot Namib Desert too is expanding.
In the latter half of the 20th century, the continent has been witnessing extended spells of drought and extreme rainfall. The rapid and successive swinging between dry and wet conditions has devastated regions in the south and east of the continent. According to the ipcc report, it is “very likely” that the northern and southern parts of the continent will experience a decline in precipitation levels and undergo more intense dry conditions in the future. At the same time, the eastern and central regions are set to have a wetter future. However, wetter doesn’t necessarily mean better. ipcc notes that over the last 30-60 years, extreme precipitation changes alternating between tempestuous rains and prolonged droughts have been observed with increasing frequency.
Vanishing farmlands
In Zambia, droughts, floods and other climate events inflict annual damages of around 0.4 per cent of the country’s gdp, says Zambia’s Minister of Agriculture Micheal Katambo. Without adaptation measures, the intensified effects of climate change and variability are expected to sap around one