Africa more at risk from warming than feared -- UN
05 Nov 2006 12:54:09 GMT Source: Reuters
By Daniel Wallis NAIROBI, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Africa is more vulnerable than feared to global warming, with 70 million people at risk from coastal flooding by 2080 and more than a quarter of wildlife habitats under threat, a U.N. report said on Sunday. Helping the world's poorest continent adapt to climate change must be a key focus of ministers meeting in Kenya for a major conference opening on Monday, it said. Africa's vulnerability to global warming was "even more acute" than had been feared, it said, and sparse historical data coupled with inadequate forecasting centres added to problems. "Climate change is under way and the international community must respond by offering well targeted assistance to those countries in the frontline which are facing increasing impacts," said U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) head Achim Steiner. Sunday's report gave dire predictions for Africa, including sea level rises increasing the number of people at risk from coastal flooding to 70 million by 2080 from 1 million in 1990. An estimated 30 percent of the continent's coastal infrastructure was at risk, it said, including seaside settlements in the Gulf of Guinea, Senegal, Gambia and Egypt. Habitats and ecosystems were threatened by changing weather patterns, it added, and 25 percent to more than 40 percent of species' habitats could be lost altogether by 2085. Nearly three-quarters of all Africans -- and almost all its poorest people -- rely on agriculture for a living, and global warming was also seen having a devastating effect on farming. Cereal crop yields will drop by up to 5 percent by the 2080s, with subsistence crops also seeing climate-linked falls. Baglis Osman Elasha, a Sudanese climate change researcher, said her country was already feeling the effects of global warming. "The gum arabic belt, an economically important crop, has shifted southward below latitude 14 degrees north," she said. "The rains, which used to occur from mid-June to the end of August, now start in mid-July until the end of September with important ramifications for agriculture and livelihoods." At the talks, about 6,000 delegates will discuss how to broaden the fight against warming beyond the Kyoto Protocol, capping emissions of greenhouse gases by 35 industrial nations until 2012, to include outsiders such as China, India and the United States.
