It's one of the most painful ironies of climate change. Africans are the world's poorest people and have contributed the least to industrial pollution, yet they face the greatest suffering from the changing climate.
While sub-Saharan Africa contains 12 per cent of the world's population, it is responsible for just 2 per cent of greenhouse gases. Africa produces only 1/20th as much carbon dioxide as the United States on a per-capita basis, yet it is the world's most vulnerable region. As the planet warms, droughts, floods and food shortages are likely to ravage the land with increasing frequency.
Studies suggest an additional 250 million Africans will be affected by water scarcity by 2025. Malnutrition will rise and armed conflicts will increase as Africans fight over scarce food. And an additional 90 million Africans will be exposed to malaria by 2030.
That's why the Copenhagen conference is placing a huge emphasis on "adaptation" - financing from wealthy countries to help the poorest adapt to drought, erratic rainfall and rising sea levels. Sources say Ottawa is already drafting a short list of African countries to receive Canadian funds to help them adapt. However, the process of adaptation in Africa is already under way.
Predicting the spread of malaria
On the snowcapped slopes of Mount Kenya, as in other African highlands, malaria was unknown in the past. But as the climate warms up, the snow has disappeared from the mountains - and malaria-carrying mosquitoes have moved up Mount Kenya and into other high-altitude regions, putting millions of people at risk.
Temperature data is "the most revealing and compelling" indicator of the spread of malaria in the highlands, Kenyan researcher Andrew Githeko found. He discovered that a 0.5-degree increase in average temperatures since the 1970s has led to an eightfold increase in malaria cases in western Kenya. Similar links between malaria and climate change have been found in Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia.
A new project, with help from Canada's International Development Research Centre, is trying to refine weather data to predict malaria. Researchers have developed a prediction model that can detect an epidemic up to four months in advance. They collected malaria data from a dozen East African hospitals and matched it against local climate records, allowing predictions to be made.
Under the latest three-year project, with a $245,000 contribution from Canada, the researchers will develop a detailed map of existing malaria zones and new zones, improving their predictive ability. They will train health-care workers to prevent expected outbreaks by distributing mosquito nets and spraying mosquito breeding grounds.
How to avoid the $100 chocolate bar
Almost three-quarters of the world's cocoa is produced in West Africa. Yet the changing climate has become a serious threat to cocoa farmers. In Ghana, the land area where cocoa can be grown has shrunk by 40 per cent since the 1960s. Climate change is jeopardizing cocoa by causing more disease, more bushfires, declining soil fertility and a shorter lifespan for cocoa trees.
One expert, John Mason of the Nature Conservation Research Centre in Ghana, predicts the decline in cocoa- growing land will fuel a sharp rise in global prices. A chocolate bar could cost as much as $100 within 20 years, he says.
Yet cocoa itself is contributing to climate change, since many farmers are chopping down the canopy of trees that gives shade to cocoa. Farmers traditionally believed that cocoa grows better in direct sunlight. But with climate change, they are finding that the sun is too harsh on their crops.
Mr. Mason and another Ghana-based environmentalist, Rebecca Asare, are working on schemes to encourage cocoa farmers to preserve their trees or plant new ones. They are hoping to tap into the carbon credits offered under new international agreements to those who preserve forests.
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