Irene Shone
Increased warming and associated impacts of climate creates new challenges and calls for improved coordination across governance levels.
This was recently said by Climate Scientist at Kenya Meteorological Department, Patricia Nying’uro at Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (MESHA)’ s first media cafe on COP-27 meeting. Nying’uro says that it is important to invest on climate change issues. “Investments are particularly needed in capacity development and technology transfer, as well as in enhancing countries’ early warning systems, including weather, water and climate observing systems,” she says.
She says some of implications of projections for Africa include: projected increases in frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation and flooding, mainly in South East Africa, projected decrease in mean precipitation Mediterranean regions of Africa in the North as well as Central & West Southern African regions, as well as projected increases in frequency and intensity of droughts. She further says that many parts of Africa are identified as global hot-spots of high human vulnerability to climate hazards, mainly in areas of high poverty, poor governance, limited access to basic facilities, violent conflict and high climate-sensitive livelihoods.
“The number of people that will continue to be at risk from adverse impacts of climate change will increase significantly in the absence of robust response measures as population growth interacts with climate change,” she explains. She adds that, this is estimated at 1.312 billion for 2020, 17% of world population projected to grow to 40% of the world population by 2100.
She further laments that there is also a threat of Health impacts in Africa due to adverse climate change.
“Infectious diseases continue to be noted, like the increasing incidence of malaria, cholera outbreaks, especially following tropical cyclones in East and, Southern Africa,” she shares, explaining that seasonal transmission of vector-borne diseases is expected to increase, exposing tens of millions more people.
There is also 44% of heat-related mortality noted from 1991 to 2018, attributable to climate change in South Africa, she says. “Above 1.5°C global warming the risk of heat-related deaths rises sharply, with at least 15 additional deaths per 100,000 annually across large parts of Africa,” explains Nying’uro. As a result of climate risks and threats, there are losses and damages noticed at approximately 337 million people who were affected by natural disasters between 2000 and 2019 as a result of floods at 80% and droughts at 16% rate.
This she says also affects food security. She explains that, food insecurity increases by five to 20 percent with each flood or drought in sub-Saharan Africa. ” Climate Change has reduced economic growth across Africa, increasing income inequality between African countries and countries in more temperate climates,” she says emphasizing that,
Africa has seen increasing losses to agriculture, tourism, manufacturing and infrastructure.
