The UK Government will today issue a warning that climate change could have a devastating effect on Africa and has the potential to wipe out all the benefits from the measures to help its people agreed by the G8 last year after sustained pressure by the Live Aid campaign.
Hilary Benn, the Secretary for state and International Development, will in his first white paper highlight the fact that people in poor African nations, while producing much lower carbon dioxide than individuals in rich countries, are likely to be hardest hit by permanent changes to the climate.
African farmers will by 2050 have to deal with more
droughts, more extreme temperatures, and flash floods, which is likely
to lead to lower food production, loss of income, higher death rates
and diseases.
How will Africa be affected
Central African nations
are likely to be worst hit by an expected drop in food and livestock
production of between 5-20% or more.
Senegal, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan
are likely to suffer the most as crops of cassava, maize, beans and
cocoyams becomes increasingly difficult to grow.
Sahara and southern
Africa is unlikely to see any change as these regions already are
hyper arid with no crop growth.
Mozambique and other pockets of land
are in the short term likely to see food production increase by 5-20%
due to increased rainfall.
Mr. Benn stressed the importance of including Africa and other poor
nations in the next round of climate talks - known as Kyoto 2 - to
build a global conensus on how to tackle growing concerns about global
warming. "The aim would be to allocate Carbon Permits to poor nations,
which they can sell on to the Western world to help their own development",
said Hilary Benn.
