A library of evidence — including a major new UN report released on Friday — suggests that Africa will suffer more than any other continent from the impact of climate change during the course of the century.
Hundreds of millions of people are set to face severe shortfalls in food and drinkable water in the coming decades throughout the continent but the impact may be most dramatically witnessed on the southernmost tip of the continent.
According to international and local experts, endemic plant kingdoms, fish stocks and unshielded coastal areas are all at risk from rising sea levels in the province where the waters of the Indian and Atlantic oceans collide.
The centuries-old, world-renowned wine region that lies within easy range of Cape Town will migrate towards the east in coming decades as the province becomes warmer and dryer from the north.
Farming in one of the country’s agricultural mainstays would become even harder and food ever scarcer as sparse water resources dry up.
Poor will suffer the most
And the poor will suffer the most as increasingly extreme weather conditions threaten their subsistence livelihoods and encourage diseases like malaria to travel further inland.
“The prospects are dire,” said Katherine Bunney, facilitator of a grouping of global warming activist organisations, the South African Climate Action Network.
“We should be scared enough about the effects of climate change to want to do something about it. It is going to be catastrophic.” …
A 2005 Western Cape climate change report warned of the potential effects of rising sea levels, although the extent was uncertain.
“Higher sea levels will require smaller storm events to overtop existing storm protection measures,” it said.
With less frequent but more severe rainfalls, flooding would also become a bigger threat.
“In Cape Town many of the informal settlements are situated on the Cape Flats where the high water table and inadequate infrastructure makes them particularly vulnerable to flooding,” said the report.
“The cost of not doing anything will be huge,” he stressed.
Stern said he was encouraged that the threat was being taken increasingly seriously worldwide.
“But there is still the question: will we as the world act quickly enough and strongly enough? We will find out in the next year or two”.- AFP
Hundreds of millions of people are set to face severe shortfalls in food and drinkable water in the coming decades throughout the continent but the impact may be most dramatically witnessed on the southernmost tip of the continent.
According to international and local experts, endemic plant kingdoms, fish stocks and unshielded coastal areas are all at risk from rising sea levels in the province where the waters of the Indian and Atlantic oceans collide.
The centuries-old, world-renowned wine region that lies within easy range of Cape Town will migrate towards the east in coming decades as the province becomes warmer and dryer from the north.
Farming in one of the country’s agricultural mainstays would become even harder and food ever scarcer as sparse water resources dry up.
Poor will suffer the most
And the poor will suffer the most as increasingly extreme weather conditions threaten their subsistence livelihoods and encourage diseases like malaria to travel further inland.
“The prospects are dire,” said Katherine Bunney, facilitator of a grouping of global warming activist organisations, the South African Climate Action Network.
“We should be scared enough about the effects of climate change to want to do something about it. It is going to be catastrophic.” …
A 2005 Western Cape climate change report warned of the potential effects of rising sea levels, although the extent was uncertain.
“Higher sea levels will require smaller storm events to overtop existing storm protection measures,” it said.
With less frequent but more severe rainfalls, flooding would also become a bigger threat.
“In Cape Town many of the informal settlements are situated on the Cape Flats where the high water table and inadequate infrastructure makes them particularly vulnerable to flooding,” said the report.
“The cost of not doing anything will be huge,” he stressed.
Stern said he was encouraged that the threat was being taken increasingly seriously worldwide.
“But there is still the question: will we as the world act quickly enough and strongly enough? We will find out in the next year or two”.- AFP
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