Hunger, disease & death: The new normal

That mark of doom is biting the East African region where it hurts most; depressed rainfall, severe famine, dried up rivers, and desertification have become the new norm here. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

The news was buried inside the papers and blogs last week. It did not raise a storm, or even a whimper. Instead, it passed as it had come — quietly. But it was not any less foreboding.

Last year was the hottest in recorded history, surpassing the record set by 2015, and 2014 earlier. In the same week, the news channels and blogs were awash with voter registration analyses, Donald Trump memes, and — ominously — images from the drought-stricken regions of Kenya. The story might have been ignored, but its evidence was all over the place.

That mark of doom is biting the East African region where it hurts most; depressed rainfall, severe famine, dried up rivers, and desertification have become the new norm here. Consider this, for instance; despite the fact that East Africa was plagued by a severe drought between July 2011 and June 2012, history is repeating itself so soon as over 22 million people in Kenya and Tanzania are today food-insecure.

The region, while not a direct contributor to global warming, is bearing the brunt of the negative effects of climate change due to a combination of geographical and economic factors, as well as dependence on natural resources.

The 2015 Climate Change Vulnerability Index shows that three in five countries most at risk from the new world order are African, while the African Development Bank reports that the negative effects of climate change are already reducing Africa’s Gross Domestic Product by about 1.4 per cent annually.

WATER TOWERS DRYING UP

In Tanzania, just like in Kenya and Uganda, water towers are drying up. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that nearly 82 per cent of Mt Kilimanjaro’s ice cap has disappeared in the last 100 years, and the soft white on top of Mt Kenya is melting away quite fast too.

It is easy to see why: the World Meteorological Organisation says that last year was the hottest on record, surpassing the exceptionally high temperatures of 2015 and 1.1°C hotter than the pre-industrial period.

For Kenya, the effects of this warming of the planet became apparent in the 1960s, when average temperatures started rising as rainfall volumes fell.

By 2020, assessments project that about 75 million to 250 million people worldwide will be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change, and in 2015 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that weather-related hazards triggered 14.7 million displacements.

JARGON OF SUSTAINABILITY

Discussions about the environment in the region are laced with the jargon of “sustainability”, but beyond the air-conditioned boardrooms the noun “sustainability” is quickly replaced with “emergency”.  Scientists believe, however, that the danger is worse than previously imagined, and that human activities on the planet could have altered it forever. Discussions have moved from the effects of global warming on human populations to whether we have plundered our collective way into a new geological era — the Anthropocene Era.

The earth is, according to stratigraphy — the study of layers of rocks — about 4.5 billion years old, and this block of time is divided into smaller epochs of millions of years. For instance, the 66 million years that came after dinosaurs became extinct is called the Cenozoic era.

Within that era was the Quaternary period that lasted about three million years, and during which the earth was alive. Then it went into several ice ages in a period called the Pleistocene epoch. The most recent epoch is the Holocene, calculated to have begun about 11,700 years ago. Even though highly disputed, some scientists believe that the Holocene, marked by a period of stable climate and balanced ecological system, ended around 1950, thanks to the effects of human civilisation. That is why, at the international Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, in August 2015, an expert group argued for recognition of Anthropocene.

And, defending the need to define the new epoch last week, Japhet Kanoti, a lecturer at the Department of Geology at the University of Nairobi, told HealthyNation that “the boundary should mark a period when human activities had substantial global impacts on the total environment”.

PROGRESSIVE EVOLUTION

“This period can be linked with the progressive evolution of current human species, the Homo sapiens,” he said. “We are no longer the thinking man but a new species, a species driven by science, money, property and other things. If we, the scientists, can define the boundary between the ‘old human species’ and the evolved new human species, then this boundary can for sure define this new epoch. The Holocene belonged to Homo sapien and the proposed epoch to a new species, us, to be defined by the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature.”

In the past six years, rainfall has been below-average, complicating the survival of many East African communities whose livelihoods and economies — agriculture accounts for 43 per cent of annual Gross Domestic Product in the region — are directly anchored on the availability of rain. Overall, there has been a decrease of nearly 20 per cent in precipitation compared to levels 20 years ago.

The IPPC predicts, consequently, that there will be a decline, by nearly half, of rice, soy bean, wheat and maize by 2020 in countries such as Ethiopia, South Sudan, Burundi, Bangladesh and Nigeria due to the impacts of climate change.

In fact, wheat may disappear from Africa by 2080, and the staple meal, maize, will fall significantly in southern Africa. This will also likely make maize be the most costly food crop by 2050, and millet, a drought resistant crop, the cheapest.

 

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COST OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Damage to property and infrastructure due to sea-level rise, floods, droughts, wildfires, and extreme storms that may require extensive repair of essential infrastructure such as homes, roads, bridges, railroad tracks, airport runways, power lines, dams, levees, and seawalls.

 

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Lost productivity due to severe rainfall and, where applicable, snowstorms that delay planting and harvesting and cause power outages. Extreme heat causes allergies and more air pollution.

 

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Coping costs to mitigate effects of climate change such as need to irrigate previously rain-fed areas, cool vulnerable livestock, and manage new or more numerous pests. Governments may also have to build seawalls, contain sewer overflows, and strengthen bridges, subways, and other critical components of the transportation system.

 

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Mass migration and security threats leading to “climate refugees” when people are forced to leave their homes due to drought, flooding, or other climate-related disasters. Consequently, may lead to conflict over resources and displacement of others

 

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DID YOU KNOW...

The IPCC: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in 1988. Its mandate is to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge on climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. Over the decades, the panel has published a series of reports and assessments for policymakers and the public, the most recent being the 5th Assessment in November 2014.

 

The Paris Agreement: Adopted on December 12, 2015 by more than 190 countries who agreed to keep the global average temperature rise below two degrees Celsius by curbing greenhouse gas emissions, it commits countries to strengthen adaptation by implementing plans that should protect human health from the worst impacts of climate change, such as air pollution, heat waves, floods and droughts, and the ongoing degradation of water resources and food security. It also commits countries to finance clean and resilient futures in the most vulnerable countries.

 

Sources: There Is No Time Left: Climate Change, Environmental Threats, and Human Rights in Turkana County, Kenya; Journal Science Advances; East African Agriculture and Climate Change; World Health Organisation, African Development Bank, WWF, Online.