By Ochieng’ Ogodo
Journalist-Kenya
[NAIROBI]
For Edward Nduli, life has been a struggle for decades in Kenya’s Eastern province, but
things were never as bad as they are today.
“For a region where majority are small-holder farmers
and people depend on crop production for their livelihoods, the advent of
unpredictable seasonal variations has visited upon us serious challenges for
survival,” he said.
The last good rains, he remembered, were in 1997,
during an El Nino occurrence. But thereafter, he says, “We saw the decline of
rains with extreme erratic seasons, and this has continued since. Rain was
becoming scarce and poorly distributed, and intercropping yielded nothing,”
said Nduli
These are some of the climate change related impacts
being felt in various parts of the world. Dr. Andrew Newsham, Research
Fellow, Climate Change Team, Institute of Development Studies says climate
change could be disastrous for the environment, and its life supporting
services that poor people across the world rely upon.
“Some plant and animal species will be able to migrate
in response to changes to temperature and rainfall patterns,” he said. A
lot of biodiversity will, therefore, survive the impacts of climate change, but
will appear in different places–further north or south, at higher or lower
elevations.
They will not have the same possibilities to migrate,
and they may be amongst the biodiversity we most value. One such example is the
polar bear.
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| Drying river in Kenya Pic: Ochieng' Ogodo |
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The drying tendencies that parts of the world like Southern Africa are projected to experience
over the coming decades is likely to lead to greater harvest failures, even if
people use locally bred and well-adapted seed varieties.
“We may see it making more sense for people
across large parts of Africa to switch from
cultivation to livestock as a result of rainfall reductions,” But a drying
tendency may, in some places, lead to greater levels of bush encroachment and
consequently less grazing availability.
Acidification of the oceans–an increase in the acidity
of the oceans as a result of human-caused by carbon dioxide (CO2)–could
have big implications for marine biodiversity. More CO2 in the
oceans means higher levels of carbonic acid and lower levels of the carbonate
ions that many marine organisms use to make their shells and skeletons. This
could have negative effects on coral reefs that must calcify (rebuild) their
skeletal structures faster than the rate at which they are eroded.
But Newsham said more funding for the protection of
biodiversity which provides important functions and services for livelihoods is
one of the remedies needed, but in a way that local people don’t bear the costs
of such protection.
“It’s about getting good ways of using such
biodiversity. But getting funding for environmental projects is not easy in an
era of climate change, where funds might be more likely to go towards other
issues like decarbonising the energy infrastructure,” said Newsham
Another important consideration would be getting the
costs of environmental degradation into the way economy works. This could have
short term benefits but must be a long-term goal. Paying governments to keep
biodiversity, instead of extracting mineral resources might help.
In the Yasuní reserve in Ecuador,
the government has promised to refrain from extracting the oil from underneath
this biodiversity hotspot if it can raise from national and international
sources 50 percent of the revenue it would forego.
The REDD initiative (Reducing Emissions through
Avoided Deforestation and Degradation) which is about maintaining carbon sinks,
biodiversity and habitat but also the ecosystem services which we need to make
our economy function is another case in point. But it must be pro-poor.
Reducing carbon emissions is critical. It must be done
to avoid the prospect of ‘runaway climate change’ with greater magnitude
implications for ecological and social systems hard to predict.
Political will key to GHG reductions
Newsham said the biggest one is generating the
political will to implement a global regime of legally binding emissions targets,
especially in terms of getting the biggest emitters and geo-political powers –
among others the USA, China,
Brazil –
to sign up.
But a lot is happening at the national level in terms
of responding to climate change like the very serious and well-funded response
of the Bangladesh
government.
Finding ways to decouple economic growth both from
carbon intensity and environmental destruction is important.
“We’re still at a point where growth wins over
the environment all too frequently when it comes to national development
priorities. There still is not enough political desire to confront the
environmental consequences of economic activity that is held to contribute to
economic growth,” he said.
“If there is an issue in the climate change agenda
that I would flag as in need of receiving more attention,” said Newsham, “it is
to ensure that efforts to reduce carbon and to reduce environmental degradation
are done in ways that are pro-poor.”
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| Water scarcity in some parts of the world will deepen | Pic: Ochieng' Ogodo |
We are all going to feel the impacts of climate
change. The higher the global average temperature rise, the more ‘dangerous’
the level of climate change we will let ourselves in for, and the more everyone
will struggle.
However, the impacts of climate change will almost
certainly be harder to deal with in countries with fewer financial resources,
weaker governance and in which climate sensitive livelihoods such as farming
are still very prevalent as opposed to where the government and the
infrastructure can deal with an increase in extreme weather events.
According to
Dr. James Kinyangi, a climate change expert at Climate Change, Agriculture and
Food Security (CCAFS) and the East African Regional Program Leader, even a 2
degree Celsius rise in global mean temperatures by 2100, which is an optimistic
scenario, will radically change the face of farming.
Potential to
transform productivity
“Climate change
has the potential to transform the patterns and productivity of crops,
livestock and fisheries, and to reconfigure trade, markets and access. For
instance, in a study of the 50 most globally important crops, results
illustrate a general trend where, as the world warms, suitable growing areas
will shift towards cooler temperatures at higher latitudes, where most
developed countries are located.,” Kinyangi said.
Therefore,
while developed countries may gain substantial production potential, many
developing countries—particularly those in food-insecure subtropical and
tropical regions—will likely lose out.
By 2090, according to Kinyangi, agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa would
be heavily impacted, with almost all parts of Africa
registering a decline in growing season length. “It is not only the future and
the gradual change in conditions we have to worry about. It is the extremes in
the coming seasons that may already hit farmers,” he said.
Many climate scientists suggest that many strange weather events
will be more frequent and more severe. In the developed countries, there is some indication of increased
drought severity and duration in the western and southwestern United States and other areas in Europe.
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| Climate change can transform productivity including
livestock Pic: Ochieng' Ogodo |
There is a trend toward
reduced mountain snowpack and earlier spring snow melt runoff peaks across much
of these nations. Kinyangi said this trend is very likely attributable at least
in part to long-term warming, although some part may have been played by
decadal-scale variability. These may have substantial impacts on the
performance of reservoir systems.
Climate change will impact all aspects of farming. There will be reduced
crop yields, loss in livestock productivity, increased pests and diseases,
including those associated with post-harvest storage, changes in the
availability of irrigation water, negatively impacted aquaculture. There will
also be some new opportunities, but in general the negative impacts outweigh
the positive ones.
Short and
long term actions
But there are
both long and short term actions that could be taken. In the long term,
he calls for reducing emissions and improving carbon storage. In the short term, he said, there is need
for crop breeding for future climates, better agricultural practices
transferred from one region to another, enabling policies in environmental
management and food systems and seasonal forecasts for adaptive management.
Climate
information services is also key as is agricultural intensification and
technical compatibility in ways to reduce GHG emissions or sequester carbon. It
is also important to improve knowledge on the economic feasibility of
environmental mitigation and its links to investments in food security
He also said
there is need for “a new research initiative that integrates and applies the
best and most promising approaches, tools and technologies. The involvement of
farmers, policy makers, researchers, the private sector and civil society in
the research process is vital.”
Successful
mitigation and adaptation, he added, will entail changes in individual
behavior, technology, institutions, agricultural systems and socio-economic
systems. These changes cannot be achieved without improving interactions among
scientists and decision makers at all levels of society.
He also said
there is need to consult more and negotiate globally so that expectations for
international programs are grounded in reality, a consultation that will be
facilitated and made more effective in taking steps in each country to address
reductions in GHG emissions. “Also we need to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, as
it does provide for trans-boundary market based programs to encourage climate
friendly development. That involves both science and economics,” said Kinyangi.
It is
increasingly evident that regardless of the mitigation efforts today and in the
future, temperatures will continue to rise, at least the next five decades
because if earlier emissions of greenhouse gases. The magnitude and frequency
of extreme events are also likely to increase while the magnitudes of future
effects are still not well understood. Adaptation and mitigation are,
therefore, urgent challenges in future changes are to be limited.
Ochieng’ Ogodo is a Nairobi based journalist
whose works have been published in various parts of the world including Africa,
the US and Europe.
He is the English-speaking Africa and Middle East
region winner for the 2008 Reuters-IUCN Media Awards for Excellence in
Environmental Reporting. He is the chairman of the Kenya Environment and Science
Journalists Association. He can be reached at ochiengogodo@yahoo.com
or ochiengogodo@gmail.com
