Originally published November 29 2005
Africa especially vulnerable to effects of global warming
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The effect of global warming on Africa's crops is more than enough evidence that the country is exposed to greater dangers than the rest of the world because of its poverty, according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article.
The potential consequences of global warming could be devastating for the world's poorest continent, yet its nations are among the least equipped to cope.
"It is our vulnerability that sets us apart from developed nations," said Luanne Otter, a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand during a climate change conference this week in South Africa.
Surface temperatures rose about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century - the largest increase in 1,000 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
South Africa's environmental affairs minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, urged the United States and other holdouts to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which calls on the top 35 industrialized nations to cut carbon dioxide and other gas emissions.
But even if countries stop polluting today, researchers argue the effects will be felt for decades, posing what the African Development Bank has singled out as possibly the greatest long-term threat to efforts to end poverty on the continent.
Hotter, drier weather in the semiarid west of South Africa could reduce production of maize by up to 20 percent and generate a proliferation of pests, researchers said.
In the moister areas to the east, where rainfall is forecast to increase, thickets are encroaching on grasslands, threatening livestock and wildlife.
While the United States may be able to recover from Hurricane Katrina in a year or two, it could take Mozambique 10 years to recover from the catastrophic floods of 2000, said Roland Schulze, a hydrologist at South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Some species in South Africa's famed Kruger National Park are already disappearing, said Norman Owen-Smith of the University of the Witwatersrand.
Corridors will have to be created to allow animals to migrate toward more favorable climates, or they may have to be carried to new habitats.
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