October 20, 2009
...Africa’s heightened vulnerability to climate change7. (click here) Climate change is a key development issue in Sub-Saharan Africa because of
the region’s special vulnerabilities. These include the continent’s natural fragility (twothirds
of the surface area is desert or dryland), significant and fragile terrestrial and
coastal ecosystems, and high exposure to natural disasters (especially droughts and
floods), which are forecast to increase and intensify as climate change progresses.
Moreover, the region’s livelihoods and economic activities are very much dependent on
natural resources and rainfed agriculture, which are highly sensitive to climate variability.
While biomass provides 80 percent of the primary domestic energy supply in Africa,
rainfed agriculture contributes some 30 percent of GDP and employs about 70 percent of
the population, and is the main safety net of the rural poor. Added to this is the spread of
malaria — already the biggest killer in Africa — to higher elevations because of rising
temperatures, compounding the effects of climate change with an increasing disease
burden....
4 September 2017
By Baher Kamal
Members of the Kenyan Kadokoi community water project show how they use drip irrigation to grow vegetables with water from their borehole.
The increasing occurrence and severity of weather events such as droughts and floods, high heat and cold stress, will impact agriculture in Africa, threatening regional food systems, explains Grainger-Jones.
Smallholder farmers and those who primarily draw their incomes from agriculture value chains will be affected, which will in turn threaten the region’s food security, adds the executive director of this partnership comprising 15 independent, non-profit research organisations, home to over 8,000 scientists, researchers and technicians.
“Agriculture and our global food systems, however, contribute up to 29 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions which needs to urgently be addressed,” Grainger-Jones underlines.
He further explains that CGIAR is helping the developing world to harness an environmental transformation, to drastically cut the environmental footprint of the food system, including climate emissions, land degradation, water, land pollution and food waste....
