The United Nations has warned that accelerating climate change threatens over 100 million “extremely poor” people across Africa. The UN on Tuesday said that the climate crisis could also melt away the continent’s few glaciers within the next two decades.
A new report released by the World Meteorological Organization concluded that Africa’s 1.3 billion people remain “extremely vulnerable”. The report said that the temperatures across the continent are rising at a faster rate than the global average. What is more alarming is that the continent’s 54 countries contribute less than 4 percent to the global greenhouse gas emissions.
The 30-year warming trend from 1991-2020 was above that of the 1961-1990 period in all of Africa’s regions. The reports said that the rate of sea-level rise along the tropical coasts and the South Atlantic, as well as along the Indian Ocean, was higher than the world average.
The report said that Africa’s land mass and waters warmed more rapidly than the world average last year as well.
The report also highlighted the shrinking glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda as symbols of the rapid and widespread changes to come.
The report warned, “Their current retreat rates are higher than the global average. If this continues, it will lead to total deglaciation by the 2040s. Mount Kenya is expected to be deglaciated a decade sooner, which will make it one of the first entire mountain ranges to lose glaciers due to human-induced climate change.”
While the continent’s water reserves are too small to serve as significant water sources, Africa’s glaciers have high tourism and scientific value.
African people face looming droughts, floods, extreme heat
In the report’s foreword, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union Commission Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko said, “By 2030, it is estimated that up to 118 million extremely poor people will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa, if adequate response measures are not put in place.”
The World Meteorological Organization defined the “extremely poor” as those who live on less than $1.90 per day.
Sacko said, “In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change could further lower gross domestic product by up to 3 percent by 2050. Not only are physical conditions getting worse, but also the number of people being affected is increasing,” she said in the report’s foreword.
Meanwhile, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said that last year temperatures continued to rise across Africa, “accelerating sea-level rise” as well as extreme weather events like floods, landslides and droughts – all indicators of climate change.
Earlier yesterday, African countries also demanded a new system to track funding from wealthy nations that are failing to meet a $100bn annual target to help the developing world tackle climate change.
