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Climate Change and the MDGs in Southern Africa. Climate change slows down progress towards the achievement of MDGs. Tigere Chagutah. Introduction. Several key environmental issues in southern Africa continue to be brought to the fore.
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Climate Change and the MDGs in Southern Africa Climate change slows down progress towards the achievement of MDGs TigereChagutah
Introduction • Several key environmental issues in southern Africa continue to be brought to the fore. • Climate change is emerging as one of the biggest and most complex challenges for the region’s ecosystems, social development and economic growth
Introduction • The findings of the Fourth Assessment Report (2007) of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change – established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation – put an end to lingering doubts on whether climate change is happening, and outlined with great clarity the likely impacts on not only southern Africa, but the world at large.
IPCC Members – Southern Africa Working Group I (The Physical Science Basis) • B. Hewitson (South Africa) Coordinating Lead Author, Regional Climate Projections Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) • C. Vogel (South Africa) Coordinating Lead Author, Africa • G. Midgley (South Africa) Coordinating Lead Author Ecosystems, their properties, goods and services • P. Dube (Botswana) Lead Author, Ecosystems, their properties, goods and services • C. Magadza (Zimbabwe), Lead Author, Assessing key vulnerabilities and the risk from climate change • S. Ragoonaden (Mauritius) Lead Author, Coastal systems and low- lying areas • M. Hauengue (Mozambique), Lead Author, Human Health • P. Yanda (Tanzania), Lead Author, Africa
IPCC Members – Southern Africa Working Group III (Mitigation) • C. Turner (South Africa) Lead Author, Energy supply • P. J. Zhou (Zimbabwe) Lead Author, Transport and its infrastructure • A. M. Mehlwana (South Africa) Lead Author, Residential/Commercial • F. Yamba (Zambia) Lead Author, Industry • R. Scholes (South Africa) Lead Author, Agriculture • H. Winkler (South Africa) Lead Author, Sustainable Development and Mitigation IPCC Synthesis Report core writing team • C. Vogel, South Africa
Climate Change Challenge • Increased global attention on climate change in 2007 noted that southern Africa, among other regions, has begun to suffer serious impacts of human-induced climate change. • According to the IPCC southern Africa has experienced a general drying from 1900 to 2005, with longer dry seasons and more uncertain rainfall. • According to the IPCC, most of the observed increases in globally averaged temperatures since the mid 20th century is due to the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere resulting from human activities. • Global greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities were reported to have grown by 70 percent between 1970 and 2004. Annual emission of carbon dioxide, the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, grew by 80 percent during the same period.
Climate Change Challenge • A briefing paper published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) lists all southern African countries among the more than one hundred countries most vulnerable to climate change. • The paper states that this group of countries has contributed least to total carbon emissions yet they will bear the brunt of climate change impacts in the next two decades. • Data from 2002 shows that, excluding South Africa, countries on the critical list account for only 3.2 percent of the total global emissions, compared to 23.3 percent for the United States of America, 24.7 percent for the European Union, 15.3 percent for China, and 4.5 percent for India. • South Africa alone accounted for 1.47 percent of global emissions.
Climate Change Challenge • The Southern African Environment Outlook reports that records from southern African countries show that temperatures have risen by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years and the 1990s were the warmest and the driest ever. • The report warns of sea level rise, reduced crop production, amplification of drought and desertification, irregular rainfall, frequent flooding, increased cyclonic activity, habitat loss and an increase in the incidence of vector borne diseases such as malaria in previously unaffected areas.
Climate change and glaciers in Africa • Evidence of climate change is starkly visible in the disappearance of glaciers on mountains near the equator in East Africa. Glaciers are found on three mountains in Africa - the Ruwenzori mountains on the DRC-Uganda border, Mount Kenya in Kenya, and Mt Kilimanjaro in the United Republic of Tanzania. • Retreat of these glaciers began around the 1880s as a result of a decrease in precipitation and an increase in solar radiation from reduced cloudiness. • Later in the 20th century, increased temperature became an additional driver, although its relative importance is still debated. • Close to 50 percent of the glaciers on the Ruwenzori mountains, Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro have disappeared, while larger glaciers, particularly on Kilimanjaro, have been fragmented.
Climate Change and Floods Early season flooding during 2007/08 rain season
Climate Change and Floods Flood affected areas in southern Africa (Dec 2007-Jan 2008)
Social Impacts • Climate shocks are prominent in southern Africa. The region has suffered repeated droughts and floods in the last two decades, with the year 2007 starting and ending with significant flooding in a number of countries. They year 2008 also started with floods. • Floods and droughts threaten lives and leave people feeling insecure. • Climate shocks also erode long-term opportunities for human development, undermining productivity and eroding human capabilities. • Climate change may worsen existing social and economic challenges, particularly for those societies dependent on resources that are climate-sensitive.
Social Impacts • Records show that southern Africa is prone to droughts with at least two droughts occurring per decade. • A drought often triggers serious water related imbalances, causing loss or damage to crops, shortage of water for people, livestock and wildlife, as well as famine and disease. • As a result of droughts during the 1994/1995 season, cereal harvest in southern Africa declined by 35 percent compared to the previous season, with maize harvests declining by 42 percent.
Social Impacts • Strategies for coping with climate risks can reinforce deprivation. • Producers in drought prone areas often forego production of crops that could raise income in order to minimise risk, preferring to produce crops with lower economic returns but resistant to drought. • When climate disasters strike, the poor are often forced to sell productive assets creating life-long cycles of disadvantage and locking vulnerable households into low human development traps
Social Impacts – Climate Change & Gender • Climate change is not a gender neutral process. In general, women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, because they represent the majority of the world's poor • Because of frequent droughts or as water resources deteriorate, women and girls will walk longer distances to secure water • According to a World Bank estimate, some African women use 40 percent of their daily nutritional intake travelling to collect water. • Another survey, carried out by UNICEF in rural areas of Namibia, found that female-headed households are 20 minutes further away from water sources in the dry season compared to the wet season. • in Mozambique, women spend 15.3 hours during the dry season and 2.9 hours during the wet season, each week drawing and carrying water • Under rising temperatures the tasks of farming, fishing, and supplying water and fuel will become more difficult. These tasks are typically and disproportionately the responsibility of women and girls
Climate Change and MDGs • Climate change could seriously impair the ability of countries in the region to reach the Millennium Development Goals – the set of eight internationally agreed goals for improving social and economic indicators by 2015
MDGs There are eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). For each goal one or more targets have been set, most for 2015, using 1990 as a benchmark. • Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger • Targets 2015 Halve the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day, and • Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. • Achieve universal primary education • Target 2015 Ensure that all girls and boys will be able to complete primary school.
MDGs • Promote gender equality and empower women • Targets 2005, 2015 Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels of education no later than 2015.
MDGs • Reduce child mortality • Target 2015 Reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate of children under five. • Improve maternal health • Target 2015 Reduce by three-quarters the ratio of women dying in childbirth. • Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases • Target 2015 Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS, and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
MDGs • Ensure environmental sustainability • Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. • Target 2015 Reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. • Target 2020 Achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
MDGs • Develop a global partnership for development • Develop an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system that includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction – nationally and internationally. • Address the special needs of the least developed countries, and landlocked and small island developing states. • Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries. • Develop decent and productive work for youth. • In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries. • In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies – especially information and communications technologies.
Climate Change and MDGs In southern Africa, an additional warming of the globe is adversely influencing the MDGs in many ways: • A warmer and drier climate, characterised by increased frequency and intensity of El Niño events, is drastically reducing soil moisture and water runoff to rivers, thus hampering crop production, which has a major influence on food security and poverty reduction (Goal 1); • Increased frequency of climatic disasters is forcing the removal of children from school (Goal 2) due to increased poverty, food shortage, isolation (for example when roads are damaged by floods), and child abandonment; • Women are often getting a disproportionate share of the burden when disasters strike because they have less opportunities and limited access to resources than men. This can undermine their education and development, and affect their welfare and that of children (Goals 3, 4, 5)
Climate Change and MDGs • A long-term rise in temperatures, and occasional flooding due to La Niña events, is increasing water and vector-borne diseases, while poor nutrition due to crop failure is exacerbating disease impacts (Goal 6); • Increased aridity is exacerbating land degradation, desertification and loss of biological diversity, a set of processes that are not compatible with environmental sustainability (Goal 7); • The importance of agriculture and the heavy dependence of many southern African economies on natural resources mean that more intense and frequent droughts have a major bearing on development in general. A collapse in national income, combined with the heavy costs of disaster response operations, has the potential to reduce the ability of governments to invest in key socio-economic sectors (Goals 1-7).
Climate Change and Food Security • Analysis of maize production in southern Africa over the last four decades reveals two distinctive phases. There was an upward trend between 1961 and 1981 when annual maize production increased from less than 10 million tonnes to more than 20 million tonnes. In the last two decades however, maize production has largely stagnated, if not declined • The declining food situation that has been afflicting the southern African region in recent years stems from a combination of factors including: unfavourable climatic conditions (erratic rainfall, drought and floods); poor and unfertile soils; environmental degradation; and inadequate support, among other factors
Climate change and the economy • Droughts and floods are very important factors influencing economic growth in southern African countries and can frustrate development efforts undertaken for many years. • After the 1983 and 1992 droughts, Zimbabwe’s GDP fell by 3 percent and 11 percent, respectively. • In South Africa, the 1992 drought was estimated to have reduced the agricultural GDP by about R1.2 billion and caused a 0.4-1.0 percent loss in economic growth. • The same drought cost the Zambian government US$300 million, bringing its 1992 deficit to US$1.7 billion. A 39 percent drop in agricultural output was largely responsible for the 2.8 percent decline in GDP in the country
Climate Change and Energy • Many southern African countries are critically dependant on hydroelectric power from the many rivers in the region. • In the past, severe droughts have had wide-ranging economic impacts on the industrial and agricultural sector. During drought, crop production in large scale farming is heavily dependant on electrical power for irrigation. Thus a reduction in hydroelectric power generation leads to losses in both industrial as well as agricultural output
Climate Change and Energy • The Zambian National Heritage Commission warns that reduced flow in the Zambezi would have serious implications on power generation along the river – and consequently the economies of Zambia and Zimbabwe. About 75 percent of the total hydro power installed capacity in the Zambezi Basin is on the river itself. • A study of the potential impact of climate change on the proposed Batoka Gorge hydro project on the Zambezi river found that a reduction in flow levels over the Victoria Falls of 35 percent would cut annual power production by 21 percent and dry season production by 32 percent, rendering the project economically non-viable.
Climate Change and Energy • The economic impacts due to curtailment of the hydropower generation from Lake Kariba, on the Zambezi river, resulting from the 1991/1992 drought, was estimated to be some US$102 million loss in GDP, US$36 million loss in export earnings and loss of 3,000 jobs
Conclusion • What are the trends in climate change issues in southern Africa? • What are the drivers of this climate change in the region? • How do both the drivers and climate change itself affect human well-being and development, and which population groups, ecosystems and geographical areas are most vulnerable? • What policies are in place in the region and what action is being taken to address climate change?
