Climate change

It is not good news for the future of the continent of Africa from climate change according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) .

Greenhouse gases will later this century put up to 1.8 billion more people in Africa at risk of water stress. Even a modest temperature rise could lead to falls in water flows in some river systems equal in volume to one large dam being lost annually. Arid and semi-arid lands are likely to increase by up to eight per cent . Sea level rise, especially on the east African coast, will increase flooding .

The report also predicts that wheat may disappear from Africa by the 2080s; that the soya bean harvest in Egypt could drop by close to 30 per cent by 2050 under a worst case scenario and maize yields fall significantly in southern Africa.

"It [Africa] is the Continent with the least responsibility for the climate change and yet is perversely the Continent with the most at risk if greenhouse gases are not cut”. - Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme

"Unfortunately for us, the West pollutes and Africa suffers," Dorothy Kaggwa, a spokesperson from Environmental Alert