Global warming threatens Africa most severely

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that Africa will likely be the greatest effected region of climate change due to foreseen food and water supply shortages. In the next 13 years, as many as 250 million Africans many become displaced from land becoming uninhabitable. Effects such as degrading forests, mangroves, coral reefs, and agricultural land are being expected.

Coastal and Island communities will be effected by rising sea levels, and lakes are already shrinking with diminishing fish stocks. Sensitive agricultural land have shown to yield fewer crops due to less rain and shorter growing seasons. The report estimates that some countries might see their crops from rain-fed agriculture to be reduced by 50%.

Hundreds of researchers contributed to the report from over 130 countries and was compiled over a six year period. The IPCC created the report to help policymakers prepare for the future changes. One of the main authors of the report, Guy Midgley, says that Africa is "a continent which is most vulnerable to climate change because of its low adaptive capacity." Their major weakness, he explains is the "fairly weak institutional control and inputs and at the same time high levels of projected climate impact. Put those two things together and you end up with substantial vulnerability."

Midgey says that the growing amount of research being done on global warming is increasingly in agreement in statistics. Scientists are saying that the surface temperatures on land and sea have risen one or two degrees in the past 34 years and that weather and eco systems are being effected.

The greatest factor that puts African people at risk is that "A lot of people in Africa are not living buffered by insurance, buffered by savings, by credit availability," Midgely said. "So when resources become less available people potentially could be quite mobile. And that's always a problem for social security, for unrest, etc."

In November 2006, the U.N. Secretary at the time -General Kofi Annan said the impact of climate change will fall disproportionately on the world's poorest countries, many of them in Africa. He said that these people already live on the front lines of pollution, disaster and the degradation of resources and land.

More environmental politics articles.