A global conversation that began with concern over warming has now turned to the broader term climate change. Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas and a range of other impacts. All of these changes are arising as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Climate change and its differences in Nigeria
Addressing climate change will require a lot of time and effort—there’s no magic bullet. The required less waste and smarter use of our resources in technologies, human behaviors, and policies. For example, improvements to energy efficiency and vehicle fuel economy, increase in wind and solar power, biofuels from organic waste, setting a price on carbon, and protecting forest are all potent ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases trapping heat on the planet.
Scientists are also working on ways to sustainably produce hydrogen, most of which is currently derived from natural gas, to feed zero-emission fuel cells for transportation and electricity. Other efforts are aimed at building better batteries to store renewable energy; engineering a smarter electric grid; and capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and other sources with the goal of storing it underground or turning it to gasoline. But planting trees, restoring seagrasses, and boosting the use of agricultural cover crops could help clean significant mounts of carbon dioxide.
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Deep dives on climate migration in West Africa and Lake Victoria Basin
WASHINGTON, October 27, 2021— The World Bank’s new Groundswell Africa reports, released today ahead of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26), find that the continent will be hit the hardest by climate change, with up to 86 million Africans migrating within their own countries by 2050.
The data on countries in West Africa and the Lake Victoria Basin show that climate migration hot spots could emerge as early as 2030, and highlight that without concrete climate and development action, West Africa could see as many as 32 million people forced to move within their own countries by 2050. In Lake Victoria Basin countries, the number could reach a high of 38.5 million.
How It Affects Africa?
Slow-onset climate change impacts, like water scarcity, lower crop and ecosystem productivity, sea level rise, and storm surge will increasingly cause people to migrate. Some places will become less livable because of heat stress, extreme events, and land loss while other areas may become more attractive as consequence of climate-induced changes, like increased rainfall.
Battered by drought, floods, water scarcity, lower crop and ecosystem productivity, sea level rise, and storm surge and famine because of a problem they had little part in creating, vulnerable African nations are seeking billions of dollars at COP26 to boost their defences against climate change. Many view the Glasgow climate summit as the last chance for world leaders to save humanity from its devastating consequences.
Aid promised in 2009 to help poorer nations worldwide cope with climate change has still not fully materialised even as vulnerable nations are increasingly ravaged by disasters linked to climate change, from deadly floods in South Sudan and Niger to devastating famine in Madagascar. “More than 1.3 million people are facing a food crisis,” Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina said of the famine currently ravaging his country.
The African Development Bank (ADB) and the Netherlands-based Global Center on Adaptation have launched a $25-billion programme to help Africa adapt. The African continent has secured half of those funds via the ADB, and has called on developed countries to provide the rest.
But the money “will not fill the funding gap for adaptation”, said DR Congo’s Tshisekedi. Britain’s COP president, Alok Sharma, said there had been a gulf between needs and the international response so far. “The need is great and the injustice is stark,” he said. He announced $197 million in new funding for African adaptation from the UK government.
We may not have as many of the tools needed to address climate change as the rich countries of the world, but there are simple concepts governments and businesses in Africa can implement, but many other ideas involve personal changes like plating more trees in the community or having plants in our apartments and houses.
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Credits: ChannelsTV, National Geographic, Worldbank.
