Remember this from Christmas 1984?
The African continent has contributed the least carbon emissions, but the impact of climate change will hit Africa hardest. African agriculture is particularly vulnerable:
In Mali, Niger, the Sudan and much of the Horn of Africa and West Africa, arid or semi-arid agriculture will likely be wiped out. More broadly, swathes of the Horn of Africa will lose 94 percent of their agricultural production, with or without carbon fertilization, Cline found. Senegal will lose over 80 percent in either scenario, and the Sudan, close to 80 percent, as well.
In Somalia, included in the Horn of Africa statistics, years of drought and the resulting evisceration of its agriculture base have led to a worsening lawlessness. While the origin of the violence has little to do with ecology, it blocks food aid. Such unforeseen tragedies are not included in the IPCC models, although recent research suggests global warming is responsible for more than one-third of the recent worldwide droughts.
In the 1970s, the Horn of Africa was a net exporter of food, but now five years of drought have left 3.8 million Kenyans -- 10% of the population -- in need of emergency assistance, and 20 million people in the region dependent on aid. Droughts used to come once a decade, but they're now once every two or three years. Conditions have never been so harsh or inhospitable, reports an Oxfam director. Kenya faces drought by seeking aid, with pastoralists felling hardwood trees for fuel, slaughtering young animals to save lactating mothers, and giving up their nomadic lifestyle completely.
African crops are particularly vulnerable to temperature shifts -- only a 0.5 degree Celsius increase is enough to drive crop failure. Armed conflict follows; in fact, unusually warm years raise the odds of war in Africa 54%. The National Academy of Sciences found strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature in Africa, "or an additional 393,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars."
Bill McKibben describes reason and faith in Copenhagen at a recent Sunday service:
As the service started, dozens of choristers from around the world carried three things down the aisle and to the altar: pieces of dead coral bleached by hot ocean temperatures; stones uncovered by retreating glaciers; and small, shriveled ears of corn from drought-stricken parts of Africa. As I watched them go by, all I could think of was the people I've met in the last couple of years traveling the world: the people living in the valleys where those glaciers are disappearing, and the people downstream who have no backup plan for where their water is going to come from. The people who live on the islands surrounded by that coral, who depend on the reefs for the fish they eat, and to protect their homes from the waves. And the people, on every corner of the world, dealing with drought and flood, already unable to earn their daily bread in the places where their ancestors farmed for generations.
Those damned shriveled ears of corn.
Band Aid was a heartfelt moment, but only a small bit of adhesive on a serious wound that hasn't healed. The shriveled ears of corn haven't gotten any plumper in the past 25 years, nor will they.
Cross-posted at The Seminal