The muturage should know where the 'climate shoe' pinches most

It is welcome news that the muturage (common man) will be involved in the forthcoming UN Climate Change talks, the 21st annual session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to be held in Paris later this year. It will not only add a touch of rustic flavor to the talks, but will also lend it a hint of community-based advocacy. Rwanda is among 100 countries in an initiative that seeks to involve the muturage, whose views will be presented in contribution to policy formulations at the high level international meet. Often missing from such meetings, it will be offering the more personal view from the ground. This column has previously observed how the African continent is likely to warm this century, with the drier sub-tropical regions warming more than the moist tropics. In its 2007 assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that “Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability, a situation aggravated by the interaction of ‘multiple stresses’, occurring at various levels, and low adaptive capacity.” The IPCC is the principal scientific body charged with reviewing and assessing climate science, then issuing reports about the risks to the world’s governments. Rainfall patterns will shift as the hydrological cycle becomes more intense. Annual rainfall is likely to decrease throughout much of the region. Current adaptations of food producers to cope with climatic variability may become inadequate, while agricultural production may fall, particularly in semi-arid regions. This means that the areas suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and crop yields are all expected to decrease, with serious consequences for food security. Likewise, global warming could reduce agricultural production by as much as 2 per cent each decade for the rest of this century. During that period, demand is expected to rise as much as 14 per cent each decade as the world population – estimated to be just over 7.3 billion currently – is projected to grow to 9.6 billion in 2050. Any shortfall would likely lead to rising food prices that would hit the world’s poor hardest. But there is also a health dimension to climate change that Rwanda poignantly illustrates. According to a study by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Rwanda could suffer economic costs amounting to 1 per cent of annual GDP by 2030 due to global warming. The body predicts a temperature rise of between 1.5 and 3 degrees Celsius by the 2050s. The study notes that a large proportion of the rural population in Rwanda currently lives at altitudes beyond the normal mosquito habitat. It explains that as temperatures rise, so will the threshold altitude, increasing by 150 per cent the number of Rwandans at risk of Malaria by 2050. The potential healthcare costs are of the order of $50 million per annum. But IPCC also predicts that existing water shortages will be aggravated, where new nations may join the list of those experiencing shortages. A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report shows how the conflict in Darfur in the Sudan has, in part, been driven by climate change and environmental degradation. The advancement of the Sahara desert, estimated to have been up to more than a mile every year by 2007, coupled with rainfall decreasing by up to 30 per cent resulted in tensions between farmers and herders over disappearing pasture and declining water-holes in Darfur. Conflict in the region persists. As research attests, effects of climate change are the latest in a series of environmental sparks of human conflict, along with those of the more traditional model such as drought, desertification, land degradation, failing water supplies, deforestation and fisheries depletion. Abundance of research also suggests that we may not unaware of what the muturage is likely to face if nothing is done by keeping check on the “multiple stresses” that affect the climate. Yet, as community-based advocacy has always known, personal stories provide a tremendous source of power to both the person telling the story and those listening. That is why, in knowing where the shoe pinches most, the muturage should always have his say at forums such as the COP 21.

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The muturage should know where the 'climate shoe' pinches most