Climate change accelerates the food crisis and exacerbates conflicts in Africa

Africa, a continent where climate disasters affected 110 million people and caused at least 5,000 deaths in 2022, suffers disproportionately from the effects of global warming, which will worsen the food crisis and it will increase the conflicts over resources that are already hitting it, warns today a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The region, which only emits a 10% of greenhouse gases – hence his suffering “disproportionate”-, could face losses derived from climate change of between US$290,000 and US$440,000 million in the coming decades, indicates the study prepared by the United Nations agency.

agriculture suffers

The same document warns that Africa is the continent where agricultural productivity has fallen the most, a 3. 4% since 1961, due to climate change, something worrisome in a continent where the 55% of the population is still dedicated to the primary sector.

Dependent increasingly on food imports – which have made it one of the areas most affected by the effects of the war in Ukraine on the world market for basic goods – Africa could triple these purchases in the coming years, until it has to spend US$ 110,000 million in 2025, warns the study.

This is published to coincide with the celebration this week in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, of the Africa Climate Summit, and also has the collaboration of the African Union (AU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). .

According to experts, if an increase in temperatures of 4 degrees is reached (the Paris Agreement urges not to exceed 1.5 degrees), Africa could, even with adaptation mechanisms, suffer annual losses equivalent to 3% of the continental GDP.

All this could fuel conflicts over increasingly scarce productive land, in countries where confrontations between farmers and ranchers for this reason have grown in the last 10 years, often mixed with ethnic and religious factors in areas such as the Sahel or the Horn of Africa.

accelerated heating

The report indicates that the rate of increase in temperatures is accelerating in Africa as in other regions: if it was 0.2 degrees per decade in the period 1961-1990 compared to the pre-industrial era (1850-1900), it has been 0.3 degrees between 1991 and 2022.

The continent also experiences a rise in sea level of 3.4 millimeters per year, a magnitude similar to the rest of the planet’s regions, although the average is even higher on its Red Sea (3.7 millimeters) and Indian Ocean coasts. (3,6).

A 43% of the victims of climate change last year in Africa were due to floods and a 48% due to the droughts, which particularly hit the region of the Horn of Africa, where five consecutive seasons of poor harvests have caused famine in Somalia and displaced 1.2 million people, to which must be added another half million in neighboring Ethiopia.

Climate change has recently become apparent not only in the worst drought in 40 years in the Horn of Africa, but also in the serious fires that have ravaged Maghreb countries such as Algeria and Tunisia, the floods in Sahel nations (Nigeria, Niger , Chad, Sudan) or the effects of tropical cyclones in Madagascar.

The report recalls that African nations need US$2.8 trillion to be able to meet their emissions reduction contributions to comply with the Paris Agreement, for which they have the help of institutions such as the African Development Bank.

Source: EFE