SPECIAL FEATURE
Whatever the cause, the snows of Kilimanjaro are evaporating into thin air – desiccating rather than melting – for the first time in over 10 millennia.
AINS
A frica’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, has been crowned by 40-meter-high glaciers for almost 12,000 years despite standing just 3 degrees off the equator. “No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude,” reads the famous opening line of Ernest Hemingway’s (right) short story The Snows of
Desertification One hundred million hectares of healthy land – equivalent to the size of Egypt – are lost each year worldwide, according to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (October 2023). Sub-Saharan Africa lost over 160 million hectares of healthy land between 2015 and 2019. Botswana is one of the region’s few success stories, managing to reduce its land degradation by almost 20 percent. Droughts Almost 30 million people face chronic drought conditions in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Mauritania and Niger. A newly identified phenomenon known as a “flash drought” – which ruins crops and sparks wildfires – is set to double due to climate change, according to the University of Reading, UK (September 2023). Southern African nations are set to be among the worst affected worldwide. Floods More than 11,000 people died in Libya’s floods caused by a rare Mediterranean hurricane (or “medicane”) in September 2023. Prior to that more than 3,000 people were killed in flash floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda in May 2023. And almost 1,000 people were killed in floods and mudslides during Tropical Cyclone Freddy, the longest cyclone on record lasting 36 days – which performed an extraordinary “double pass” over Madagascar and neighboring countries in February 2023. AFRICA ’ S CLIMATE CRISIS
painfully clear to see. But there are also creeping, insidious effects of climate change including desertification, described by the UN as “a silent, invisible crisis that is destabilizing communities on a global scale”. Sub-Saharan Africa lost over 160 million hectares of healthy land between 2015 and 2019, according to the
UN Convention to Combat Desertification – equivalent to the entire land mass of Mozambique and Namibia combined. Where to channel our efforts? Humans are an adaptable species, calling vastly
Kilimanjaro from 1936. Today, the animal that strayed too far from its normal territory would perhaps no longer be in danger of freezing to death: Between 1912 and 2011 the
ice shrank by more than 85 percent and will likely disappear by the middle of this century, according to NASA and UNESCO. Experts state that there are various factors at play: from temperatures rising on the surface area of the Indian Ocean to changing rainfall patterns caused by deforestation. Whatever the cause, the snows of Kilimanjaro are evaporating into thin air – desiccating rather than melting – for the first time in over 10 millennia. Beyond the symbolic and cultural loss there are more pressing effects for local farmers, who have relied on seasonal meltwater to support their crops and livestock for thousands of years. Such are the links between climate change and food security. Vanishing glaciers, floods, droughts, heatwaves and locust infestations are
different environments on every continent “home”. But even we have limits, and in many cases our limits have been crossed. The UN and the international community have upped their response in recent years, but given our finite resources how can we best weigh competing demands? Where should we focus flows of short- term humanitarian aid and long-term development assistance? Some political leaders continue to cite myopic regional interests, saying there are no easy answers – but actually there are. We now have global rankings that balance on the one hand “climate vulnerability” across areas such as food, water, health, ecosystems services, human habitats and infrastructure, with
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