Africa’s fabled glaciers in the east will disappear less than two decades from now, 118 million poor people face drought, flood or extreme heat, and climate change could reduce the continent’s economy by 3% by the middle of the century, the UN climate agency warned on Tuesday.
The report issued ahead of the UN climate change conference in Scotland on 31 October by the World Meteorological Organisation and other organisations is a grim reminder that Africa’s 1.3 billion people continue to be “extremely vulnerable” as the continent warms faster and more rapidly than the global average.
Africa, which causes fewer than 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, has long been expected to have a serious effect of climate change.
It comes in advance of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, where the United Nations has warned that extreme conditions could lead to more people leaving the continent.
Massive displacement, hunger and increasing climate shocks like droughts and floods are expected in the future, yet deficiency of climate data in parts of Africa has “significant consequences” on disaster warnings for millions of people, WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said Tuesday during the presentation.
“By 2030, it is estimated that up to 118 million extremely poor people will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa, if adequate response measures are not put in place,”Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko
It is estimated that by 2030 up to 118 million extremely poor people in Africa will be vulnerable to droughts, floods and extreme heat if appropriate countermeasures are not implemented,”commented Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko, Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture at the African Union Commission.
An estimated 1.2 million people will have been displaced by storms and floods in 2020, almost two and a half times the number that were displaced in the same year by conflict.
“accelerating sea-level rise,”Petteri Taalas
Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said that Africa has seen another rise in temperatures in the past year that “accelerating sea-level rise,” the increase in sea levels, and extreme weather events such as floods, landslides, and droughts, all all in indicators of climate change.
