Category: Threats

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Is climate change an opportunity for Africa?

Kennedy Omenda is a freelance journalist who has written a very interesting article over at The African Executive. Africa’s Agriculture Can Adapt to Climate Change suggests that forecast changes to rainfall patterns, temperature and the like could actually offer Africa a chance for development. Omenda refers to farmers changing their crops and methods and people changing their diets, and benefits that will arise from increased trade and other structural improvements.

It is not a “bad” change after all, but a good opportunity for farmers to embrace new technologies and researchers to brainstorm on products that will suit the various climate patterns. Adequate infrastructure, access to markets and credit will enhance agricultural development and food security while building resilience to future climate change.

I am not absolutely persuaded, I have to admit. Maybe necessity will drive the changes needed, but, to take one example, while farmers in currently wet regions will need to grow crops that can grow with less water, what will farmers in currently dry regions, some of which are going to dryer, grow?

Fascinating aside: Africa “has about 1,150 world weather watch stations. That is one per 26,000 square kilometers—or eight times lower than the minimum density recommended by the World Meteorological Organization”. Maybe climate change will boost investment in weather forecasting that will be directed to farmers rather than pilots and soldiers.

On balance, I think the article is a sort of pro-business-as-usual, but I’d love to hear contrary views.

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Project Baseline

The work at UV Irvine summarized here on the genetic effects of climate change on different kinds of plants is interesting enough. But what particularly intrigued me was the reference to a Project Baseline, “a national effort to collect and preserve seeds from contemporary plant populations.” Unfortunately I was not able to find anything more about this on the internet. Anyway, sounds like they need something similar in Armenia.

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Farming Hoodia

Another example of a wild species being farmed: this article in the San Francisco Chronicle tells the story of Hoodia gordonii cultivation in southern Africa. The species is the source of a hunger suppressant which Unilever has been licensed to commercialize, with a royalty payment going to San tribesmen. Another Hoodia species may have potential as a salad vegetable. Prices are such that there is a thriving smuggling trade in wild-harvested product. Some Namibian farmers are trying to cultivate the plant – organically – but it is not easy.

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Ocean’s prairies dying

A press release from University of California at Davis says that seagrasses, which deliver considerable ecosystem services, are vanishing, but because they are generally out of sight they are also out of mind. Susan Williams, a UC Davis marine biologist, is one author of a report on the plight of seagrasses in the journal BioScience; unfortunately the journal is behind a subscription wall, so I cannot tell you more.

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Livestock at risk

Another report from FA0 says that 20 percent of the world’s livestock breeds are at risk. And the culprits are those we’ve come to know and love; intensification, globalization, modernization. So what’s new? They may be planning to do something about it, that’s what. The report is part of a process leading up to the first International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, to be hosted by the Government of Switzerland, in Interlaken in September 2007. Anyone out there want to keep an eye specifically on that topic?