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G8 SUMMIT: Think Africa on Climate Change

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jun 20 2005 (IPS) - Africa and climate change will be the two priorities at the Group of Eight (G8) summit next month, host Britain says. But think of the two also as one, say scientists after a meeting on the impacts of climate change on the African continent.

“The two become one because the development of agriculture sits within a system affected by climate and by the political economy,” Tim Wheeler from the Royal Society in London told IPS.

“You cannot get one thing right and the other wrong and still hope to address the underlying problems,” said Wheeler, who organised a meeting of scientists at the Royal Society to look at climate change in Africa. The London-based Royal Society founded in 1660 is an independent academy promoting the natural and applied sciences.

“There was agreement among the scientists that Africa is most susceptible to climate change,” Wheeler said. “That may limit its development potential, because there are many areas of Africa where farming practices are vulnerable to the climate.”

The scientists have recommended the creation of a pool of African scientists to address ways of limiting the impact of changing temperatures and altered weather patterns on the development of Africa. But the scientists acknowledged also that Africa may not have the necessary pool of scientists in place as yet.

“Africa is slightly behind in this field compared to other continents, so there is a potential there for capacity building,” Wheeler said. “The important thing is to help Africa help itself.”

A priority could be finding ways to “develop climate information to improve farming practices,” Wheeler said. “Africa can build up its resilience to climate change through better information, early warning systems, and through development of better crop varieties to choose from.”

Leaders from the G8 countries (the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy) need to take decisions at the July 6-8 meet that will improve capacity building in Africa in the field of climate as affecting development, Wheeler said.

A report issued by the experts Monday points out that Africa is consistently predicted to be among the worst hit areas across a range of future climate change scenarios. It also indicates that new data suggests the impact on crop yields and quality may be more severe than previously thought.

“The threat of climate change to an already vulnerable Africa cannot be underestimated,” Prof. Brian Hoskins, a Fellow of the Royal Society and one of the organisers of the meeting, said in a statement. “The changes in weather patterns which we expect to see, such as more extreme temperatures and changes in rainfall, have potentially disastrous consequences for a continent which relies so heavily on rain-fed agriculture.”

Some of the knowledge and expertise needed to reduce the negative impacts of these changes already exists, he said.

“Recent experiments call into doubt the possibility that better crop growth due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will compensate for the negative impacts on crop yield of an overall rise in temperatures,” Hoskins said. “Tests on crops in the field rather than in the greenhouse suggest that the increases in yield from higher carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be less than half what was originally predicted.”

Advances in seasonal weather forecasting are increasingly leading to predictions that should be useful for agricultural decision-making, Hoskins said. “This can only happen if African scientists are given the resources to collect data and to evaluate forecasts for their regions.”

One benefit of this would be that “farmers can then take action before a crop fails rather than just trying to pick up the pieces afterwards,” he said. “With the right warning systems in place, and sufficient resources, they can decide to try growing different kinds of crops or save resources and not grow anything for a season. They can also capitalise on forecasts of good growing conditions by applying fertilizer only in these years.”

The report’s call for the need to build scientific capacity in Africa echoes the contents of a joint statement issued by the science academies of the G8 nations and the Network of African Science Academies last week.

The academies called for a clear commitment from the G8 leaders to build development of science, technology and innovation capacity into international assistance programme and ensure that these initiatives are African-led and sensitive to cultural diversity.