Road to Copenhagen – Part I

By Mubarick Masawudu

 

On cold nights in Cape Town, South Africa, friends and neighbours can be found gathered at the house of a man called Happy. While Happy may well be the perfect host, his company is not only the attraction for those who have come together under his roof; the roof itself is a large part of the draw. Happy’s ceiling has recently been insulated, keeping his house much warmer than others in his neighbourhood. And the ceiling is not the only change on his-low income housing estate. Some houses have new solar water heaters. Others have had low-energy light bulbs fitted for the first time. These new developments are intended to reduce the green house gas emissions from Happy’s neighbourhood.

But these are not the initiative of individual homeowners, nor are they the result of extra money coming from a housing cooperation. No, the drive behind these changes comes from thousands of miles away. Funding for the low-emission projects in this Cape Town neighbourhood was agreed by politicians of the G8 meeting in Scotland in 2005, to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s richest countries.

In another part of South Africa, Green house gas emissions from the world’s richest countries have also had a direct impact on someone’s life. This time, however, the effect is far more destructive.

A woman called Barbra living in Nwadjahane in Mozambique has had little chance of entertaining her neighbours as Happy did.  Barbra lost the roof over her head when her house was lost in storms and flooding in the year 2000. She rebuilt the house but in 2004 it was badly hit again. Undaunted, she rebuilt it again and got to work planting crops. But the terrible weather affected her work as well as her home. A drought killed her seedlings, Barbra replanted, but the drought continued well into what should have been the rainy season. In response she planted a drought-resilient crop the following year. Unfortunately, the water situation continued to be disastrously unpredictable; this time, heavy rains brought flooding and destroyed the harvest.

This is a story by Melanie Jarman, the story of climate change – the story that shapes our world today. The story of climate change impacts on the availability of food and water systems, increasingly deepening wounds already created as result of extreme poverty. The UN has announced that, about 600,000 people were affected by floods that swept across West Africa from June 2009, till now. Some 159 deaths have also been recorded in this incident. Recent floods in Turkey have also left 32 people dead with 8 others missing.

According to SciDev.net, in an article, Get the Science Straight on Climate Change and Diseases by Sian Lewis, “there is clearly a link between insect-borne diseases and climate. Variables such as temperature and rainfall influence vector and parasite development and lifecycles, as well as feeding rates — and therefore disease transmission rates”. Though current scientific data leaves much to debate on, climate change may have a link with the increase in the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Watch out for subsequent editions of this article as we explore solutions and measures to tackle climate change.

Mubarick Masawudu (Ghana)
Africa Youth Summit, 2009