African scholars, researchers and academics are ready to provide innovative solutions to mitigate the climate emergency.
According to the provisional “State of the Global Climate Report for 2022“, the past eight years are on track to be the warmest on record, fuelled by ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations and accumulated heat. The global average temperature in 2022 is estimated to be about 1.15 [1.02 to 1.28] °C above the 1850 to 1900 average.
The report also details the effects of both droughts and excessive rains. The global climate outlook is rather gloomy, and even more urgent for the African continent. Southern Africa was battered by a series of cyclones over two months at the start of the year, hitting Madagascar hardest with torrential rain and devastating floods. In the other extreme, Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are facing crop failure and food insecurity, because of another season of below-average rains.
The report shows that concentrations of the main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – once again reached record levels in 2021. The annual increase in methane concentration was the highest on record. Data from key monitoring stations show atmospheric levels of the three gases continue to increase in 2022.
The call for urgent climate action will be amplified at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27) in Egypt. The Paris Agreement provided a legally binding framework for all nations to play a role in combating climate change and adapt to its effects. Thus COP 27 is expected to prompt actions on emergency reduction of greenhouse gas, strengthening resilience and adapting to unavoidable impact of climate change.
African scientists lead the charge in mitigating climate change
Amid growing changing weather patterns, African scientists are breaking new ground in trying to find solutions to the environmental, epidemiological and socio-economic complications associated with climate change. African scholars, researchers and academics are ready to provide scientific evidence of the impact and damage of climate change. They are also equally ready to present innovative solutions to mitigate the crisis.
Vito Baraka, from the Tanzanian National Institute for Medical Research, is part of a cohort of scientists who are probing the long term effects of climate change on disease control on the continent. It is predicted that in the long term, the climate crisis will also become a health crisis for Africa. Baraka and others are warning that the continent will soon have to deal with more waterborne, and mosquito induced infections due to rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.
Baraka and his colleagues are calling for more investment in epidemic preparedness planning to prevent disease outbreaks in parts of the continent where infectious diseases such as malaria are still a major problem.
“For Africa to be able to cope, there has to be a support mechanism especially from developed countries to make sure they consider a package that will help the continent to cope in terms of mitigating and adapting to the impact of climate change”, notes Baraka.
While these scientists believe that developing countries must do more to reduce carbon emissions, their main focus is on finding African solutions to global problems that affect the continent adversely. Atube Francis from Gulu University in Uganda is part of a team that has come up with a new clean energy solution in the east African nation that is heavily reliant on charcoal.
“We have come up with an innovation in Northern Uganda which we call green energy. It is basically agricultural residues which have been charred and mixed, which can be used for charcoal”, says Francis. This solution provides households with an alternative energy source that is not too harmful on the environment.
Not far from Uganda, in neighbouring Kenya, the University of Nairobi, Rawlynce Bett has discovered more innovative interventions in waste management and recycling, using nature.
“We are breeding insects for waste recycling. The message for COP27 leaders is that we need action. Our leaders in Kenya, we need to hold responsible for the promises they have given us, especially when they say they are planning to plant 15 billion trees in the next 10 years to arrest climate change”, says Bett.
In Ghana, Dzigbodi Doke and his team from the University of Development Studies in Tamale, are studying the compose of trees found in the Savannah of the West African nation. She and her team are using scientific innovations to find solutions to climate change, while empowering local women through tree planting.
“For trees and women, are we are looking at the products that they are already producing, for example. So if they can get more income from their produce, they are likely to nurture and preserve the trees,” notes Doke.
This article is courtesy of MInsight Content Creation