July - September 2020
CONTENT
Chair's Foreword
How Should Africa Respond to Climate Change?
Earth Science Events
References and selected reading
Chair's Foreword*
As the theme for the First Conference of the Society of African Earth Scientists proposed in 2021-22 ( if travel restrictions due to the global pandemic allow), it has been suggested that the Society consider the role of the Earth and Geo-sciences in responding to climate change and the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The title of the main article therefore addresses the question of how Africa is to respond to climate change, as this will frame the exact role that needs to be played by the earth sciences in Africa. This continues a discussion already started in previous issues.
A recent news article suggests that the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda [1] offers a possible blueprint for shared global prosperity. This will result from investment in tackling climate change and specifically addressing the 17 sustainable development goals [2]. These measures will address the effects of climate change which will include i) the rising sea levels around the globe as well as ii) the devastating prospect of Earth losing up to one million of its species under threat of extinction. Just as IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has had a steering role in raising awareness and understanding of the challenge of climate change; the IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) has helped, likewise, raise awareness of the existential threat to life on our planet [3].
The Nigerian economist, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala [4], has put light on the potential economic benefits that could ensue if Africa embarks on projects targeted at ameliorating climate change. Globally, she notes the estimated $26 trillion in benefits that could ensue between now and 2030. Furthermore, the investment in climate change could generate 65 million jobs across the globe by 2030; as well as save 700,000 lives that might have been lost to air pollution.
How many of these jobs created by the sustainable development drive will be in Africa? Because it has a vast unemployed youth population - with up to 75% of the people in any African country being under the age of 30 - Africa's employment needs will be helped but possibly not fully met by the job creation in tackling climate change. However, it still represents an opportunity to address the issue, which may in turn lead to other opportunities.
Thus instead of being seen as a potential threat to social stability the large unemployed, yet talented, youth population should be Africa's greatest asset in the struggle for sustainable development. The youthfulness of Africa's population also makes it more resilient in health terms. Recent data from the BBC [5] has shown that Africa as a continent has seen a much lower prevalence of death and infection due to the COVID 19 virus than any other continent. Youth, among other factors, such as having
predominantly rural populations, limited contact with international travellers, and the greater level of outdoor life, has been cited as the explanation for the low rate of COVID deaths in Africa to date, compared to other continents [6].
Okonjo-Iweala's allusion to an African sustainable development drive is in line with what appears to be the first signs of an emerging paradigm shift in the economics of our planet. Governments around the world are realising that human economics must be more aligned to the Earth if our planet is to survive. Politicians are coining new phrases such as "green new deal"; which in various industrialised nations is being entertained as an innovative redesign of the economy around sustainable technologies and practices that will ameliorate global warming and loss of biodiversity and also help redress economic injustice and inequality.
Okonjo-Iweala is right to suggest that this kind of transformation and the economic benefits it will bring in jobs and investment in new infrastructure, can also be taken advantage of in Africa. To an extent this is already taking place with the onset of growth in renewable energy; particularly where this is off-grid in rural settings. Furthermore, despite the fact that Africa contributes the least to global carbon emissions, its likelihood is high of suffering disproportionately from climate change. In recent times we have seen the evidence of climate change in the devastating cyclones of 2018, that affected 3 million people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. We have seen increasing rainfall, flooding and landslides across the continent.
Hither to, environmental summits such as the Paris conference of 2015 have presented a platform where the industrialised nations can make much ado about working towards addressing climate change with cosmetic measures that have no direct influence on the problem. We noted in a published 2012 SAES paper [7] how the industrialised nations of the north, through the protocol of the 1997 Kyoto summit, created the terminology of "carbon trading" which has largely served as a mechanism of avoidance of direct climate action by the industrial countries; whilst also giving polluters a tool that would enable them to continue polluting the planet - provided they could demonstrate they had planted a few trees here or there to "offset" their carbon emissions. This kind of tinkering around the problem of carbon emissions has served to deliver a weak international response to the climate crisis thus far.
We must admit eventually [if we are to be ruthlessly objective and scientific] that solutions to our climate change and biodiversity crises cannot be forthcoming without a reassessment of the role of capitalism [8]; which as a system is by its very nature, unsustainable. At root, this is the problem preventing direct climate action by the industrialised nations. The philosophy of ever-increasing profit and growth cannot coexist with environmental sustainability, which seeks equilibrium and balance. This will mean an inevitable paradigm shift in our view of economics and what constitutes economic prosperity in the future.
Earth Science Events
November 5-6, 2020
International Conference on Earth Sciences and Climate Change
VISION: Various aspects of earth sciences and climate change including, biodiversity, bio-degradation, conservation, deforestation, impact on human health health among many other issues.
VENUE: Marrakesh, Morocco.
References and selected reading
1] Transforming Our World: 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, United
Nations, 2015. https//sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld.
2] Hamid, Z.A., Sustainable Development is founded on Science, New Straits Times, September, 28, 2020.
3] Ibid.
4] Okonjo-Iweala, N., Africa Can Play a Leading Role in the Fight Against Climate Change, Foresight Africa 2020 report, Brookings.
5] British Broadcasting Corporation, ECDC and National Public Health Agencies Data, 1 September, 2020.
6] York, G., Africa's Low COVID-19 Death Rate Has Multiple Causes Says WHO, The Globe and Mail, 24 September, 2020.
7] Society of African Earth Scientists, Earth Water and Justice: A Note by the SAES on the environmental effects of land grabbing, October 2012. https://saescientists.blogspot.com/2012/10/
8] Patterson, R., A Great Dilemma Generates Another Great Transformation: Incompatibility of Capitalism and Sustainable Environment, Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 9(1-2),74-83, 2010.
*Board of the Society of African Earth Scientists: Dr Enas Ahmed (Egypt), Osmin Callis (Secretary - Guyana/Nigeria), Mathada Humphrey (South Africa), Ndivhuwo Cecilia Mukosi (South Africa), Damola Nadi (Nigeria), Dr Chukwunyere Kamalu (Chair - Nigeria).
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