The Threat of Climate Changes

Abstract

The fourth Global Environment Outlook of the UN’s Environment for Development (2007) and the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented in 2008 found water, land, air, plants, animals, and fish are all in “inexorable decline” and food security in Africa is likely to be “severely compromised” by climate change. Over 95 percent of Africa’s agriculture depends on rainfall. Based on elaborate agroclimatic models, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) predicts that, while the 80,000 sq km of agricultural land in SSA currently deemed constrained will improve as a result of climate change, 600,000 sq km currently classified as moderately constrained will become severely limited. Malthus’s prediction, made 220 years ago, that “the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available” seems more threatening than ever (Box 2.1).