‘Climate change’ the phrase of the century

Hi and welcome to my blog Water & Environmental Change in Africa, which will explore themes relating to climate change, the acceleration of the hydrological cycle, climate injustice, land-use change, agricultural practices, and adaptive strategies within the African continent. Before we begin, it’s relevant that I explain who I am, and my reason for writing this blog series. My name is Bianca, and I’m a Geography student. I think of myself as a physical geographer, mostly because science has always made sense to me, however, understanding environmental change requires both a physical and human geography perspective, one that incorporates the socio-economic, cultural and political as well as hydrology. For today’s blog I’ll be presenting a simplified introduction to climate change and then draw attention to its effects which are already drastically impacting parts of Africa.
 

Environmental Change – Beginner’s Guide

Undoubtedly everyone has heard of climate change, but do we all understand its implications beyond global warming? Put simply environmental change will consist of extreme weather events manifested as floods, droughts and tropical cyclones, hurricanes and heat waves happening more frequently and more intensely. This is caused by the acceleration of the water cycle due to rising temperatures and consequently increased evapotranspiration.  These effects will vary according to topography and climate; however, they are predicted to drastically impact tropical regions in particular. This is relevant when discussing the African continent, seeing as a high percentage of the continent’s climate is tropical; and is most affected by water and food scarcity; and safe water access issues. This is representative of the ‘climate injustice’ phenomenon, where countries least responsible for climate change suffer the most drastic consequences.

Climate map of Africa.

Environmental change - It’s happening NOW!

The vast majority of climate change discussions conclude with setting goals for the future, with nations pledging new more ambitious goals all the time and affording themselves extensions on the deadlines they have failed to meet. I would argue that this portrays climate change as something that will come to pass in the FUTURE and takes away from acknowledging the urgency of its effects that are happening NOW. For instance, what has been called East Africa’s most severe drought in 40 years has been happening in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia since 2020 and was even declared a ‘natural disaster’ by the Kenyan government in 2021. Despite a history of droughts in the east African region, this extreme drought event has been attributed to the La Niña phenomenon being affected by climate change. Within the region, La Niña induces droughts, however due to climate change its effects have been amplified causing the rainy season to fail for 3 consecutive years.  Another example of extreme weather cause by climate change is south-east Africa where tropical storms have become more intense and frequent due to higher ocean temperatures. Just this spring Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar were affected by three storms or cyclones (Tropical Storm Ana, Tropical Storm Dumako and Tropical Cyclone Gombe). These tropical storms collectively claimed the lives of almost 100 people, affected thousands and destroyed roughly 220,400ha of cropland in Mozambique alone, and severely damaged infrastructure.

 

                                Aftermath of Tropical Storm Ana, Tete region, Mozambique.

Concluding thoughts

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading this short introduction to environmental change and the brief examples of its effects in Africa. In the coming posts I’ll be discussing the links to water related issues such as water and food scarcity and access to safe water and adaptive strategies. See you next time!