OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Wednesday
AFRICA may face more natural disasters if the world’s main economic powers do not ratify a key protocol on climate change as soon as possible, according to a top United Nations environmentalist.
Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), was speaking after scientists released a report this week warning that average global temperatures could rise 5.8% in the 21st century.
”It is a very dramatic situation,” he told a news conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where the UNEP is based. ”The evidence is absolutely clear that the speed of global warming is going faster and faster.”
”Africa’s share of the global population is 14% but it is responsible for only 3.2% of global CO2 emission. Africans face the most direct consequences with regard to extreme weather conditions, with regard to drought and storms.”
Last year floods battered Mozambique and prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa pushed millions to the brink of starvation.
Toepfer said developed countries, which were responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions, had a moral obligation urgently to tackle the scourge of global warming.
UN climate talks called to plan ways of coordinating cuts in greenhouse gas emissions ended acrimoniously in The Hague in November and major economic powers blamed each other for the collapse of the negotiations.
The Hague conference had sought agreement on implementing a pact reached in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, which called for developed nations to cut their emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide by an average five percent from 1990 levels by 2010.
Toepfer said the report, compiled by scientists for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, showed conclusively that global warming was linked not to natural fluctuations but to human activities in the form of greenhouse gas emissions.
”My strong appeal, especially to developed countries, is that they have to resume their meeting and start as soon as possible to come to a solution to ratify the legally binding Kyoto protocol against global warming,” he said. – Reuters