Al Gore rang the alarm bells with An Inconvenient Truth, Leonardo DiCaprio issued the warning with The 11th Hour and now the United Nations has heeded their calls to take the plight of our planet seriously.
Unesco has declared 2008 the International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE), an initiative that was launched in February at a glittering event in the French capital of Paris. The launch in Africa takes place in Arusha, Tanzania, on May 22 and 23.
Actually, it’s not exactly a “year”, more of a time period stretching from January last year to the end of December 2009, but irrespective of this IYPE aims to capture the world’s imagination with the wealth of knowledge we possess about our home and to see that knowledge put to good use by making our planet a safer, healthier and wealthier place.
In honour of this, South Africa’s scientific community has banded together to commemorate IYPE at this year’s national science festival, SciFest Africa, which takes place in Grahamstown from April 16 to 22. Some of the world’s top Earth scientists will be in attendance delivering lectures on ways we can improve our chances of arresting global warming and climate change.
The UN sees IYPE, a joint initiative with the International Union for Geological Sciences, as a contribution to its sustainable development targets as it promotes wise use of the Earth’s materials and encourages better planning and management to reduce risks for the plant’s inhabitants.
IYPE is supported by all 191 UN member countries, with national committees established in more than 70 countries and regions across the world.
The main activities of IYPE will be science and outreach programmes. The science programme consists of 10 themes: health, climate, groundwater, ocean, soils, deep Earth, megacities, hazards, resources and life. Scientists from across the globe have been asked for their input, helping to answer questions within each theme.
Of these themes the issue of climate and global warming is the hot potato. And although the planet’s top scientists are working on this issue, there is still a long way to go when it comes to governments.
Political will to institute changes that will help to arrest the effects of climate change remains weak, with governments largely leaving the problem to the private sector and academia.
In 1992 most countries joined the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to fight global warming and to adapt to temperature increases. This resulted in the Kyoto Protocol — the legal instrument agreed to by the countries on December 11 1997 at the UNFCCC’s conference in Kyoto, Japan. It came into force on February 16 2005, but as yet only 175 countries have ratified it, 137 of these being developing countries such as Brazil, China and India, all of which have no obligation beyond monitoring and reporting carbon emissions.
The past year has seen enormous debate over global warming, most of it in public spheres, fuelled by An Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour — both hard-hitting, mass-media documentaries that have reached the sitting rooms and social consciences of a global population. This has taken global warming beyond the realms of a soft green issue pondered over by tree-hugging liberals to that of International Public Enemy Number One.
And yet, in spite of this, there are those who still believe that global warming is a myth. This despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary set out in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which puts the reality of human-induced global warming beyond any doubt.
The main challenge of IYPE, then, is not to preach to the converted, or even to the world’s science fraternity, but to challenge the mindset of our leaders and the grip of the multinationals for which profit, and not planet, is the bottom line.
All about climate change
The South African Weather Service (Saws) is clued up about what climate change is all about and how it affects us. Here is what Saws says about global warming:
What is climate change?
It is the natural cycle through which the Earth and its atmosphere are going to accommodate the change in the amount of energy received from the sun. The climate goes through warm and cold periods, taking hundreds of years to complete one cycle. Changes in temperature also influence the rainfall, but the biosphere is able to adapt to a changing climate if these changes take place over centuries. Unfortunately, human intervention is causing the climate to change too fast. Climate models predict that the average air temperature over South Africa will increase by 2°C over the next century. Plants and animals may not be able to adapt as quickly to this “rapid” climate change as humans can and therefore the ecosystem is in danger.
What causes climate change?
The global climate system is driven by energy from the sun. Several gases in the atmosphere act to trap the energy from the sun, thus warming the Earth. These are called greenhouse gases and the process is the greenhouse effect. Without this there would be no life on Earth. Human activities over the past 200 years, particularly the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) and the clearing of forests, have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is likely to lead to more solar radiation being trapped, which in turn will lead to the Earth’s surface warming up — called the enhanced greenhouse effect.
How does a changing climate influence South Africa?
Higher temperatures will influence the rainfall, but it is still uncertain how the annual rainfall will change. It could increase in some parts of the country and decrease in other parts.
Water resources: South Africa’s industrial, domestic and agricultural users are dependent on a reliable supply of water. A reduction in rainfall amount or variability, or an increase in evaporation (because of higher temperatures) would further strain the already limited amount of water resources. An increase in rainfall or a reduction in plant water use (because of a higher atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide) would ease the problem slightly.
Human and animal health: There are several important insect-borne diseases of humans and livestock that are sensitive to the climate. A small increase in temperature would allow, for instance, malaria to spread into areas that are currently malaria free and would increase its severity in areas where it already occurs.
Fisheries: Changes in the oceans have important implications for South Africa. In the recent past, variation in ocean currents caused major changes in several important fish resources. Future variations, which may be linked to climate change, could have a similar effect.
Biodiversity: Plants, in particular, have trouble keeping up with rapid climate change. Small, isolated populations could go extinct as a result. South Africa has about 10% of all the plant species in the world, of which about half occur nowhere else on Earth. Warming and a change in the seasonal rainfall of the Cape floral kingdom are issues of concern to conservationists.
For more information visit www.weathersa.co.za