CLIMATE CHANGE

[Lisbeth]

Sub-Saharan Africa and the awareness of a new colonialism more invasive than the past


Photo Shutterstock

9 March 2023

The opinion of Pedro Ranca Da Costa, former collaborator of the Swiss Integration Office of foreigners

Beyond verbal oceans, rhetorical proclamations, commitments made and never kept, Sub-Saharan Africa closes this 2022 with a problematic balance sheet on multiple fronts.

The Ebola virus has spectrally re-emerged in Uganda, where there are 22 deaths in the month of December alone, adding to the 55 victims recorded in the previous 11 months. The Covid epidemic has dealt a further blow to already fragile health care structures, bringing many nations to their knees and reducing large sections of the population to poverty. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has resulted in the importation of grain, causing 40 million people to go hungry and soar the prices of petrol and fertilizers. Widespread poverty exacerbated by the desertification of a continent that until the seventies was almost self-sufficient in terms of food, and today witnesses helplessly a widespread drought at the origin of famine.

Sub-Saharan African nations in various international meetings have reiterated their opposition to the draconian measures proposed by the West to stop environmental degradation, explaining that Sub-Saharan Africa is the continent that pollutes the least and which is now suffering the consequences of foolish choices by others . An ecological transition as suggested by the most polluting countries would be a further penalty.

2022 ends with the civil conflict between Ethiopia and Tigray that has been going on for two years and has already claimed 500 thousand victims and created millions of refugees and displaced persons. The peace treaty signed in South Africa remains a framework because the framework must be filled with content. The 12,000 soldiers sent on a peace mission by the EAC (East African Community) should oversee the difficult peace under construction.

Political instability is an all too common denominator for Mali, Guinea, Sudan, Chad, Burkina Faso, countries where coups d'état have decided the fate of citizens since 2020. Instead, the coups in Sao Tome, Principe and Gambia failed. The road to stability in Sudan remains impervious. In South Africa, since Mandela's departure, no president has proved capable of leading the country.

To stop the Chinese invasion (sub-Saharan Africa's main economic partner with investments of 254 billion dollars in 2021 compared to 64 billion from the USA), Washington favored the entry of the African Union into the UN security council and as a permanent member of the G20. And there is a commitment to invest 55 billion dollars over 3 years to develop the economy, health and safety, i.e. the military and arms sector. The "race to do good" for Africa has begun. The actors are all interested in returning the protagonists, as in the years of the cold war. The sub-Saharan continent remains strategic but there is also the awareness of a new colonialism that is more dangerous and invasive than the past one.

[Lisbeth]

Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report - The AR6 Synthesis Report

Jargon and scientific language make reading these full reports difficult, so we’ve summarised the key findings because understanding what it says is vital if we are to change our trajectory.

Seven Key findings:

• The Earth's climate is unequivocally warming, and human activity is the primary cause of this warming. The evidence for this is stronger than ever before.

• The world is currently on track to exceed the 1.5°C and 2°C temperature targets set in the Paris Agreement.

• It is still possible to limit global warming to 1.5°C, but this will require rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of society. That means transforming energy systems, land use, transportation, buildings, and industrial processes.

• The impacts of climate change are widespread and severe, affecting ecosystems, human health, and economic development. These impacts are expected to worsen over time, with the most vulnerable populations being the hardest hit. Climate change is exacerbating existing inequalities and creating new ones.

• Some climate change impacts, such as sea-level rise and the loss of Arctic sea ice, are irreversible for centuries or millennia, and others, such as ocean acidification, will continue for tens of thousands of years.

• The world must cut greenhouse gas emissions to 60% below 2019 levels by 2035. Options that must be implemented quickly and at scale to achieve the necessary emissions include renewable energy, energy efficiency, and carbon capture and storage.

• If climate goals are to be achieved, both adaptation and mitigation financing would need to increase many-fold.

What needs to happen in a single quote:

“This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every time frame. In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.” - UN Secretary General António Guterres

If you study one thing:



Created by The University of Reading

Three Positive takeaways:

• Increased ambition in global climate action: The report indicates that many countries have strengthened their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in recent years, which could potentially limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.

• Advancements in renewable energy technology: The report highlights the significant progress made in renewable energy technology, with solar and wind power becoming increasingly cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

• Greater public awareness and concern: The report notes that public awareness and concern about climate change have increased in recent years, with more people taking action to reduce their carbon footprint and support climate-friendly policies.

[Lisbeth]

THE GATHERING, EARTH EDITION

Time is not on our side – we must join forces, now

Many years from now, our political fights will be a thing of a forgotten past. Our vanities. Our greed. Our excessive consumption. Our recklessness with other life we share the world with. Our solid myths that we were no fools for taking over an entire planet in less than a few hundred years while slaughtering everything in our path. Our even more solid myths that we are destined for greatness no matter what, and responsible for none of the darkness.

All of these, with the rest of humanity, will one day belong to times long buried in the great geological dig in the sky. It is on all of us to help make this inevitable moment of ultimate entropy happen in a future that is many thousands of years ahead of us.

But as I write this, it feels as though that moment of reckoning may come much, much earlier. Just this week, sobering headlines warned us that the real stuff is going to get even more real: we are likely to breach 1.5C climate threshold by 2027. Just four years from now, we might reach the point we were hoping to keep off until 2050. The tipping points that these developments bring to us will not be pretty.

Additionally, it is indeed an expression of our ultimate vanity to think that our efforts to reverse the effects of the climate crisis are about saving the planet Earth.

This planet has lived happily through many cataclysmic events so far – like five seminal extinctions (for the geeks among us, they are Ordovician-Silurian, Late Devonian, Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic and finally, the Cretaceous-Paleogene - aka dinosaurs’ end). There were also countless smaller events that were also devastating to life, like Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PET) that saw the average temperature grow between 5 and 8 degrees Celsius over a relatively short period of 200,000 years, some 56-million years ago.

There were Snowball Earth events, when the entire surface froze, twice, for about 10-million years each, between 710- and 640-million years ago.

There were gigantic floods that ripped the continental surface into shreds, almost as bad as the moving glaciers have.

The Earth was bombarded by asteroids (was even hit by a small planet that almost shattered it and caused the creation of the Moon), and showered by the ash from supervolcanoes which obscured the sun for many years at the time. The Earth was also doused by sulphur dioxide at times, and heated when carbon was going nuts. It got near-fully iced when the oxygen went wild and eerily quiet for some years after the dinosaurs died off.

Humanity got lucky to have lived through a rare cycle of near-perfect, quiet climate and relatively low volcanic activity.

And yet, planet Earth is perfectly fine with all of these periods of catastrophes and quiet. It does not complain. It just is.

But humanity is not fine with its own possible extinction. We are not fighting to save Earth, though it would be most wonderful to see its life flourish in its fullness once again around us. We are fighting to save us, humans, on Planet Earth.

A common misconception about humanity’s demise in the climate crisis is that it will play out akin to a scene from Armageddon. We are not going to receive a six weeks advance notification to tell us that the planet is going to explode. It will look very much like how it already looks: flash flooding, wildfires, bleaching coral, failing crops, rising sea levels and with that a social unrest that will make the riots of July 2021 look like a skirmish.

We only need to reflect on our most recent history as a nation to understand how humans will react when their homes are washed away or burnt down, when food scarcity forces prices to become a luxury and not a right, and when the water simply runs out.

Humans will fight to survive. It is quite literally built into our brains to do so. Anarchy will be the only constant. Migration to parts of the country not yet resembling ground zero will occur until they do. Cities all around the world will be submerged under water, and the quality of life we are so used to will become but a lost dream.

To fight that ultimate fight, we need to be smart, resourceful and indefatigable. We also need to be compassionate, strategic and measured while still being brave and determined. We need to work together, as communities, as countries and economies. We need to work as Team Humanity to gain a shot at having a chance of attempting this near-impossible feat of engineering our very future, this time for the good of every single one of us – a real First for our modern, selfish times.

The solutions do exist.

Daily Maverick’s contribution to this fight is Our Burning Planet, a 10-person strong team that devotes its full attention to these topics:

• Climate crisis

• Global heating

• Ecosystem damage and biodiversity loss

• Pollution, in all its forms

• Food insecurity

• Water insecurity,

• Energy transition and renewables

• Corruption

We’ve been at it for four years now and, for the first time, we are ready for our first big conference:



It will be a remarkable collection of talent - the people who really have something to say and know what they’re talking about.

Speakers include: Andre de Ruyter, Tendai Biti, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, Katrina vanden Heuwel, Kate Handley, Bill Mckibben, Kumi Naidoo… we’ve got experts in agriculture, AI, economics and energy – people have dedicated their lives to understanding the problem and are ready to share their solutions.

In order to fight for our own survival, we need to do it together. If we want to help ourselves, it is the very same ourselves who must do the work. We cannot farm this out. We need to learn, understand, and get into action. This is the one modern fight we can’t outsource. This is about our survival, and it must be our work that goes into this.

Are you ready to fight for our common humanity? We all need to start somewhere. How about next Friday? DM

Register for virtual event

[Lisbeth]

Chronicle of the death of a glacier

Climate change is affecting the health of the Alps - The situation at the Gries, as the glaciologist Matthias Huss testifies, is disturbing

What happened to the Gries Glacier? Good question. Matthias Huss, glaciologist and researcher at ETH Zurich and the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, is very familiar with the language of ice. Every September, when glaciers have traditionally been at their lowest, he and his colleagues measure the reduction in the mass of this and other Swiss glaciers. What Gries did, as he explained in a report published by Watson, is peculiar. And the reason is quickly said: «In recent years it has lost more and more in terms of medium thickness». Climate change, needless to say.

The scenery, indeed, is quite bleak. Huss: Almost the entire glacier is greyish. Only at the top there is a small area of white snow». And again: «In order for the glacier to be in balance, in this period of the year it should be covered by snow falling in winter up to the escarpment. But in the last two years, in July, the snow had already disappeared to the top. So the heat could attack the ice throughout the summer».
According to Huss, the last two years have been very bad for glaciers. Little snow in winter and too hot summers. This year, however, it snowed two or three times in the summer, slowing the melting a bit».

2022, in this sense, was a record year: Swiss glaciers lost 6% of their volume. From a statistical point of view, it was an extraordinarily anomalous year. In all likelihood, 2023 should have been a more normal year. In fact, the opposite happened».

Huss speculates that 2023 will likely be the second or third worst year ever for glaciers. But he will know for sure only at the end of September, when the measurements are completed. To Watson’s reporters, during the excursion, Huss shows how far the Gries stretched in 2008. Meanwhile, he retreated 500 meters. Climate change, at high altitudes, is neither an abstract concept nor a political discourse to debate. It is something real, concrete, tangible. While it is true that the glacial and interglacial periods partly explain similar retreats, it is equally true that man-made climate change must be added to the equation. «Thousands of studies confirm this» says Huss. «That’s why glaciers today move much faster than in the past».

The figures for the studies speak for themselves. On the Gries, Huss holds a special rod near the first measuring station. In September 2022, at the end, there was still ice. The height of the rod? 6 meters and 50. The retreat and melting of the glacier, in short, are violent, if not violent. The average retreat last year was about four meters. Double the previous record. Even higher, in the other measuring stations, the situation is dramatic. To the point that Huss states: «It is incredible, a madness, I would never have believed it possible».

And elsewhere, says Huss, the situation is even worse: on the Sankt Annafirn glacier, near Andermatt, there is so little ice that «it is no longer worth measuring it». At the Gries, it seems to understand, the glacier will last, even with some difficulties, for a while longer. But he will not live very long. Very soon the tongue will separate from the top of the glacier. It will become dead ice, it will no longer be fed». The upper part, however, should last until 2060 or 2070. The opportunity to prevent some of the consequences of climate change is in our hands. For the Gries Glacier it is certainly too late. All we can do here is document its decline. But we can still save the biggest glaciers».

[Lisbeth]

Western Cape puts climate on cabinet agenda after months of environmental disasters


A boy walks through knee-deep pools of water in the Nomakanjani informal settlement in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, on 28 June 2023. The area reportedly flooded after it rained for three consecutive days. | (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Lulama Zenzile) | Firefighters battle a raging fire in Hangklip in the Western Cape on 30 January 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach) | Waves batter the Brass Bell in Kalk Bay, Cape Town, on 17 September 2023. (Photo: Brenton Geach)

By Kristin Engel | 13 Mar 2024

After a year in which the province experienced floods, a storm surge and devastating wildfires, climate change will be added as a permanent item to the Western Cape administration’s agenda. This should ensure there are sufficient resources to respond to climate-related threats.
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Climate change has been added as a permanent item on the Western Cape government’s agenda in what is seen as a win for streamlining climate governance. The move was adopted on 6 March and comes after the province was battered by months of climate-related disasters.

Although the Western Cape is expected to become drier, hotter and have more severe storms and droughts, the province has already faced several climate-related issues in the past year.

Anton Bredell, MEC for Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, with Ivan Meyer, MEC for Agriculture, announced that climate change would be added as a permanent item on the provincial cabinet agenda as they signed a climate change pledge of the Western Cape government.

The move was hailed during the inaugural Western Cape Climate Change Indaba in Cape Town on 9 March.

During the event, officials sought to ensure that a “whole-of-society” approach was established to tackle climate change in the province, instead of simply leaving it up to the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning (DEA & DP) and the Department of Agriculture.

Bredell told Daily Maverick that the addition to the cabinet agenda was approved on 6 March, but has been in the works for some time.


Flooded homes on 25 September 2023 in Sandvlei, Cape Town. Disaster management officials worked through the night dealing with flooded roads, damaged homes, uprooted trees and power outages. (Photo: Benton Geach / Gallo Images)

He said things didn’t simply appear on the cabinet agenda, but that they had worked to put climate change into the middle of their governance working streams.

“This is because climate change is one of the topics cutting into all departments, and for too long it seemed like it was the [sole] responsibility of the DEA and DP and the Department of Agriculture.

“But it’s cross-cutting… it is how you design a building, where you’re going to plan your next housing development, the importance of managing our estuaries and so on…

“It was very important to land it in the cabinet, and we’ve done that,” he said.

Other officials within the Western Cape government said there has been an increase in the frequency and severity of climate extremes, particularly heat waves and floods caused by erratic rainfall.

DEA & DP head Gerhard Gerber said, “The devastating impacts of these events are not only evident in our physical environment but also profoundly affect our communities, economies and the very fabric of our society.

“Unprecedented floods such as those that occurred in June and September last year continue to erode the numerous developmental gains that the Western Cape has achieved.”

Although the Western Cape government plays a role in all sectors, Gerber said its constitutional mandate limits decision-making and implementation ability, particularly in terms of resource choices such as the energy mix and management of water resources.

Adding climate change as an item on the cabinet agenda was expected to assist in ensuring sufficient money and resources were allocated to respond to increasing climate-related threats across the province.

Increase in severity of climate extremes

The Western Cape is the most disaster-prone province in South Africa, according to Bredell, and is particularly vulnerable to climate change and the effects of climate-related hazards because of its coastal location, with rising sea temperatures expected to influence regional weather patterns.

“The Western Cape is characterised by a highly variable weather and climate regime. This means that we experience all manner of extreme weather and climatic events including flooding, drought and extreme temperature,” Bredell said.

At least R3.5-billion worth of infrastructure was destroyed in two major flooding events during June and September last year.


Motorists drive through a flooded Textile Street after heavy rain on 14 June 2023 in Paarl, Western Cape. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger/Jaco Marais)

In June 2023, the beginning of the province’s rainy season, the intense and prolonged rainfall resulted in disastrous flooding that left people homeless, infrastructure washed away, uprooted trees, damage to farmlands and agriculture and deaths by drowning.

Daily Maverick previously reported that two people died and many were displaced due to excessive rainfall in the Western Cape between 14 and 19 June 2023.

Following successive cold fronts and exceptionally rainy weather that battered parts of the Western Cape over June, scientists told Daily Maverick that the total rainfall by 21 June last year was the highest experienced in the region since 1976.

Further flood damage was experienced in September 2023 when a storm over the Heritage Day weekend caused flooding and mudslides, affecting homes, blocking off whole communities, destroying bridges and altering river courses.

That month, a national disaster was declared for the Western and Eastern Cape to unlock funding and repair the damage left in the wake of the floods.

In addition, the province also experienced a storm surge along the coastline which wreaked havoc between 16 and 17 September 2023. This resulted in flooding of low-lying areas, people being swept off beaches, coastal inundation, estuary flooding, damage to infrastructure and disruption to coastal activities.

Daily Maverick previously reported that in Wilderness, Western Cape, a 93-year-old woman died after being swept off her feet by a wave while standing in a parking lot.

Then there’s the intense wildfire season in the Western Cape which began in December and is expected to come to an end in April.


Helicopters drop water on a fire near Millers Point, Simon’s Town, on 20 December 2023. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)

A Daily Maverick report revealed the staggering scale of Western Cape wildfires during the season, with more than 6,000 fires destroying around 100,000 hectares of land. Entire communities were evacuated during December 2023 and January 2024.

The wildfires have pushed firefighters and firefighting resources to their limits with fire after fire endangering homes, animals, people and the environment.

Bredell told Daily Maverick, “There used to be floods every 10 years but now every year there are a couple of floods and fires. We had a very bad winter season with the June floods… June and September were very difficult.”

Bredell said that on the Monday morning following the Heritage Day weekend storm, 154 roads were closed, the Overstrand was without water because infrastructure had been washed away, and 82,000 people were left without electricity.

By the end of that week, 68 roads were still closed and 1,000 people were without electricity. The water supply, however, had been restored to Overstrand.

Bredell said many lessons were learnt that week.

“We need to think differently about redesign. There are many areas that we will need to rethink. Not just rebuild them, but rebuild with climate change at the back of our minds. Otherwise, we’re going to reinvest every year there’s a flood or another climate threat,” he said.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Western Cape hospitality and tourism industry still counting the ‘massive’ cost of mudslides and flooding

When the cabinet discusses budgets, Bredell said that everybody needed to understand that sufficient funds had to be made available for climate change in the future.

“Otherwise, we are in trouble.”

Agriculture MEC Ivan Meyer added that South Africa’s agricultural sector was also facing devastating impacts of climate change, with farmworkers’ lives being lost due to extreme weather patterns.

“I see what is happening with climate change around the world and in South Africa. I was deeply touched when I saw on the news that six farm workers near Kakamas in the Northern Cape had died as a result of the extreme heat [in January 2023],” he said.

Meyer said all these instances spurred them to approach the premier and request that climate change be added as a permanent item on the provincial cabinet agenda.

Policy and legal context

Karen Shippey, chief director of environmental sustainability in the DEA & DP, said the Western Cape government’s climate change journey began in the 2000s when it had one of the first climate change strategies in South Africa as a regional government.

That was the Climate Change Response Strategy in 2008. The government completed a second update and revision in 2023, presenting a collective plan for how to address the long-term impacts of climate change and to reduce the Western Cape’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“That strategy was beautifully written. It says all the right things, but we struggled to implement them. One of the reasons we struggled is because the government is only part of the answer, and at the time, there wasn’t enough pressure and urgency around climate change.

“Therefore, we’ve gone through the mechanisms of trying to understand what it is we must do. What is it other sectors must do? Which sectors are going to be impacted? How will the Western Cape look in 2030, 2040, and beyond? It doesn’t look good,” she said.

When average temperatures increase at the rate they are now, Shippey said the province could start to see the kind of heat waves experienced in the Northern Cape – the kind that kills agricultural workers and leads to schools developing a heat protocol for children.

“These are the kinds of things that we are going to have to deal with now,” she said.

Prof Guy Midgley, head of Stellenbosch University’s School for Climate Studies, told Daily Maverick that an integrated approach was needed to address climate change issues.

“It’s an incredibly useful move to include climate change as a permanent issue because of its role in amplifying risks across all sectors. If you don’t account for climate change and continuously return to it, and it falls off the agenda, you lose that.

“The ability to integrate climate change [into the cabinet agenda] also helps you to integrate across sectors and to make sure that investments make sense and the right balance is made,” Midgley said. DM