Africa Aid to be Eaten by Climate Change - Scientist
Date: 24-Oct-05
Country: UK
Author: Jeremy Lovell
In an open letter to environment and energy ministers of the Group of Eight (G8), Lord May of Oxford, president of the Royal Society scientific think-tank, said the deal struck at the G8 summit in Gleneagles was flawed.
"As long as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, there is the very real prospect that the increase in aid agreed at Gleneagles will entirely be consumed by the mounting cost of dealing with the added burden of adverse effects of climate change in Africa," he wrote.
The problems include increased and more severe droughts and floods.
"In effect the Gleneagles communique gave hope to Africa with one hand ... but took that hope away with the other through its failure to address adequately the threat of climate change," he said.
He appealed for the ministers, who meet in London on Nov. 1 for the first post-Gleneagles review, to be decisive in the face of potential catastrophe.
"The mounting scientific evidence shows that the consequences of global climate change are the biggest single threat facing the world today," he said.
G8 leaders -- under the presidency of British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- agreed at their July summit in the Scottish golfing resort to spend $25 billion a year more on Africa where poverty kills a child every 10 seconds.
They also agreed to take a series of measures to tackle globl warming which scientists predict will put millions of lives at risk -- mainly on the poorest countries -- through increased incidence of floods and drought and rising sea levels.
However, while acknowledging -- very reluctantly in the case of the United States -- that human activities like burning fossil fuels were a major contributor to emissions of greenhouse gases, they failed to set any targets or deadlines for action.
Since then, the United States -- which rejected the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions -- has set about building an alternative grouping, and there are signs world leaders are contemplating nuclear power as a source of energy.
May said the time for inaction was long over -- noting the massive destruction wrought by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma -- the former alone estimated to have cost $200 billion in damages.
"In short, the scientific evidence now presents a more compelling case than ever before for tackling the threat from climate change by stopping the rise of greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere," he wrote, highlighting the potentially devastating impact on Africa -- the world's poorest continent.