UN to Intensify Africa Climate Change Monitoring
Date: 20-Dec-06
Country: SWITZERLAND
The Global Climate Observing System, a partnership of UN agencies including the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said more funds were needed to prepare the vast continent for weather extremes linked to "human-induced climate change".
"There are big holes in climate observing networks in Africa," William Westermeyer of the Global Climate Observing System told a news briefing.
To help reverse the trend, he said United Nations agencies and regional groups such as the African Union had agreed to intensify monitoring of global warming trends in Africa in a new initiative called ClimDev Africa.
Britain has pledged up to US$20 million in start-up funds for ClimDev Africa, which will seek to improve climate observation and risk management in eight African countries, and then seek to expand to about half of the continent, Westermeyer said.
The initiative, whose other partners are the International Council for Science and UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, would require about US$200 million over 10 years.
Most scientists now agree that world average temperatures may rise by between two and six degrees Celsius this century due to emissions of so-called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 cited evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years was "attributable to human activities".
