African Climes

Water is essential for life. To start with, every person on the planet (about 8 billion of us) need drinking water to survive. Climate change, population growth and economic development are increasingly putting pressure on freshwater supply from which drinking water is obtained. Supplies are finite and climate change is changing the availability, access and quality of drinking water. Normally, a large portion of human society relies on rainfall which recharges lakes and rivers (surface water) and aquifers (groundwater), as well as glaciers and snow which provide water in hot months. Climate change has altered the entire water cycle. Higher temperatures mean more water is removed from the earth’s surface through evapotranspiration. A warmer atmosphere absorbs more water vapour while more moisture in the air increases its ability to hold heat and on and on it goes. When this vapour cools it distills as heavy and sudden rain. Lack of enough drinking water caused by droughts, heatwaves...

I saw a tweet the other day, which led to an article about how climate change induced shrinkage of Lake Chad has worsened the humanitarian crisis in the area.   T oday’s post is about climate change and security. In what ways does climate change interact with security issues? What are the security impacts of a sustained change in otherwise normal weather conditions?  C limate change has been said to be a threat multiplier. A threat multiplier is something that amplifies or makes a certain threat worse. It makes an already bad situation worse. It can act as a catalyst. E xtreme weather events worsen life conditions because they directly destroy livelihoods, property, and infrastructure. They negatively affect basic human needs. In  Puerto Rico power was knocked out in the entire country by Hurricane Maria. So much loss and destruction was occasioned by the hurricane that Puerto Rico has to build everything from scratch. This will  require a lot of re...

Migration is caused by people moving in search of better conditions in life. These conditions can be economic, political, religious or other ‘life’ conditions. people on the move - courtesy  Climate change causes migration both directly and indirectly. Directly, flooded cities in coastal areas or dried out areas inland would be inhospitable and cause people to abandon the said areas and move elsewhere. Island countries especially in the Pacific and Carribean are under threat from rising sea waters both directly and indirectly. Land acreage is being lost to the sea and freshwater aquifers are being invaded by sea water threatening even agriculture.  As noted, food insecurity and conflicts arising from over exploitation of increasingly scarce natural resources lead to migration. Climate change is also a major factor fuelling or compounding other existing problems with its tentacles spreading to national and regional geopolitics. What do I mean?  Well, imag...