Impact of Climate Change on African Countries

Impact of mood falsify on Afri stinker CountriesThe effectuate of mode Change on Volatile African CountriesIn the fall of 2015, get together States Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders received an onslaught of criticism when he attri provideded the rise of terrorism, and the series of Paris terrorist attacks that had just left 130 dead, to temper convince. Immediately future(a) the presidential parameter, numerous reputable political pundits, from palisade Street Journals Peggy Noonan, to res publicaan Senator and former Chairman of m another(prenominal)land Security Ron Johnson, voiced their disagreements with Sanders claim. In fact, soon after the debate ended, Senator dockage Corker from Tennessee was interviewed saying, I get disappointed when throng see momentum about mood turn and try to attach an unrelated issue to it.1(Henry, 2015) In fact, in celestial latitude of that same year, unconnected Policy magazine, a political conductger venerable for its impart iality, published an article titled, Stop Saying Climate Change Causes contend refuting both Sanders claim, and others that sought to connect modality veer to the still current devastating Syrian Civil War. composition Sanders cause-and-effect relationship whitethorn defy been exaggerated, the relationship amid extremum weather events, temperature anomalies, and frenzy is neither hazardous nor uncorroborated. In fact, everywhere the last half-decade, numerous studies befuddle been released substantiating the linkage between climate change and armed combat. In a 2017 theatre of operations produced by the Brookings Institution, reason Vesselin Popovski found that a 1 percent attach in temperature leads to a 4.5 percent addition in civil war in the same year, and a 0.9 percent increase in the following year(Popovski, 2017) Just a year later, indite Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic notice that out of the ten countries around frequently menti unrivalledd in climate c hange literature, six of them to a fault hold positions in the list of the worlds well-nigh violent countries.(Meyer, 2018) While there is still little turn up to support Sanders grandiose claim that climate change triggered the proliferation of terrorism in the 21st century, it is becoming increasingly evident that climate change pass oning not just slightly alter flow standards of living. The rise in temperature has inadvertently begun to promote civil unrest and power in some of the most underdeveloped kingdoms of the world.In order to theorize possible palliation and adaptation strategies, it is measurable to recognize both theramifications of climate change, and the role that industrialise countries need chat uped in contri moreovering to this inter plain beaal temperature increase. According to writerLynn Hewlett, whose chapter Learning from Student Protests in Sub-SaharanAfrica, featured in Fees essential Fall,explains simply, the burning of coal, oil, and natur al sport creates hundreddioxide flatulency which traps the suns heart in the atmosphere and makes the earthwarmer(Lynn Hewlett, 2015) Although the Inter political relational Panel onClimate Change (IPCC) report of a per-decade temperature increase of 0.2C may seem negligible, the consequences ofclimate change ar difficult to overlook.(IPCC Working Groups I-III, 2015) Escalatingtemperatures yielding from babys room gas emissions not lonesome(prenominal) deplete naturalresources much(prenominal) as arable land, potable body of water, and breathable air. The abnormal temperaturerise over the prehistoric half-century has also contributed to rising sea levels, aglobal biodiversity loss, and more frequent thorough weather events, frompro immenseed droughts to incessant rainfall. Although there is still some debatesurrounding human contribution to climate change, most climate change experts agreethat humans ar at least partially responsible for(p) for the stark temperature ris e.According to a drive conducted by Yale University in 2013, over 97% of 12,000peer-reviewed papers on climate change contest that the temperature increase isindeed at least partially attributable to anthropogenic glasshouse emissions. (Marlon, 2013) much disturbingly, however, is the role that industrializednations, much(prenominal) as the United States and Germany, promptly developing countriesincluding India and China, and transnational corporations have all played inproducing this surroundingsal catastrophe. As reported in the 2017 Carbon majorDatabase, a peer-reviewed study which compiled and recorded companies with themost greenhouse gas emissions, over half of global industrial emissions since1988 can be traced to just 25 unified and kingdom producers.(Griffin,2017)Despite the influence thatindustrialized nations and the currently modernizing BRICS countries have hadon the current climate system, the brunt of climate variability has thus farfallen largely on Afric an shoulders. Natural resources which were at one point fat throughout the continent have diminished greatly over the pasthalf-century, which has led to desertification, widespread crop failure, andeven hysteria. In his article, Who Wins from Climate Apartheid? AfricanClimate Justice Narratives about the Paris swipe 21 author Patrick Bond pointsout that inland Africa is uniquely susceptible to climate change, which is communicate to warm 6-7C by the end of the century, more than two degrees great than the anticipated greater world average.(Bond, 2016) Author ChristianParenti offers similar statistics to deck African susceptibility toclimate change. As a member of the Maasai people living in Kenya explains, Inthe 1970s, we started having droughts every seven years now they are comingalmost every year, right crosswise the country.(Parenti C. , Chapter 4, 2011)Yet, as Patrick Bond and others argue, nascent African countries are vulnerable to the effects climate change not because o f their location, but preferably because of the lack of the infrastructure and resources that earmark countries to face constantly changing environmental conditions. These issues are only escalate in Africa by pervasive government corruption and political instability. For example, although tillage is the main source of takement for greater than 60% of the continents inhabitants, African malnourishment has worsened with each passing year.(The manhood Bank, 2018) African farmers simply lack the funds to acquire high-yielding techniques, and are not provided with seemly infrastructure systems to produce sustainable quantities of victuals in unfavorable climates. Furthermore, African countries eager to cement their places in the global economy often gossip pro- institutionalisement policies that prioritize multinational commercial agriculture over minuscule-scale subsistence farming. As the example above illustrates, many African countries exemplify what author Christian Paren ti calls Catastrophic Convergence a phenomenon where political, scotch, and environmental disasters collide, compound, and amplify one some others effects.(Parenti C. , 2011) In these conflict systems, climate change generates violence in many forms, much(prenominal)(prenominal) as intrastate conflict between competing tribes, loot and piracy of Transnational Corporations, and mass demonstrations protesting environmentally destructive African governments.The long-run rise in global temperature, coupled with the youthful preponderance of extreme weather events, has induced a natural resource deprivation across the globe. In fact, Parenti estimates that by the end of the century, the proportion of land in double-dyed(a) drought will expand from 3% to 30%. (Parenti C. , 2011) Therefore, ownership, allocation, and management of these increasingly scarce resources has become an issue of the utmost importance for countries and tribes across the globe. In vulnerable African states t hat lack basic infrastructural needs, however, this competition over approach path to remaining natural resources has erupted into armed conflict. In his 2011 book titled, Topics of cuckoos nest Climate Change and the radical Geography of Violence, author Christian Parenti explains how climate change can induce violence by illuminating the current action between the Turkana and the Pokot, two competing groups living in Kenyas Pastoralist Corridor. For tribes living in the Pastoralist Corridor, a mountainous and arid region in Western Kenya, oxen are the economic and cultural c go in of life. Yet, without water and tolerable crop land, Parenti writes, the Turkana would disappear. they would die or migrate to cities and their culture would exist only in the memories of deracinated urban slum dwellers.(Parenti C. , 2011) Due to the areas regular droughts and ostentate floods, coupled with deficient adaptation policies imposed by the Kenyan government, pastoralist groups are left no choice but to raid their neighbors and fasten in violent behavior just to ensure their own future livelihoods. While it is difficult to estimate how many men have fallen in the Pastoralist corridor fighting over limiting resources, Parentis interviews of Kenyan pastoralists highlight the pervasiveness of climate-induced violence in these already tumultuous African states. Former Kenyan pastoralist Lucas Airong missed both his father and friends when he was a young boy by musical mode of the Kenyan cattle wars. Although Ariong is now a topical anesthetic nongovernmental placement leader, and is far removed from the Pastoralist Corridor, he still owns about 50 cow all kept under the watchful eyes of armed men, his sons, and chartered hands.(Parenti C. , 2011) Since the Kenyan government has proven incapable of providing sufficient watering holes and adequate irrigation systems, local tribes such as the Turkana and Pokot are left no other choice but to engage in violent behavi or.The diminishing offer of natural resources has the ability to spark both small-scale tribal clashes, such as in the Pastoralist Corridor, and large-scale civil wars, as illustrated by the most recent add-on crisis currently unfolding between the Christian anti-balaka rebels and the Muslim former Slka rebels in the Central African Republic. Although no current gondola car casualty report exists, the Associated Press reported in December of 2014, just seven months after the armed conflict began, that at least 5,186 fatalities were caused by the strife between the anti-balaka and the ex-Slka factions.(The Associated Press, 2014) While sacred differences and the desire for political control were undoubtedly factors in instigating this conflict, former gondola Minister of Environment and Ecology and current CAR liaison for the foundation Resource appoint Paul Doko is one of many who attribute the ongoing Central African Republic civil war to resource scarcity. What we have been facing in the provinces, Doko claims, is a struggle between different reserves for control over natural resources such as diamond, timber, ivory and others, rather than willingness to actually change politics.(Bollen, 2013) In these remote provinces outside of the capital of Bengui, the feud over the countrys remaining resources has had devastating effects on local communities. Slka commanders have posturefully removed, and even slaughtered, CAR citizens for control over the countrys artisan timber interceptation, ivory poaching, and diamond mines.(Bollen, 2013) Similar to the Pastoralist Corridor, armed conflict over natural resources is facilitated by the countrys weak governance and rampant poverty. In this politically fragile state, access to the countrys remaining natural resources is a critical step in attaining political influence and achieving economic prosperity. Climate change has also fostered violence between African locals and outside(prenominal) corporations that exploit African workers and extract African resources. In their article titled, Globalization, Land Grabbing, and the current Colonial State in Uganda E colony and Its Impact, authors Pdraig Carmody and David Taylor argue that the depletion of natural resources has change magnitude their overall economic, social and political value in the global economy, which in turn has caused ecolonization, a phrase coined by the two authors which refers to the ongoing colonization of different types of natural resources by those states, companies, and consumers that are able to exercise billet in the global political economy(Carmody & Taylor, 2016) Due to continents largely untapped resource market and each countrys eagerness to finally enter the global economy, Africa has become one of the most popular destinations for foreign investment. Yet, this mass influx of foreign governments and transnational corporations (TNCs) has created exasperation among many already impoverished and malnourish ed African communities. In resource-rich countries such as Somalia and Nigeria, locals have responded to the arrival of outside corporations with acts of looting, robbing, and piracy. In a 2014 journal study titled, Fisheries, ecosystem evaluator and piracy A case study of Somalia, authors Rashid Sumalia and Mahamudu Bawumia argue that the recent rise in piracy off the coast of Somalia is the result of the destruction of the local fishing industry caused by change magnitude foreign fishing presence, unable(p) state governance, and unregulated poisonous waste dumping. Foreign t dimlers often overfish and, because of weak government enforcement of environmental policies, are allowed to dispose toxic and hazardous waste into Somalian waters. This in turn not only reduces the supply of available fish for Somalian natives, but also threatens the ecosystems future availability. (Sumaila & Bawumia, 2014) Confronted with increasingly barren fisheries, Somalian fishers, unable to overcom e corporate technology and capital, are provided no other alternative but to engage in theft and piracy. This ongoing conflict between foreign entities and Somalian locals has made the Somalian coast the most dangerous body of water worldwide, nearlyly trailed by the Niger Delta.(Gaffey, 2016) With a crude oil production electrical condenser of close to 2.5 million barrels a day, Nigeria is Africas largest oil producer, and the sixth largest worldwide. Although the Niger Delta accounts for 90% of all Nigerian commercial crude exports, and makes up close to 70% of the governments total revenue, the region remains one of the most dangerous in the world.(NNPC, 2016) While government officials, Nigerian elites, and major Transnational Corporations such as Shell, Mobil, and Chevron all reap the economic benefits of crude oil extraction, the vast majority of Niger Delta inhabitants still live in abject poverty. To make matters worse, crude oil extraction has subsequently led to greate r pollution in the river basin, the widespread destruction of subsistence crops, and the expropriation of residential territory. The anisometric statistical distribution of oil revenue, the blatant disregard for environmental preservation, and the policies preferential to multinational corporations have all led to the emergence of multiple militant organizations in the Niger Delta. While these militancy groups differ in composition and extremity, they all employ violent tactics to achieve the same goal a greater control over the countrys limited resources. (Francis & Sardesai, 2008)Lastly, in recent years, grass al-Qaidas protests have arisen in several African countries in an move to assail environmentally destructive governmental policies. Having been hampered by colonialism for decades, many African governments are now employing top-down development models that concentrate on expanding industrial modes of production as a way to cement their place in the global economy.(Leonard & Pelling, 2010) While such policies will certainly help touch off national economies in the long term, they tend to relegate certain, already marginalized, African communities. Such marginalization and ensuing protest is most apparent in Kenya, and in the Darfur region of western Sudan. In her publication titled, Its More Than Planting Trees, Its Planting Ideas Ecofeminist Praxis in the color flush faeces, author Kathleen Hunt points to the Green Belt Movement, a nationwide environmental campaign in Kenya, to illustrate the role that African citizens frequently play in protesting environmental and political oppression. The Green Belt Movement (GBM) was naturalised by Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai as a centre to protest the countrys latest model of economic development, which relies firmly on trading the countrys already limited unsustainable resources, ilk timber, charcoal, and coffee. Hunt explains that such policies, which are not unique to Kenya alone bu t characterize much of the African continent, favor national trade of raw materials over local community economies. (Hunt, 2014) According to Hunt, Kenyas keenness to enter the world market has both exacerbated local nutrient risk and caused deforestation, dominion erosion, sedimentation and migratory shifts, as men moved in anticipate for work in the white settlers plantation.(Hunt, 2014) While these policies have indisputably afflicted the nations population as a whole, the Green Belt Movement has primarily focused on ensuring the rights of Kenyan women, who have traditionally been in charge of managing the familys land, solid food production, gathering water and fuelwood.(Hunt, 2014) Established in 1977, the Green Belt Movement hasnt only combatted environmental debasement through public demonstrations, however. Rather, the movement places an equally large focus on empowering Kenyan villages, from teaching locals how to properly plant trees to hosting community-wide engagemen t seminars. Despite the organizations holistic and empowering approach, the movement has indeed encountered a considerable meter of violence throughout its history. Once the Green Belt Movement take a pro-democracy message to its platform, the Kenyan government began to use state force in order to taking into custody the dissemination of their message. This was most apparent in 1992 when GBM forces joined fellow pro-democratic group, Release Political Prisoners (RPP), to protest the unjust torture and indefinite holding of political detainees. While the demonstration was originally aforethought(ip) as a three-day sit-in on Uhuru Park, the two allied groups outright encountered police violence. Fighting off the polices tear gas and batons, many GBM and RPP members remained in the park for over eleven months.(Hunt, 2014) Although the violence encountered at Uhuru Park was ananomaly for the Green Belt Movement, more frequent displays of violencestemming from environmentally destr uctive national policies can be found in theDarfur region of Sudan. With an almost entirely Arab population and government,Sudan Arab semi-nomadic pastoralists and non-Arab sedentary farmers have long sharedthe regions natural resources. Yet, over the past half-century tensions haveheightened as climate unpredictability has forced the two groups to competeover shrinking grazing land and evaporating watering holes. The current dayhumanitarian crisis, however, began in April of 2003, when a rebel groupcomprised of non-Arab members attacked El Fashir airport in North Darkur.(Sikainga,2009)This attack was the culmination of numerous non-Arab demonstrations advocatingfor better resource distribution and greater political representation in theSudanese government. In result to this attack, president Omar al-Bashir actedswiftly, employing numerous autonomous militias to suppress non-Arab rebelgroups. One ethnically Arab group, known as the Janjaweed, employedparticularly heinous tactics to combat their non-Arab counterparts, including torture,arson, looting, and mass violent deaths, deemed by many as ethnic genocide.(Human RightsWatch, Africa Division, 2004-2005) While the Darfurregion has historically been volatile, this particular resource-relatedconflict, which pit marginalized sedentary farmers against the predominantlyMuslim Sundanese government and its hired militias, has been deemed one of theworst humanitarian crises in the last century, killing more than 300,000citizens and displacing more than 2 million (Taylor, 2005)If the immediate ramifications of climate change, such as desertification, droughts and food insecurity werent enough already to get state actors to institute environmentally friendly policies, the examples listed above, from Kenyas Pastoralist Corridor to Sudans Darfur, hopefully serve to illustrate the true gravity of unabated greenhouse gas emissions. Currently one-sixth of the worlds population is starving, and with global temperatures e valuate to rise anywhere from 4-6C by the end of the century, one can only assume the consequences of climate change will intensify in the near future.(Holt-Gimnez) In order to reduce malnutrition, maintain our current levels of biodiversity, and stop resource related conflicts altogether, major polluters and African countries must agree to sweep and stringent reforms. Although mitigation strategies, which seek to drastically cut the production of greenhouse gasses through the implementation of green energy and the disengagement from the industrialized economy, are preferred by environmental activists worldwide, they have proven to be in trenchant thus far, as Annex I countries, rapidly developing BRIC countries, and African central governments all refuse to make economic concessions in the found of environmental preservation.(Jacobs, 2018) This was best illustrated at the 2011 Copenhagen Conference of the Parties (COP), an annual meeting between all member nations of the UNFCCC. The only agreement crafted at the conference, in which the United States, Brazil, south Africa, India, and China all decided to take inadequate and spontaneous emission cuts, was conducted behind closed doors.(Bond, 2016) The industrialized worlds tenacious refusal to include African countries in the decision-making process has been a recurring floor in nearly all environmental negotiations. The Paris Agreement of 2015, for example, did not even mention climate debt payment for vulnerable countries, even though many African countries are already owed reparations for the damage levied by local climates.(Bond, 2016) While occidental countries should be reprimanded for their unwillingness to take environmental action, it is important to note that African governments are also partially to blame for perpetuating climate change. Primarily concerned with enhancing the national economy, African governments have repeatedly successful large-scale corporations over local industries. This partiality manifests itself most clearly in the coastal city of Durban, South Africa. Although the Durban population has expressed its vehement animadversion through frequent demonstrations and protests, the South African government has continued to invest in foreign industries nevertheless. As authors Llewellyn Leonard and Mark Pelling write, state and industry interests in Durban, South Africa have continued to invest in projects that harm the local environment and human health (Leonard & Pelling, 2010)This widespread government reluctance to reduce carbon emissions has rendered most proposed mitigation solutions, like La Via Campesinas global food sovereignty movement, unfeasible. In his report titled Seven Reasons wherefore the field Banks Plan for land Will Not Help Small Farmers, author Eric Holt-Gimnez explains how promoting global food sovereignty could help ameliorate food insecurity and resource deprivation facing African nations today. Providing citizens with the righ t to determine their own food and agriculture policies will not only keep local malnutrition from worsening, Holt-Gimnez argues, but will also hinder transnational corporations from inflating commodity prices to unreasonable levels. (Holt-Gimnez, Williams, & Hachmyer, 2015) Although an effective policy in theory, global food sovereignty hinges on rural and urban communities agreeing to directly exchange products and policymakers deciding to cut out transnational corporations from the food supply chain. This course of action seems unlikely in Africas current economic climate, however. Challenging the TNC dominated neoliberal market will not only take decades to achieve, but will also earnestly impede on long-term national growth. Even though mitigationstrategies such as reducing CO2 emissions and excluding transnationalcorporations from the global food supply chain are unlikely to be effective,climate-change induced conflict will decrease nonetheless if Africancommunities are well fit to fluctuating environmental conditions. EnsuringAfrican resilience begins with the implementation of Climate-Smart cultivationand increased infrastructural support from NGOs and already developed nations. Ratherthan just simply advocating for emissions reductions, Climate-Smart Agriculturepromotes resilience among African communities by providing farmers with newtechnology and agricultural techniques, such as mulching, intercropping,conservation agriculture, crop rotation (The World Bank, 2013). While Climate-SmartAgriculture will certainly help attenuate the problems plaguing Africa today, infrastructuralimprovement is also take to curtail resource related conflict. In fact, whenasked how to solve tribal violence in the Pastoralist Corridor, Lucas Airongresponded with, more wells. We need boreholes the issue is drought(Parenti C. ,2011).Although both of these solutions shoot a collective and concerted effort onbehalf of developed countries, they are more moderate than the m itigation plansrejected in the past. Even though these policies are mere strawman solutions anddo not address the root cause of climate change, adaptation strategies areundeniably the best way to guarantee that the worlds most vulnerable nationsare at least prepared to combat the consequences of climate change. BibliographyBollen, A. (2013, December 18). Natural resources at the heart of CAR crisis. Retrieved from New Internationalist https//newint.org/blog/2013/12/18/central-african-republic-natural-resourcesBond, P. (2016, Winter). Who Wins from Climate Apartheid? African Climate Justice Narratives about the Paris COP 21. New Politics, pp. 83-90.Carmody, P., & Taylor, D. 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