Day: October 1, 2021

The U.S. government says it wants to partner with African countries to combat climate change.

A U.S. climate envoy, who is in South Africa to prepare for a key conference next month, said the fight must be an international one.

“These kinds of damages do not limit themselves to one country,” said Jonathan Pershing, U.S. deputy special presidential envoy for climate change. “You can’t say I have got a problem and nobody else does. But neither would any country be immune. You don’t have to be a landlocked country or an island country or coastal country. We are all in this together.

“That brings me to why I have come to Africa. It’s the fastest growing continent, it’s a continent in many ways it represents the future, what it chooses to do could either leapfrog the past or follow the previous historical trajectory.”

The State of the Climate in Africa 2019 report, a publication coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, showed increasing climate change threats to people’s health, food and water.

The predictions on weather patterns, covering the years between 2020 and 2024, call for a continued warming trend and less rainfall in northern and southern Africa.

This has major consequences for the continent. Farmers in Africa depend on their natural environment to grow crops, and due to unpredictable weather patterns, they are getting less food from the farms.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of undernourished people in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 45% since 2012.

Pershing said despite the challenges, Africa’s natural resources can transform the economic fortunes of many countries.

“We could have the critical minerals Africa has in abundance servicing that global demand, that is countries like Kenya, it’s countries like Namibia,” he said. “We have forest opportunities in countries like the Congo, both of the Congos — Brazzaville and Kinshasa — real windows of opportunities. We have an extraordinary capacity around ports, fishing choices that could be all of our coastal nations. This is an opportunity that is continent-wide.”

Pershing said climate issues matter to Americans and said the U.S. wants to work with Africa to solve the global problem.

Developed countries have pledged some $100 billion per year to help developing countries mitigate climate change. In 2019, $80 billion was collected.

Wanjira Mathai, vice president and regional director for Africa at the World Resources Institute, based in Nairobi, said Africa needs to invest in its people and lands to mitigate climate change.

“We have to invest in adaptation, we have to invest in cushioning and building resilience in our cities, in our rural settings and certainly investing in energy because energy will ensure that we can make the necessary transition that will cushion us building resilience, especially in the rural areas will require protecting and restoring nature,” she said.

High-level officials are expected to gather in Glasgow next month for the COP26 climate summit to accelerate action toward the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The 2016 agreement set out to limit global warming caused by climate change to 1.5 degrees. It also supports countries’ efforts to deal with the impacts of climate change.

Source: Voice of America

The United Nations is issuing a $139-million flash appeal to provide assistance to 1.3 million people in Kenya hardest hit by a severe drought.

Millions of people across Kenya are suffering from two back-to-back seasons of poor rainfall, resulting in severe food shortages.

The latest Integrated Phase Classification, which analyzes the severity of food insecurity, finds nearly 370,000 Kenyans are in a state of emergency and two million others are in crisis.

World Food Program Resident Coordinator in Kenya Stephen Jackson, speaking via Zoom from the capital, Nairobi, says acute malnutrition rates are rising rapidly. He says 465,000 children and 96,000 pregnant and lactating women are acutely malnourished. He warns many are at imminent risk without urgent nutritional feeding.

On a visit to a clinic Thursday in Wajir, northern Kenya, he said people told him it had been more than a year since they last felt rain.

“I spoke with a young mother, Zeinab, who told me that she could not feed her children that morning and that she did not know if she would be able to put food on the table that evening. And that many of her livestock had already died because of the drought and those that are left are not in a good condition to sell. And you know, of course, in northern Kenya, livestock is the basis of life,” he said.

Jackson said problems arising from drought are compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, insecurity, the recent locust infestations, and diseases.

The Kenyan government so far has allocated about $17 million to assist the most vulnerable drought victims and has announced another $20 million for this effort. However, Jackson said that is not enough and support from international donors is needed.

“The time to act is now. As I already stressed, if the October rains fail, that would be the third season in a row without rain. And we would be the end of this year be facing a much deeper crisis still. Something on the order of what we saw 10 years ago. So, any support we provide now will save lives and livelihoods,” Jackson said.

The 2011 East Africa drought caused a severe food crisis across the region, threatened the livelihoods of 9.5 million people and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

The current appeal will provide food and livelihoods, special nutritional treatment for acutely malnourished children and women, access to water, sanitation, and hygiene, health care, education, and other essential needs.

Source: Voice of America

Malawi has deployed soldiers to distribute fuel at gas stations after a strike by fuel tank drivers this week led to shortages. The drivers are pressuring the government for a minimum wage increase and to ensure local drivers get contracts they say are dominated by foreign transporters.

Tanker drivers started the strike Monday in the country’s major cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu.

On Wednesday they blocked the road in the capital Lilongwe, resulting in some arrests.

Government spokesperson Gospel Kazako told a press conference Thursday that the strike is surprising, considering that government officials already addressed all the demands the drivers raised during a similar strike in November 2020.

He said among the demands was that the government should review the minimum salary for drivers, which was at about $60 per month.

“Government had to go all out listening to their problems,” Kazako said. “Government made directives and this was made into law that there shouldn’t be any international truck driver who should be paid less than MK140,000.”

That figure is equivalent to about $170 per month.

But drivers have yet to receive the increased salaries. This, they said, is largely because their employers are going through financial difficulties due to lack of business from the government.

They said the strike is also aimed at pushing the government to award their employers local fuel supply contracts they say are dominated by foreign transporters.

This spurred truck owners to join the strike on Wednesday.

Kazako, also Minister of Information, said he believes the strike is a ploy to sabotage government operations.

George Khaki, president of the Employers Consultative Association of Malawi, said the strike is baseless.

“If they wanted to have industrial action, that industrial action should have been against their employers. Not against the government, because the government is not a party to the employment contract,” he said. “This is where they are getting it wrong and it is unfortunately an unlawful strike.”

The strike led to panic buying this week at the few Malawian gas stations which had fuel.

Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority said the country has enough gas to last for a month, but the problem is the failure to supply the pump stations because of the strike.

To address the problem, Kazako said the government has deployed the military to help distribute fuel.

Starting Thursday night, soldiers began escorting fuel tankers to pump stations and, in some cases, are driving the tankers themselves.

In a statement Thursday, Acting Public Information Officer for the Malawi Defense Force, Major Emanuel Kelvin Mlelemba, said the move is in line with its constitutional role in assisting civilian authorities to maintain essential services in times of emergency.

Meanwhile, the striking drivers maintain they will not resume work until their demands are met.

Source: Voice of America