A Mythical giant Snake Is Helping Raise Climate Awareness In Malawi
In March earlier this year, Mary Phiri, 40, was at her home in Chilobwe, southern Malawi, when she heard a peculiar rumbling sound in the distance. It got louder until, moments later, an avalanche of mud and rocks hurtled down the nearby Soche Mountain, sweeping away everything in its path. The surrounding area was soon hit by flash floods that washed away homes, bridges, and infrastructure. A nationwide blackout followed as over 200,000 hectares of cropland were ruined just days before they were about to be harvested.
For meteorologists, these impacts came as a shock but not a surprise. Weeks earlier in early-February, they had watched as a disturbance in the ocean near Australia developed into a full-blown cyclone as it crossed the Indian Ocean towards Africa. Due to climate change, storm systems have become more intense and prolonged.
This African Nation Has Named Its First Chief Heat Officer. Here's What It Means
Eugenia Kargbo has been appointed as Africa's first chief heat officer in Sierra Leone, to shield her city from the dangerous effects of climate change. Miami and Athens have already appointed heat officers: Jane Gilbert and Eleni Myrivili.
Kargbo wants her two children to be able to walk the city streets without fear of heatstroke. In this role, she has one year to make a difference to peoples' lives in her city.
Technology Can Boost Farming In Africa, But It Can Also Threaten Biodiversity - How to Balance the Two
Cultivating one hectare of maize used to be an arduous task for Precious Banda, a farmer in Zambia. It would take her hundreds of hours to prepare her land before sowing and to keep it weed-free until harvest – equipped with nothing but a small hoe. She says it was backbreaking work: “I can still feel it.” For a few years now she has hired a tractor, and a neighbour sprays herbicides for her. “Life has become so easy,” she says.
But she has also noticed changes around her farm. There are fewer bees and – most worrying for her – fewer caterpillars, which used to make a delightful dish. Precious Banda’s story is a perfect example of the situation millions of African farmers face.
A Changing Climate, Growing Human Populations, and Widespread Fires Contributed to the Last Major Extinction Event − Can We Prevent Another?
In a new study, published in August 2023, we sought to understand changes that were happening in California during the last major extinction event at the end of the Pleistocene, a time period known as the Ice Age. This event wiped out most of Earth’s large mammals between about 10,000 and 50,000 years ago. This was a time marked by dramatic climate upheavals and rapidly spreading human populations.
Africa Must Own the Idea of the “Just transition”
There’s no one-size-fits-all with sustainable economies. A just transition on the continent will look very different to one in the Global North.
Literature From the Congo Basin Offers Ways to Address the Climate Crisis
The African continent is responsible for only 2–3% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy and industrial sources. But it’s alarmingly suffering from the effects of the climate crisis, as reports from the UN and others show. On the positive side, Africa has a huge potential for climate mitigation, especially thanks to its tropical rainforests.
Andrew Amadi
“Africa has an advantage that it has never had before. The cheapest electricity in the world today, is daytime solar in Africa.
If we have the potential for the cheapest electricity, we also have the potential for the cheapest transportation. 40 percent of the national reserves of foreign currencies are used to purchase and import petroleum products. If a large amount of that cost is alleviated in African countries, it creates a system that is immune to fossil fuel-based inflation.”
New Forms Of Urban Planning Are Emerging In Africa
Rapid urban growth and an increasing number of climate change related disasters, such as the recent floods in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, have put the importance of sound urban planning in Africa in the spotlight.
Urban plans are seen as the key to achieving inclusive, safe and sustainable cities. But urban scholars have argued for decades that for plans to be effective we need to move away from the traditional way of doing things. This requires dropping a top down approach – master planning – and opting instead for strategic forms of planning that are targeted, flexible and participatory.
Wildlife Don’t Recognize Borders, Nor Does Climate Change. Conservation Should Keep Up
A set of studies focused on the China-Vietnam border demonstrates that the impacts of climate change will make transboundary conservation even more important for endangered species like the Cao-Vit gibbon and tiger geckos.
Conservation in transboundary areas is already challenging because of physical barriers, like fences and walls, as well as non-physical ones, such as different legal systems or conservation approaches between countries on either side.
Traditional Land Burning Is Declining – Here’s Why That’s A Problem
Greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb, and so you might expect more of Earth’s surface to be engulfed by fires each year. But satellite data shows that the reverse is true: the area of the world’s land burned by fires shrank in recent decades.
That might not be a good thing, though. Our research suggests that many of the fires no longer being set are controlled fires, which are important for rural livelihoods and ecosystems.
Climate Change Report: What We Must Do To Avert the Looming Crisis
Climate change is a threat to all aspects of our lives. Every degree of global warming is likely to increase the intensity and frequency of climate extremes, such as drought and flooding. In a bid to address this, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – an intergovernmental body of the United Nations – has released a key report which looks at mitigation of climate change.
South Africa Could Achieve Economic Recovery, And Lower Emissions. Here’s How
Measures adopted to control the spread of the COVID pandemic resulted in a worldwide reduction in economic activities. This benefited the environment by reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
The reduction of environmental pollution has offered countries the opportunity to start from a position of reduced pollution. If sustained this should contribute to an environmentally sustainable economy in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.