Experts proffer solutions on Climate change

Emeka Ibemere

t was the gathering of experts across the globe. Farmers, scientists, researchers, policymakers and national and international scientists working in the West and Central African region and donors and IITA’s board of trustees were in attendance. The host country was Benin Republic and the conference agenda-Climate change challenges. Date was Monday 5, May 2014.

By the time the conference ended, the Ozone layer depletion theory has become a reality. Those who have been arguing about climate change impossibility, however, changed their minds on the reality of the climate change possibility.

The global campaign for the awareness on the dreaded issue especially on its negative implications were laid bare before the experts who congregated to proffer solution on the impending global concern.

Opening the conference, Dr Yacoubou Toure, the Directeur de Cabinet du Ministre de Agriculture, who declared the event open, affirmed that there are negative impacts of the climate change.

 He said that farmers in developing countries were vulnerable to the negative impact of climate change on agricultural production. He pledged his Government’s commitment to join efforts to develop and make mitigation options available to farmers.

According to the Director General, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Dr Nteranya Sanginga, the negative consequences of climate change on agricultural production and productivity are real. He said the reality of the consequences on the global world needs attention of the world and that resolutions must be implemented to save West and Central Africa,

Addressing national and international researchers attending a conference on ‘Biotic stresses, climate change and agricultural production in Cotonou’, Benin, on Monday, 5 May, 2014, Dr Sanginga disclosed that the emergence of agricultural pests such as the papaya mealybug was closely linked to climate change, and stressed that there was the need to go beyond rhetoric to action.

“Whatever recommendations we make at this meeting, let’s work towards implementing them,” he said.

The Director General pinpointed to agricultural research and the capacity development of adequate human resources as the critical tools needed to tackle the challenges posed by climate change.

Sanginga cited the example of cassava pests (cassava mealybug) in which past research by IITA and partners had played a critical role in solving the problem and saving the crop from probable extinction in Africa.

On his own, the Interim Director General of AfricaRice, Dr Adama Traoré, pledged that his organization would support the implementation of the meeting’s recommendations, as they would go a long way in addressing agricultural productivity in the region.

Researchers at the conference opined the impact of climate change on biodiversity linked to biotic stresses could have a deep impact on agricultural productivity.

For instance, studies suggest that climate change might adversely influence established biological control by curbing natural enemy–pest interactions.

According to the experts at the conference, extreme climatic events may affect the benefits provided by living things in the soil ecosystem such as endophytes, rhizobia, and mycorrhiza.

Dr David Arodokoun, the Director General of the National Institute of Agricultural Research of Bénin (INRAB), said.

 “All these interactions need to be properly assessed and documented to develop and deploy pre-emptive and adaptation strategies,” adding that  in West and Central Africa, most of the current studies targeting the impacts of climate change on agriculture have focused directly on productivity (i.e., crop yields), or indirectly, on livelihoods.

Dr Arodokoun said the regional meeting had brought together researchers working on biotic stresses linked to climate change affecting the region as a first step to take stock of the available human and infrastructural resources.

This, he said, was a starting point for defining a common regional strategy for managing biotic stresses and biodiversity under changing climatic conditions.

The regional meeting attracted policymakers and national and international scientists working in the West and Central African region, and was attended by donors and IITA’s board of trustees.

Dr Manuele Tamo, IITA’s Insect Ecologist and Country Representative based in Cotonou, said the regional meeting sought to develop a regional strategy that would help member countries in dealing with the biotic stresses that are linked to climate change in the region.

The meeting was convened by IITA, INRAB, AfricaRice, Bioversity, CIRAD, and CORAF with donor support from the Swiss Development Cooperation.

Recent reports have claimed that the coastal cities of Africa and Asia expand; many of their poorest residents and are being pushed to the edges of liveable land and into the most dangerous zones for climate change. The report said these cities informal settlements cling to riverbanks and cluster in low-lying areas with poor drainage, few public services, and no protection from storm surges, sea-level rise, and flooding.

According to the reports, these communities are poor in coastal cities and on low-lying islands and are among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change and the least able to marshal the resources to adapt, a new report finds.

“They face a world where climate change will increasingly threaten the food supplies of Sub-Saharan Africa and the farm fields and water resources of South Asia and South East Asia within the next three decades, while extreme weather puts their homes and lives at risk”, the report stated.

A new scientific report commissioned by the World Bank and released on June 19 last year explores the risks to lives and livelihoods in these three highly vulnerable regions.

Another report also said communities around the world are already feeling the impacts of climate change, with the planet only 0.8 ºC warmer than in pre-industrial times. Many of us could experience the harsher impacts of a 2ºC warmer world within our lifetimes – 20 to 30 years from now and  4ºC is likely by the end of the century without global action.

The report lays out what these temperature increases will look like, degree-by-degree, in each targeted region and the damage anticipated for agricultural production, coastal cities, and water resources.

“The scientists tell us that if the world warms by 2°C – warming which may be reached in 20 to 30 years – that will cause widespread food shortages, unprecedented heat-waves, and more intense cyclones," said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. "In the near-term, climate change, which is already unfolding, could batter the slums even more and greatly harm the lives and the hopes of individuals and families who have had little hand in raising the Earth's temperature.”

The report, based on scientific analysis by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics uses advanced computer simulations to paint the clearest picture of each region’s vulnerabilities. It describes the risks to agriculture and livelihood security in Sub-Saharan Africa; the rise in sea-level, loss of coral reefs and devastation to coastal areas likely in South East Asia; and the fluctuating water resources in South Asia that can lead to flooding in some areas and water scarcity in others, as well as affecting power supply.

“The second phase of this report truly reiterates our need to bring global attention to the tasks necessary to hold warming to 2ºC,” said Rachel Kyte, the Bank’s vice president for sustainable development. “Our ideas at the World Bank have already been put into practice as we move forward to assist those whose lives are particularly affected by extreme weather events.”