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Is Africa ready for climate change effects?

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CLIMATE change is now viewed as a major international crisis, and quite possibly the defining issue of our time.
In fact, one man who can be thanked for bringing this issue to the fore of discourse in America is Al Gore, through the film An Inconvenient Truth, which shocked audiences worldwide to the horrors of global warming.
Yet despite the depressing forecast ahead of us, the greatest danger that we face today is not the future consequences of our actions, but the denial of facts. 
Today, climate change is no longer just a scientific or an energy problem.
Instead, one’s position on global warming has become a badge of political identity in a debate driven by ideological and tribal conflicts.
This bodes ill for humanity’s chances of addressing the threat before it is too late.
During the last several decades the number of El Niño events increased, although a much longer period of observation is needed to detect robust changes. 
The question is whether this is a random fluctuation or a normal instance of variation for that phenomenon or the result of global climate changes as a result of global warming.
Unlike hurricanes, El Niño is not an individual weather event, it is a climate pattern.
Developing countries dependent upon agriculture and fishing are the most affected by El Niño.
The economic impact of the El Niño is widespread.
It is benign for most of US agriculture and lowers winter heating demand for most of Canada and large portions of the Western and Northern US.
However, the impacts on other portions of the North-American economy are not as favourable.
Nearly 25 percent of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is directly or indirectly affected by weather and climate.
El Niños usually provide a favourable climate.
Their impact is less benign on other North-American countries.
Some of the historical effects El Niños have had on the economy have been positive.
In the agricultural sector, El Niños tend to have a beneficial impact on summer crops in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in the US and Canadian grain belts.
Precipitation is plentiful and there are usually few, if any, heat waves. 
Winter crops fare less well.
Typically, the most negative impacts of El Niños are on tropical agriculture — particularly in Indonesia and parts of Latin-America.
In the fishing sector, changing ocean water temperatures have an impact on marine life.
During the large El Niño of 1982-83, Pacific salmon populations dropped 20 percent and anchovies dropped 80 percent.
Other marine life, from fish, to seals and bird populations, showed similar dramatic drops.
In the energy sector, El Niños bring down demand for natural gas, causing lower prices for consumers and lower profits for producers.
This winter, any lower demand for natural gas due to weather would add to the energy consumption drop due to the economic slowdown.
For the retail sector, lower energy prices leave consumers with more money for discretionary spending.
Typically, Mid-western stores report between 5 – 15 percent increased sales during warm El Niño winters.
However, this affects only some goods, since items like snowmobiles show declining sales.
When it comes to exports and imports, El Niño years are usually excellent for US agricultural exports.
Typically, US crop yields are good while their potential customers have problems.
El Niños usually hurt agriculture in India, large portions of China, the Philippines and Indonesia.
In 25 percent of these years, they hurt competing grain production in Canada and South America.
Most El Niños concentrate their most severe effects in tropical regions, raising the cost of tropical imports, particularly cocoa, coffee, palm oil and, to a lesser extent, cane sugar.
Meanwhile, Peru has announced that it will not host the 2016 Dakar Rally due to concerns about the El Nino weather phenomenon.
Organisers say Peru believes El Nino will be particularly violent there and it wishes to have all emergency services available to respond to it.
The rally, billed as the ‘world’s toughest race’, was due to begin in the Peruvian capital on January 3 2016.
It will now be held in Argentina and Bolivia.
Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change.
This situation is further worsened by its poor state of economic development and low adaptive capacity.
A place that is really important to stress is West Africa, where there is increased risk of drought during El Niño.
The El Niño phenomenon is a threat to Africa’s food production.
The continent is expected to experience reduced yields.
The productivity of crops and livestock, including milk yields, may decline because of high temperatures and drought-related stress.
Shifting seasonal rainfall patterns and more severe precipitation events — and related flooding — may delay planting and harvesting.
Inadequate research and information, coupled by tradition will see most subsistence farmers losing out as their farming activities are not in tandem with changing climate.
Other challenges the continent is likely to face in the agricultural sector include, decreased arability and more pests.
Africa could channel its energies towards more research into climate change with a view to prepare the continent for the coming extremes that are a threat to its growth and development.

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