WWF says Africa under threat from carbon pollution

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 ◆ WWF says Africa under threat from carbon pollution

Millions of people and animals in Africa will be under serious threat unless governments at the UN Earth Summit in Johannesburg next week pledge to stem carbon pollution, the conservation body WWF warned on Tuesday.

The WWF urged more than 60 world leaders due to meet at the August 26-September 4 summit to take new steps to curb pollution linked to carbon dioxide and shift to using renewable, non-polluting fuels like solar power.

In a report on climate change in Africa, the WWF said people, wildlife and plants "will suffer serious consequences" unless carbon pollution was cut and sustainable land use encouraged.

It urged countries to sign up to an international target to raise the share of new renewable energy in their economies to 10 percent by 2010.

The burning of fossil fuels which causes carbon emissions is widely blamed for global warming -- which many scientists say is the cause of radical changes in climate and weather on all continents, but especially in Africa.

"If carbon pollution is left unchecked, climate change will have a pervasive effect on life in Africa," said Paul Desanker, Co-Director for the Johannesburg-based Centre for African Development Solutions.

"It will threaten the people, animals and natural resources that make Africa unique."
The Johannesburg summit will debate ways to raise living standards in the developing world and wipe out poverty and hunger while limiting environmental disruption. It comes as millions of people in Africa, which relies on biodiversity and rain-fed agriculture, face a mounting threat of starvation, as well as pervasive endemic diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS.

RAINFALL CHANGES

The WWF report said African communities would face further changes in rainfall, which would damage the ecosystem and the migration patterns of birds, large mammals and nomadic people.

The summit offers "a timely opportunity for governments to make commitments that can ensure development and poverty alleviation while at the same time reducing the carbon pollution that causes climate change," the Swiss-based organisation said.

The current prolonged drought across many sub-Saharan countries demonstrates the vulnerability of nomadic people to changes in weather patterns, the WWF said.

"The result of this climate change has been widespread loss of human life and livestock and substantial changes to the social system," it said.

The Johannesburg gathering has been billed as the largest United Nations summit ever, with an estimated 50,000 participants.

Although many European governments are sending high-power delegations headed by prime ministers, US President George W. Bush has said he will not go to the gathering. He is, however, dispatching his secretary of state, Colin Powell.

Soon after taking office in January 2001, Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Treaty, which set new greenhouse gas emission targets, arguing that it would damage his country's economy.

US officials say the treaty -- signed by most rich powers -- would also hold back global economic development and thus make it more difficult to combat poverty.