Over 25,000 people rallied in London at the weekend, calling for urgent action on climate change ahead of today’s UN conference in Nairobi.
Marchers from the Stop Climate Chaos coalition assembled in the centre of London, where the protests included a bike ride past the US embassy to Downing Street to hand in a petition calling for a tightening of emission targets. The British government is being urged to negotiate an international deal to keep the increase in global warming to less than 2C.
And yesterday the UN produced a damning report that once again highlights the dangers to Africa from climate change. A new report released by the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate (UNFCCC) and based on data from UNEP and WMO indicates that the continent’s vulnerability to climate change is even more acute than had previously been supposed.It is predicted that 30 per cent of Africa’s coastal infrastructure could be inundated including coastal settlements in the Gulf of Guinea, Senegal, the Gambia and Egypt. Between 25 per cent and over 40 per cent of species’ habitats in Africa could be lost by 2085. Cereal crop yields will decline by up to five per cent by the 2080s with subsistence crops—like sorghum in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Zambia; maize in Ghana, millet in Sudan and groundnuts in the Gambia—also suffering climate-linked falls.
Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said: “Climate change is underway and the international community must respond by offering well targeted assistance to those countries in the front-line which are facing increasing impacts such as extreme droughts and floods and threats to infrastructure from phenomena like rising sea levels.”