A new World Bank report on climate migration begins, in part, in Morocco. The authors of “Groundswell” point to water challenges in the life of a village teen who thinks of moving to Rabat because the decreasing water supply is putting too much pressure on his family farm. These are…
How much worse will it get? That’s a climate change question that serves as a theme for a new report released Tuesday by Chatham House, the London-based policy institute focused on global affairs. It looks at impacts that may well be “locked in” by 2040 or 2050, assuming there is…
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations plans to put climate action at the center of all its projects and offices, following a meeting in Rome to evaluate a new strategy and discuss its impact. Speaking to participants, FAO chief Qu Dongyu said the world is facing…
In 2026, Senegal will become the first country in Africa to host an Olympic event, when the Summer Youth Olympics will take place in Dakar. Initially set for 2022, the world’s most important sporting tournament for teenagers has been pushed back on account of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. While regrettable,…
With what is now the perhaps unavoidable 2°C in global warming, and as early as 2050, southern Africa will see increases in drought and dangerous fire weather with impacts to agriculture, forestry, health and ecosystems. North Africa will see dry conditions too, as will the western Sahel region. If there’s…
South Africa and the other members of the G20 Environment Ministers issued a final communiqué following their meeting in Italy, but they’ve failed to come to terms on a global coal phaseout. The meeting, which in some respects signals what to expect ahead of the COP26 climate meeting in Scotland…
Increasing rainfall linked to climate change is a main factor causing the water level of Lake Tanganyika to rise, with Burundi – one of four African nations bordering the lake – taking the hardest hit. More than 30,000 people have now been affected, with the rising waters forcing people from…
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says his country will begin reducing carbon emissions in 2025, 10 years earlier than previously projected. “With regard to our energy resources, we plan to build capacity to generate over 17 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030,” said Ramaphosa, speaking at the Leaders Summit on…
As President-elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are sworn into office in the United States Wednesday, there are a number of immediate policy changes that affect the global community and Africans in particular. Biden vowed to reverse the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), a decision…
Three African nations are among those awarded grants from a new fund designed to deliver sustainable cooling to some of the hottest places. The US$580,000 comes from the UK-based Ashden organization, which has focused on climate innovation for the last 20 years. In partnership with the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program…
Access to water has long been recognized as a basic human right, but the ways in which women and girls bear the brunt of water scarcity is often overlooked by those who seek to address the issue. Now, climate change and coronavirus are combining forces to wreak havoc on African…
President Danny Faure of Seychelles underscored the challenges facing island nations as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. Faure’s pre-recorded speech was among six such talks scheduled for African leaders, in a format that replaced in-person meetings for the…
Malaria hits hard on the African continent, home to 93 percent of the world’s 228 million cases in 2018 and 94 percent of its fatalities. What scientists at the universities of Leeds and Lincoln in the UK want to know is how Africans might be affected in the climate change…
Some of the greatest luminaries in the arts and sciences – from Nobel prize-winning astrophysicists, to singer Madonna to the economist Muhammad Yunus – have published a joint statement insisting that the world cannot go “back to normal” and must consider the COVID-19 crisis an urgent call for new pathways…
Scientists from Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, working alongside dozens of global colleagues, warn that the earth’s tropical forests are losing their ability to serve as “carbon sinks” and remove global emissions from the atmosphere. Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, looked at data from 300,000…