Climate Change
Africans have developed their farming systems to cope with an unpredictable climate over thousands of years. African farmers and livestock keepers have a variety of strategies to cope with the effects of unpredictable rainfall patterns. However most of the strategies are being challenged by a combination of climate change, population pressure and a degraded resources base.
Current climate change models predict that the drier parts of Africa will become drier and the wetter areas wetter with extreme weather events likely to increase. In recent years there have certainly been unusual patterns of more regular droughts, interspersed with high-intensity rainfall causing floods. Pastoralists are on the frontline of climate change and are particularly susceptible to the effects of more regular droughts and occasional flooding and are feeling the impact very severely.
There is increasing awareness that global warming, associated changes in precipitation, and the frequency and the severity of dramatic weather events such as droughts, hurricanes and floods are having direct and indirect effects on human and animal health. In both human and animal health, it is in the area of insect-borne diseases, that the link between climate change and disease has become most apparent. In a number of cases, insects such as ticks, midges and mosquitoes that can transmit various (viral and protozoal) diseases to animals and humans are expanding their ranges into new geographic areas.
All FARM-Africa’s programmes are helping the poorest and most vulnerable people in Africa cope and adapt to climate change in various ways. FARM-Africa also has a significant programme protecting and conserving Africa’s own indigenous forests for the benefit of both the local and global community. The Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) programme is increasingly recognizing the real value of this resource conservation work and FARM-Africa is looking to support communities to capture some of this value to invest in their long term sustainable development.
