WMO Press conference: State of the Climate in Africa report 26OCT2020

Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to this press conference with the World Meteorological Organisation.

We are today launching the State of the Climate in Africa report.

My colleague here on the left will give you more details.

Just a reminder this the contents of the press conference and the report and press release itself are all under embargo until 2:00 PM Central European time this this afternoon.

So without any further ado, I will pass the floor to Doctor Felipe Lucio.

He's on my left in the room.

He is the Director of the Regional Strategic Office at WMO in our Department of Member Services and Development.

Joining us via Zoom, we hope, is Doctor Omar Badour.

He is the coordinator of all the WM OS as data for climate reports.

So he is in Geneva.

He'll be joining us by Zoom, Also on Zoom, I hope he will be available for questions if you have any, is Doctor Amos Makarao.

He is the director of our regional office for Africa and he's based in Addis Ababa.

So without further ado, thank you very much for joining us, and I'll pass you over to Felipe.

Good morning.

My name is Philippe Lucio.

As my colleague Claire mentioned, and we are here today for the launch of the State of Climate in Africa 2019 report.

Africa as a continent faces significant challenges in addressing climate variability and change risks, including increasing temperatures and sea level, changing patterns of precipitation, the occurrence of extreme weather and climate events which have significant impacts on climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture and food security, water Disaster Risk Reduction and in other words over the broad socio economic development of the continent.

One good example was that of Mozambique, which was in March 2019 impacted a tropical cyclone Itai, which was considered to be one of the most destructive tropical cyclones ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, causing the death of more than 700 people and widespread displacement.

Together with the the total parallelisation of the city of Beira and this is a good testimony of why countries in Africa need to build and strengthen capacity for increasing their resilience against climate risk and overall improvement of disaster risk management efforts.

The State of Climate Service climate report in Africa is therefore motivated by the origins of climate action in Africa which must be supported by robust science based knowledge.

Knowledge which needs to be also supported by robust observational data.

There's also need of assessing the current capabilities of the countries in Africa with respect to the ability in developing these science based information which should support adaptation and mitigation to climate variability and change and the effort to increase the resilience in the continent.

Africa, unfortunately is a continent which still has limitations in terms of expertise, in terms of skills, but also in terms of resources and if we had that competing priorities in the continent or that contributes to limited implementation of integrated climate policies and strategies.

So, the Climate in Africa 2019 report is a report that was developed as a collaborative effort led by the World Meteorological Organisation with the participation of African continental institutions, regional climate centres and various partners organisation.

The report provides details about the behaviour of key climate indicators namely temperature, precipitation and sea level rise, their trends, **** impact events and the risks these events bringing to the continent and associated socio economic impacts.

It highlights lessons learnt from past climate action to identify policy recommendations which would basically inform any action in the continent which tries to address key challenges and opportunities.

When we look at the data, it is in a in a cubicle.

Africa is warming since 19 O1.

The continent has warmed by more than 1°C and when we look at 19/19/2000 and 19 we we see that the year was the 3rd warmest compared with any previous years we've had.

And we also note that the years 2015 and 2019 where each warmer than any particular year prior to 2014.

And the decade 20/10/2019 was also one of the warmest decades on record and we've seen a progressive warming each time we go from decade to decade.

Africa is also being impacted severely by erosion and coastal degradation and that is visible because most of the areas surrounding the African continent have reached an increase of sea level of more than 5 millimetres per per year.

In the case of Madagascar going east to Mauritius, that increase has been more than 5 millimetres per year against a global average of three to four millimetres per year.

We also have substantial impacts in terms of health areas which in the past had not seen the occurrence of diseases such as malaria particularly for example, the eastern parts of of Africa are now observing more occurrence of malaria episodes mostly because of global warming.

When we look at the policy direction that Africa needs to take to deal with the increasing impact of extreme events, there are two main points we should highlight.

The 1st is the need to increase climate risk management and increasing climate risk management involves improving preparedness prevention, which includes include effective early warning systems.

Early warning systems which must be based on use of appropriate data, on the use of improved risk knowledge, monitoring, prediction and forecasting, communication of actionable information and warnings, and eventually a good capacity to not only respond but also to put appropriate measures in the recovery periods.

The second most important policy recommendation coming out of this report is the fact that the increasing of climate resilience in Africa basically would have to go through, or would have to depend on the Nexus between agriculture, water and energy.

And that is because agriculture is the dominant sector in in Africa.

It employs more than 60% of the population and provides most of the livelihoods in the continent.

So as we try to improve efforts in terms of climate resilience, there's a need of improving agriculture output while at the same time reducing the emissions or carbon emissions.

This could be possible through, for example, using techniques that would add value to the current production systems, but also the use of micro irrigation schemes, for example powered by solar energy, which would increase output in terms of agriculture production but at the same time reduce the emission of carbon.

So overall, Africa needs to take action.

The action is needed today in terms of adaptation, but also is needed tomorrow in terms of mitigation.

And when we talk about mitigation, we're talking about mitigation in the sectors of energy, in the sectors of transport, in the sectors of infrastructure and building.

All that, of course, should be supported by robust scientific evidence, robust scientific knowledge, which is an area where Africa needs to make some progress.

Thank you, Felipe.

Now I would pass the floor to Doctor Omar Badour if you can, if you can hear us and joining us on Zoom.

Omar, can you?

Can you hear us?

So do I need to do anything to get Omar in?

Omar, can you just open your microphone?

Is he still not doing it?

While we're waiting for Omar Philippe, do you want to just say a few words about the launch this afternoon?

This afternoon, starting at 2O clock Central Eastern Time, we will have the launch of the State of Climate in Africa 2019 report.

This **** level launch will be an event which will comprise 3 segments.

The initial segment will represent the launch of the report itself in which we will have the three Co hosting organisations represented at the highest level.

The WMO will be represented by it's Secretary General Professor Tallas.

Then we will have the African Union Commission represented by Our Excellency Joseph Sacco, who's the Commissioner of Rural Economy, Agriculture of the African Union Commission.

And also we have a participation of our Excellency very strongly was the under Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Commission for for Africa.

OK, thank you.

So Omar, we can we can hear you now.

So please, please go ahead.

OK.

Thank you, Claire and Philippe.

So today we are releasing the first of its kind report on Africa.

It complements the Intergovernmental panel climate change, the series of report as well as WMO state of the global climate which we produce annually.

Today, Philip has already Doctor Lucia has already mentioned the many aspect of the findings in the report.

I would like just to highlight some additional few issues.

The first one is that Africa is warming as fast as other continents, including Europe and Asia.

So Omar, Omar, Omar, sorry to interrupt.

Can you can you turn on your camera?

We're not, we're not seeing you turn on your camera.

Can you see me now?

Sorry about that.

I can't yet.

Can anybody, can anybody see him try, try again?

Can you see me?

No, it's still not.

Sorry.

No, he has to do it from his computer.

You have to sort of accept the invitation for the for the video I think.

I accept it.

Can you see me now?

I don't know.

OK.

We think you need to validate the camera maybe if you go into zoom again, try try, just try doing that.

Sorry about this everybody.

Are you back?

Are you back in, Omar?

Hello.

OK, we can hear you again.

Still can't.

Still can't see you?

No, OK, we don't.

So sorry.

So perhaps just we're still not seeing you, but maybe perhaps just very briefly give bearing in mind that nobody is seeing you, you know, just briefly give a quick summary of some of the the main findings.

OK.

Yeah.

The main findings highlighted in report include the key climate indicators, including temperature.

We see Africa, Asia and Europe are the most warming continent in the world with about 0.4°C per decade.

For Africa.

Compared to the global trend, we are seeing double of the warm and globally and 2019 has been also warmer than the past years, especially in the north of the continent and southern part of the continent.

In terms of sea level, Doctor Lucio has already mentioned that some parts of the ocean surrounding the continent are seeing much higher sea level increase than globally, especially the area which has affected by the tropical cyclone activity.

Considering that sea level exacerbate the impact of tropical cyclones and the storms, we can see that the tropical cyclone like EDI which hit Mozambique and surrounding countries have been so devastating and there is a close link with the sea level rise in that region.

In terms of precipitation, as you know, rainfall is a main parameter for the African continent because agriculture is still based mainly on rent fed, rent fed crop production and 2019 has seen a contrast to the picture of rainfall distribution.

On one hand, the Northwest African continent was very dry.

It continued the previous year drought which made impact on agricultural production and water as well as in Southern Africa which continued it's the third dry season especially heating Namibia, Southern Africa and Zambia.

In terms of floods, we are seeing actually an increase monsoon intensity for the side region for two consecutive years.

And even today in 2020, we are seeing also an increased for in that part of the world in terms of impact.

We we are seeing that huge impact on on people, especially if we see that the African continent has seen the food insecurity increasing by 45% since 2012, eight years ago.

Also, the impact on displacement in 2019, more than 500, 1000 people has been impacted by the internal displacement due to floods in West and Central Africa.

60% of all internal displacement in the East and Horn Africa region during 20/19 were actually due to climate inducing disasters like flood and drought.

In terms of prediction, someone can ask us what will happen in the next five years.

We collaborated with the Met Office in the United Kingdom and they produced a very experimental at this stage of prediction.

But actually it fits well with with what we have already recorded in the past years that include continuous warming in the north and southern part of the continent and continues deficit in rainfall in the northern and southern part of the continent, but also increasingly for the Sahel part of the continent.

This means that there will be a huge impact on food security in the continent but as well an influence on people in terms of health and in terms of displacement due to the floods.

On long term projection, the situation is still continuing despite even if you look at the medium scenario of the IPCC, it is expected that the most of the African continent will exceed the the 2°C temperature warming and this is will be much more exacerbated in the northern and southern part of the continent.

And considering the huge sensitivity of these two sub regions to water issues, especially the scarcity of the water in the northern African continent as well as the southern part, we can see a huge impact in the future on water availability for people.

Heat waves are also fitting with the global trend in terms of increase of number of heat waves and their intensity and we are really recording extreme temperature in the North African and Southern African continent as Southern African of the continent with temperature exceeding 4850 in some places and some years.

And this is has also a huge impact on health of the people and also the drying of the rivers because of heat evaporates the water in addition to the drought.

So this accelerate actually the impact of drought.

In terms of impact, as I said, rain is a main factor that regulate the social and economic outputs of the continent.

Thanks to Food and Agricultural Organisation, we can see in the projection that you can see on the report that actually most of the crops that are reason in the continent will see a decline by up to 25% of some cases.

And this is especially very pronounced for the wheat production, which is the main production, for instance, in northern part of the continent and southern part of the continent.

So this will have a huge impact on feed security and food availability for the people health.

Also, as you know, the continent is an area where vector borne diseases due to climate factors, increasing temperature and floods in the central and Sahara region will make the malaria incidence more pronounced in the future.

There is an aggregate analysis on how all these projections of increased temperature In terms of economic growth we have the African Climate Policy Centre has provided very in depth analysis for each degree increase globally in temperature.

What will be the impact of the different sub regions and we can see the decrease in GDP for all the sub regions and the most pronounced ones including West and Central Africa and East Africa for.

For example, for 3°C increasing temperature globally, the East African sub region will see its GDP decrease by 4.5% and West Africa 9 point .7%.

Northern and Southern Africa because the agriculture is now not the major outputs of the economy, but still there is at least 2% decrease in GDP.

So 2% decrease is a huge number for the economist because it leads to a job less situation and less economic activity, employ in less employment and immigration and so conflicts.

So it's really an alarming indicator that we can see as an impact on the African continent, OK.

Thanks.

Thanks, Omar, I think given that we're not seeing you, I think there's that's probably a pretty good summary of, of, of the of the report.

I think maybe now we'll open it up for for questions, if there's any questions in the room or remotely.

And once again, I would remind you that we have, I think we have Doctor Amos Makarov, who's the director of our regional office in Africa based in Addis Ababa.

He should be with us remotely on the on the line.

So if there are any questions, please, please let me know.

Yes, good morning.

Morning.

Yes, this is Catherine.

Can you just introduce yourself?

Yes, Catherine Fiorcon Bukonga.

For France, Vancatra.

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Thank you.

Are there any further questions?

Yeah, hi, it's Lisa Schlein, VOA.

I've been unmuted.

This is all a little bit strange.

Anyway, good morning.

I have a couple of questions please.

One could Do you have any projections as to how many people are likely to go hungry as a as a consequence of climate change?

The inability to produce as much food as is needed.

And there have been predictions for quite some time now about the possibility of so-called climate refugees.

Do you expect that many people will be fleeing to other areas because of climate change, weather and the consequences of that?

In regard to conflict, the you, you Omar Badour, you mentioned that you were alarmed.

If you could elaborate upon that.

And then just lastly, please, if you could flesh out the kinds of mitigation and adaptation measures that are necessary to take immediately, I imagine, and whether there is the knowledge and the money to do this.

Do you have any idea of whether this would be an expensive process or whether some of these measures can be done relatively simply without costing too much?

Thank you.

OK.

Do you want to start Felipe and then oh, Mark an elaborate if necessary.

OK.

Thank you for those two very pertinent questions.

With respect to the first question, how many people are likely to go hungry as a result of climate variability and change?

We've noted from 2012 then the that there was an increase in food insecure and undernourished people by 45.6%.

And the predictions we have the decadal predictions we have for the period of 20/20/2024, they're indicating an increasing in terms of warming.

With increased warming, we expect a reduction in terms of food production.

We also expect impacts in terms of disease and and and pests.

But importantly we will have impacts generated by flooding on the infrastructure system for agriculture production, which is the main source of livelihoods and food security in the content.

So all indicates that the continuing warming would probably worsen the current 45.6 centre increase in terms of undernourished people we've seen from 20/20/12 and in terms of adaptation and mitigation today, Africa has identified adaptation as a key priority in their nationally determined contributions, which are the instruments countries use to indicate how they want to tackle the climate challenge as part of the Paris Agreement.

Adaptation in agriculture, adaptation in energy, one of the the two most important priorities indicated in these nationally determined contributions.

So it is critical that we improve agriculture production, we improve agriculture output not because it's the sector that employs the greatest amount of people, but also because it's the sector which provides the greatest amount of of livelihoods.

And when we look at the emissions from the the African continent, emissions come mostly from agriculture and forestry.

And therefore, agriculture is a sector which provides A tremendous potential for, on the one side, reducing poverty, increasing resilience by improving the livelihood of people.

And that can only be done by improving the way we do agriculture by using efficient irrigation systems which will increase output in terms of agriculture but also improve livelihood.

But at the same time, the use of clean energy such as solar power has the potential of addressing the climate challenge in terms of agriculture, because to improve agriculture we need irrigation and for irrigation we need energy.

So energy offers the potential clean energy.

Solar and wind energy offers the potential of being able to enhance agriculture production because it would allow irrigation but at the same time reducing emission.

So basically when we talk about African adaptation and and mitigation, we need to think of transition in terms of economy through transitional transformational development and plans and strategies.

In terms of mitigation, Africa is not a big emitter of carbon.

Therefore, there is a great potential for pursuing a path of development which will continue to be a law or a meeting will allow Africa to continue to be a law emitting emitting continent but at the same time achieving progress and development.

Here there is a a great potential of pursuing strategies and policies in terms of transportation, in terms of energy, more use of clean and green energy, but also in terms of infrastructure and industry.

So all those offer an opportunity.

Now in terms of the financing required, we've seen a great increase in terms of climate financing through for example, the establishment of the Green Climate Fund.

But there are still limitations in the ability of the African continent to tap into these climate financing.

So the reason is therefore to develop capacity, capacitate the the African continent to be able to better access climate financing.

But also at the national level, we need policies and strategies which not only use the knowledge we have but also prioritise key sectors of adaptation.

Because by adapting to climate variability and change, we are basically preserving.

We're basically making economies saving resources which could otherwise be destroyed by the occurrence of extreme climate, weather and climate events.

Omar Yeah, yeah.

I I asked the question about climate refugees and the concerns regarding that.

If you could answer that please, perhaps Omar, maybe you want to to talk about that?

Yes, the refugee issue is becoming a global issue in Africa, but also elsewhere.

This is due to many, many reasons.

So one, there are armed conflicts for instance in Africa and also the exacerbation of the situation by extreme events like drought, topical cyclones and floods.

This leads to an accentuation or exacerbation of the reflux of refugees across borders or internally.

We have seen this actually in many areas in in Africa, especially in Southern Africa, Central and West Africa.

Displacement of people has become now on North whenever there is an extreme event and a sustained extreme events like drought is one of the major actually trigger of the displacements in in East Africa.

And this has led to conflicts as I mentioned earlier because of lack of resources and there is a competition on very smaller resources in land and the grazing of animals and so forth.

This is we are not talking them as a climate refugees because it's a complex issue is a mixture of political armed conflicts as well as the climate.

So what we see, what we say usually is that the climate is an amplifier factor of of conflicts in the region.

Yes, so.

The problem is that the situation is not improving despite all the efforts done by United Nations system to mitigate the situation.

But unfortunately event after event you switch from droughts to extreme floods to tropical cyclones.

It does not give actually time to stabilise the situation towards more resilient societies.

So this is a big challenge in the in the African continent.

As Doctor Leschi mentioned earlier, there is a time to think about how to make climate action policies more efficient, more integrated so that all sectors develop same vision and same approaches to combat this extreme event impact.

In terms of statistics, you ask the these statistics about the future.

It's it's it's we don't have statistics of how many people will suffer hungers, but we have and this is that more people will suffer hunger.

If you look at the graph, it's the report on the crop production projection.

By the end of the century.

If we have the scenarios of emissions globally, you can see all type of crops that Africa is, is rising will decline dramatically, especially the rice, Millet, maize, wheat.

Those are basic food for the people in in Africa, especially the African agriculture is still basic, not as strong as in developed countries.

So unfortunately there is a need, there has not been a lot of work on making this agriculture more resilient in terms of water demand, in terms of efficiency and in terms of using energy.

So as Doctor Lucy mentioned earlier, there is now time to integrate all these things together, adaptation, using mitigation and using the best available resource in Africa, which is renewable energy.

Solar energy is abundant in African continent.

So this will actually help to improve the efficiency of agricultural system and also mitigate the impact of, of, of of food security in the future.

So this is what I can see on this question.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Do we have any further questions?

Hello.

Yes.

Yeah, this is my name is Peter Kenny.

I write for South African media.

I'm interested in the impact of climate change, which we've seen by erratic rainfall patterns and we've seen with climate with cyclone in Mozambique and the Victoria Falls drying up, so which had a big impact on the Zambezi River.

And I'm wondering with this pattern of desertification and soil erosion, which is common in the Southern Africa region, is there any mitigating factors that you can suggest to nations there that they can combat this known climate change that is on the horizon?

I might have missed part of question, but if I understood it correctly, you were referring to the impact of tropical cyclones and what can be done to address these increasing impact of tropical cyclones, particularly in Southern Africa.

Could that confirm?

Tropical cyclones and on the on the other hand, and on the southwestern part of Africa, the desertification and dry dry conditions forced by erratic rainfall patterns.

Thank you.

With respect to tropical cyclones, in 2019, we saw two consecutive Category 5 tropical cyclones hitting Mozambique.

Tropical Cyclone Itai, which I, as I indicated earlier, was considered to be one of the most devastating tropical cyclones that ever recorded in Southern Africa.

And a month later, in April, Tropical Cyclone Kenneth, which was even stronger than Tropical Cyclone Itai.

The indication we have is that coming from the data, of course, is that intensity of tropical cyclones could be expected to increase.

That being the case, basically for Southern Africa, Mozambique and the neighbouring countries which are impacted by tropical cyclones, they do not have an alternative other than building their capacity to deal with tropical cyclone.

And that capacity starts from the need of better understanding the behaviour of tropical cyclones, better predicting tropical cyclone occurrence, better communicating tropical cyclone warnings and message.

And this tropical cyclone warnings and messages have to be impact based warnings and risk based impact based warnings.

Because one of the things which we observed immediately after Trokusa ITAI was the fact that people did not understand the magnitude of the phenomena they were they were facing.

They did not understand the degree of risk they were exposed and therefore the the warnings were very often not actionable.

So there is a need of not only improving the communication of warnings but educating the people to understand risk, to understand the measures which need to be taken in case of warnings, but above all to look at the issues of, you know, hazards as integrated issues.

The case of Mozambique, there was Tropical cyclone ETA, which made landfall on the night of of the 14 and 15.

A day later, when the tropical cyclone had basically dissipated, people thought the worst was over.

But the worst came days later with the the the water that came from the rivers Buzi, which had basically flooded the entire town of of Pena.

So there's a need of looking at hazards, their consequences as an integrated problem where hydrologists, meteorologists, land use planners, urbanists and others come together to find the best and the appropriate measures which need to be taken to deal with these impacts.

One last comment I'd like to make here for example, was that people were asked to find refuge in appropriate places, but the city of Beira was never built to withstand category 5 tropical cyclone.

So that means the building codes need to be changed and the building codes cannot be changed using what tropical cyclones used to be like in the past.

They have to have a forward-looking analysis to anticipate the trends into the future and start designing infrastructure and other systems taking into account the changing nature of these tropical cyclones.

Now, in terms of desertification, unfortunately, North Africa and Southern Africa are likely to be the regions which are going to observe reduced rainfall as we move into a warmer climate in Africa.

That being the case, to prevent aridity and to prevent desertification, countries could take measures.

For example, reforestation is an important measure which on the one side improves the retention of water, runway or water, but at the same time creates vegetation, which is essential, is key for the hydrological cycle.

It is through vegetation where we have the evapotranspiration, we generate clouds and therefore we have rain.

So there are strategies which can be taken and I would say that Africa, in particular, southern Africa in particular, needs to start considering seriously those strategies.

And then building vegetation trees in others is one such strategy, which in the long term can contribute to reducing the impact of expanded arid land, but also of desertification in the parts which are going to to see less rainfall in the future.

Thank you.

I think we need to wrap up now.

So thank you.

Thank you very much for participating.

Sorry.

Thank you everybody for, for, for participating.

Apologies for the for the technical of the technical glitch, but thank you.

Thank you once again.