Africa calls for climate justice

In the event of a global temperature increase of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the World Bank predicts that southern Africa would experience up to thirty percent less rainfall. The result: an increased risk of drought. During an extremely dry period in the mid-1990s, herdsmen in Ethiopia lost around half their animals.

In East Africa, there could be more rain in future - not spread equally throughout the year but pouring down on just a few consecutive days. In 2011 torrential rainfall hit the Tanzanian port city of Dar Es Salaam, flooding entire districts. 10,000 people had to be housed in emergency accommodation. At least 23 people died.

In Africa small farmers produce some 90 percent of the continent's harvests. If crop resistance to the increasing droughts, floods and other weather disasters does not improve greatly, up to 20 percent more people will suffer hunger by 2050, the UN estimates.

Malnutrition resulting from poor harvests is already a problem in many countries. Many people move to city slums where diseases like cholera quickly spread. If temperatures rise, other diseases like malaria could also spread more quickly - for example in the East African highlands, a region that is currently malaria-free.

Higher temperatures influence entire eco-systems. Many plants and animals cannot adapt to the changing conditions quickly enough. A report by the World Climate Council says that between 20 and 30 percent of all species face extinction as a result of climate change.

The covering of ice on Mount Kilimanjaro is almost 12,000 years old. In the last 100 years more than 80 percent of the ice fields have disappeared. A research group in Ohio has calculated that if this continues, the ice will have vanished completely by 2033 at the latest. They say drought and reduced snowfall would be the main reasons.

Much of the responsibility for climate change lies with power plants, factories and automobiles in the US, Europe and Asia. But the felling of many African forests, for example to obtain charcoal, increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and contributes to the destruction of the soil.

Many people have now realised that they have to act to counter the effects of climate change. For decades, environmentally aware Kenyans have been planting new trees and the area covered by forest is expanding. The trees prevent valuable farmland from being eroded - and they absorb the greenhouse gas CO2.

Monocultures are very susceptible to drought or attack by pests. If different types of fruit are grown together, then there is still a harvest if one of them fails. According to the UN Environment Program (UNEP) ecological agriculture increases resistance to the consequences of climate change more effectively than conventional farming.

Underground rainwater reservoirs, insurance schemes that act as a buffer when harvests fail - there are many ways to soften the effects of climate change. Development aid and climate protection must go hand in hand, stressed delegates at a recent UN conference. However, no concrete projects were put forward.

"Climate justice now!" demonstrators called at at a UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, four years ago. They are now looking towards the end of this year when climate change will be discussed in Paris. There, the first global climate agreement could be adopted, with the goal of restricting the effects of climate change and keeping the global warming increase to two degrees Celsius.