The majority of Africans live by subsistence farming and often have access only to marginal land. There is almost no agricultural management and as a result the soils are nutrient deprived at the best of times. Climate change in Africa has significantly disrupted weather patterns with dry spells now lasting longer and rains tending to be more intense. The increased aridity destabilises the soils such that they are easily washed or blown away. This has led to large areas of desertification and the abandonment of land. Disrupted precipitation patterns has led to a very significant increase in the number of flooding events. In the 1950’s there were 21 major floods in Africa, in the 2000’s there were 302. These floods are getting progressively larger and in recent years there have been a number of flood events that have each affected more than a million people. The floods destroy crops and contaminate ground water leading to both famine and drought. In some parts of Africa fighting is being fuelled by the effects of climate change. The Darfur conflict began over tribal rivalries but today it is more about gaining control of the remaining agricultural land as the surrounding area becomes desert.
The bacteria that cause diseases thrive in warmer and damp conditions. Climate change leads to both increased temperatures and increased precipitation, thus providing perfect breeding grounds. Many disease vectors are temperature dependent and as the isotherms spread, so too are the diseases. Amongst the diseases known to have spread are chagas disease, lymphatic, dengue fever, pneumonic plague, hantavirus, viral encephalitis and malaria. The World Health Organisation has worked out that 150,000 people die each year as a consequence of climate change and some 5,000,000 contract diseases and illnesses. The overwhelming majority of these occur in Africa and Asia. It is reasonable that the numbers would be split roughly equally between both continents (although Africa has a significantly lower population than Asia it is being more severely affected by climate change). On this basis, the death-toll in Africa since climate change took off in about 1980, will be in the order of 2 to 3 million and some 60 to 100 million people affected. The unpredictable rainfalls, desertification, contamination of ground water, loss of crops, loss of livestock, loss of homes etc is exacerbating the problem of people moving from rural to urban areas. Over population, a lack of infrastructure, poor employment prospects and a shortage of suitable housing is a major problem in many African cities and the influx of people from rural areas is making a bad problem even worse. The incomers are often forced to live in slum conditions where worsening overcrowding and expansion puts an ever increasing burden on the already ineffective water and power systems, drainage and sanitation, waste disposal etc.
In some places, not that many, rising sea-levels are already a concern. For the time being Africa tends not to be as badly affected as other places and this is partly because sea-levels aren’t yet rising as fast as they are elsewhere. However, as the oceans around the Tropical latitudes begin to warm up (it’s the huge volume of the oceans that makes them slow to warm and as a result they lag behind atmospheric warming) more and more people will be directly affected. This is a consequence of inundation, contamination of land, destruction of coastal ‘buffer’ zones.