Urgent action against climate change
18th October 2018
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The landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that urgent and unprecedented changes are needed for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5°C. Anything beyond this will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
Here we share our views on the report and what it means for those living in the drylands of Africa.
The report provides real hope that it is possible, though not easy, to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2030. This is only possible if we all take immediate action to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas and promote sustainable land use.
The report highlights the importance of protecting our forests and planting more trees to remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Extreme weather ahead
But it’s not all good news. Whatever we do now, we are in for increasingly extreme weather in the years ahead and unless you are very elderly, this is not just a problem for future generations but also for our future selves.
There are high risks that poverty and will increase in some populations including those living in the drylands.
In West Africa, where Tree Aid works, even at 1.5°C, there will be large increases in the number of hot days. The report confirms West Africa as a climate-change hot spot with a likelihood of negative impacts on crop yields and food security.
Losing 10 billion trees per year
The report calls for a scale up of technologies to capture carbon from the air. The natural technologies highlighted include replenishing our degraded soils, ending deforestation and planting more trees which are win-wins that bring a multitude of benefits beyond carbon sequestration but we need to scale up efforts quickly as we are still losing a net 10 billion trees per year.
Worryingly, the report also relies on geo-engineering solutions and direct air capture to remove carbon from the air. These haven’t yet been proven to work or work at scale and may divert resources away from the proven natural technologies.
Above all what is required is political leadership.
Communities controlling forests is key
At Tree Aid, we’ve been working with the government of Burkina Faso to decentralise forest governance and place control for the management and utilisation of forests with the communities that use the trees. This is having real benefits.
We are working with the local community in Yendi, northern Ghana, to grow more than 1 million trees thanks to funding from Ecosia.
Collective community agreements on how trees are grown, managed, harvested and replanted is contributing to a net increase in trees as well as added value in supplementary food and growth in household income from tree enterprises.
Enshrining forest management in law
Other governments across the drylands are also seeing the benefits of community-managed forests to promote and develop green economies. Ethiopia for example recently enshrined rights to community-managed forest in law to protect the rights of poor communities that depend on trees for their livelihoods.
Wherever trees are planted, they provide a global good that benefits all of us. That’s why we are committed to growing more trees across the drylands of Africa and ensuring that the communities that rely on those trees can use them to best effect to grow their way out of poverty and protect the planet.
