By Dr Kelvin Kamayoyo | MELO MEDIA
Climate change does often disrupt economic stability of most countries due to unprecedented rising temperatures, floods and extreme weather conditions that negatively affect sectors such as tourism, fisheries, agriculture, forestry and infrastructure, said Dr. Kelvin Kamayoyo, Technical Advisor for African Rivers. Overtly, climate change is a global crisis and impacts on communities unevenly. Today temperatures are rising exponentially while people across the globe often experience annual inundation floods, cyclones and wildfires due to the unrelenting climate change developments.
The developments induced by the unforgiving climate change are never the same and have disproportionate impact on the poorest and most marginalised communities. Incontestably, climate change effects virtually undermines the development aspirations of almost every country in the world today. To this effect, addressing the climate crisis requires a holistic approach and ambitious actions.
Notwithstanding the aforesaid, climate change is not only real but is also vicious and disrupt the ecosystem, and threaten the survival of some species on planet earth. Climate change has not spared rivers and other water bodies whose healthy is the fountain of hope for secured human life and safety of planet earth. Observably, climate change is increasing food insecurity and water scarcity, migration as well as inducing some avoidable conflicts and disrupts economic stability.
Additionally, the timing and scale of climate change effects demands for concerted global action and smart climate ambition towards a safer and prosperous planet earth. The smart climate ambition should be sensitive to the developmental needs of different countries and help to reduce risk and vulnerability to climate change, strengthen resilience as well as enhance well-being and capability to anticipate the likely occurrences. Therefore, most African countries ought to put more effort in decarbonising their economies in order to reduce air pollution and other environmental hazards that could potentially threaten the health of humans.
Furthermore, there is urgent need for African countries to embrace the concept of environmental, social and governance or ESG. This would help countries address climate-related risks and build climate-resilient infrastructure so that people could be safer whenever disaster strikes and ultimately reduce the involuntary costly repairs induced by floods and soil erosion.
For comments send to the author who is a Zambian economist, scholar and publisher: [email protected]
