FORMER PRESIDENT Mary Robinson promised yesterday to push the needs of Africans affected by global warming to the fore at forthcoming climate change negotiations after hearing accounts of how the continent was being devastated by changing weather patterns.
The former UN human rights commissioner was in Cape Town to take part in a special tribunal established by NGOs to accumulate testimony given by front line climate change witnesses from around Africa.
Their messages are to be delivered to the world leaders taking part in negotiations over emission reductions in Copenhagen in December in an effort to ensure the human toll as well as the scientific theory behind the threat is understood.
“The testimony of women and men who are already struggling to cope with a changing climate is a powerful reminder of what is at stake in the international climate negotiations.
“Their voices — and their demands for a fair, ambitious and binding climate deal — deserve to be heard by political leaders in Africa and across the globe,” said Mrs Robinson.
Farmers from Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Ethiopia and South Africa gave moving accounts of the difficulties their communities are facing since the repetitive cycle of flooding and drought has gripped their homelands to a panel of guests that included Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
One of the most compelling stories was delivered by Constance Okollet, a community mobiliser and farmer from the Tororo district in eastern Uganda.
“Before 2007 we had two harvests every year, but now there’s no weather pattern. Floods like we’ve never seen came and swept up everything. We went back when the waters left and there was nothing left: our houses, crops and animals were gone,” she said.
Ms Okollet explained how the receding flood waters led to outbreaks of disease because the waterholes had become dirty, which made them breeding grounds for malaria carrying mosquitoes. “People are getting only one meal a day, so many are dying. Some times five or six each day are dying from disease and starvation.
“It was not until I went to a meeting about climate change that I heard it was not God, but the rich people in the West who are doing this to us. We are asking that they stop, or reduce [their emissions],” she said.
Omar Jibril, a pastoralist cattle farmer from northern Kenya had a similar tale to tell. The pastures in his region were devastated by serious drought in 2005 and the grasslands have not recovered due to a continued lack of rain. “I had 200 cows then but now I have only 20 left. They have all died.
“In the past our land was able to recover from drought, but not any more. The animals I have left I must feed human food, and we must walk a long way to get water.
“I used to sell animals so I could afford to send my children to school, but now some have had to drop out. Because of the food shortage, people are forced to resort to deforestation to survive. You will not see trees where I am from,” he said.