What is Climate Change going to cost in Africa?
The economics of climate change is a new field, and one that is complicated by the difficulty of saying for sure if a specific event is due to climate change or natural variation.
Estimates of what climate change will cost vary greatly, but are all big, running to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Experts tend to agree with the 2007 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, which said the costs of doing nothing would be much higher.
The costs of climate change will include: Direct damage to infrastructure and crops from extreme weather events such as floods, storms and droughts. Since 1980, the economic damages of weather-related disasters around the world has totaled over an estimated US$1 trillion.
Others include are, loss of lives, costs of tackling health problems such as disease outbreaks and the injuries people sustain in extreme events, loss of ecosystem services- such as crop pollination by insects, costs of mitigating climate change and moving towards low-carbon economies and costs of adapting agriculture, health and other sectors to the impacts of climate change.
When most of a country’s wealth is in the wild, shifts in natural systems can wreak havoc with its economy. Namibia is a case in point. Its natural legacy underpins much of the national bank balance and also leaves it highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
In fact, research by IIED suggests the impacts on natural resources alone could reduce the country’s GDP by 1 to 6 per cent. Employment opportunities could shrink and wages fall, with incomes for unskilled labour dropping by 24 per cent in a worst-case scenario.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that climate change could reduce GDP across Africa by 2 to 4 per cent by 2040, a figure that could climb up to 10 or even 25 per cent by 2100.
Small-scale farmers would be the most heavily impacted, with crop revenues falling by as much as 90 per cent by the end of the century, and drought expansion costing up to US$26 billion in dry-land losses.
Kenya, for example, needs 7 trillion in the next 10 years to address the effects of climate change.
According to Dr Chris Kiptoo, Kenya’s Principle Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, “Climate change is going to be very costly for us in the next 10 years. To mitigate and adapt to it, the country will require nearly US$62 billion
A 2009 report that Christian Aid produced summarised studies that concluded that; In Cameroon, a 14 per cent reduction in rainfall was predicted to cause losses of US$4.65 billion. A seven per cent reduction in rainfall would reduce the country’s net revenue by six and a half per cent per hectare.
In Ethiopia, marginal temperature increases will reduce net farm revenue by up to US$997 per hectare. In Zimbabwe, a 3.3°C increase above temperatures experienced before the Industrial Revolution would decrease annual farm revenues by US$0.4 billion.
A report commissioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the economic costs of damage to port cities from flooding, storm surge and high winds caused by climate change.
This indicates that in Alexandria alone, the Egypt third largest city’s, US$563.28 billion of assets could suffer damage or be lost because of coastal flooding alone by 2070. It says coastal adaptation would cost upward of US$1.7 billion in Port Said and US$2 billion in Alexandria.
This therefore calls for Africa to act swiftly in addressing the problem.
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