Africa urged to address climate change to ensure food security
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E-mail Xinhua, October 25, 2012
Scientists on Wednesday called on African countries to address climate and land tenure systems to avert the continent's food security challenges.
Dr. Braimoh Ademola, the senior Natural Resources Management specialist of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department (ARD) at the World Bank, said the prospect of Africa rising from its bleak food security reality may never come to pass if two key problems are not addressed.
"We are taking a look at how farmers can be assured that if they plant crops this year, the next year they are not driven away from the same plot of land," Ademola said on the sidelines of the 2012 Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) Conference underway in Nairobi.
He cited Africa's need to increase productivity for about 750 million people in Africa by 2050 as the continent's greatest challenge what with the lacking resilience in the agricultural sector to cope with the reality of climate change whose impact is likely to decrease crop yields to as low as 20-30 percent.
Ademola said that Africa must check its green house gas emissions as an important factor in mitigating on climate change.
Revealing that the World Bank had programs designed to help countries implement Climate Smart Agriculture, a model that helps tackle food security and climate change problems concurrently manner addressing those issues simultaneous, he warned that breakthroughs cannot be achieved without taking measures to deal with resource depletion and land degradation.
On Monday, Kenya said it will begin to engage farmers in order to promote climate smart agricultural technologies which allow them to adapt to the effects of climate change.
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