CLIMATE CHANGE COULD MEAN LOW CROP YIELD, MORE MALARIA CASES

EXPERTS say Tanzania is currently suffering high economic costs due to extreme events due to climate change. The costs include low crop yields due to drought and floods, as well as increased cases of malaria and other diseases.

Tanzania's economy is dependent on the climate, since a large proportion of the gross domestic product (GDP) is associated with climate sensitive activities, particularly agriculture. Therefore climate variability, such as extreme events like droughts and floods, has led to major economic costs.

In a recent publication by Development Partners Group and the UK Department International Development, the experts said some individual annual events have economic costs in excess of one per cent of GDP, and occur regularly, reducing long-term growth and affecting millions of people and livelihoods.

The experts concluded in their report that Tanzania is not adequately adapted to the vagaries of climate. The country, therefore, has a large existing adaptation deficit which requires urgent action.

 The combined effects of current climate vulnerability and future climate change are large enough to prevent the country from achieving key economic growth, development and poverty reduction targets, including the planned timetable for achieving middle income status by the year 2025 (National Development Vision).

It is said; however, that adaptation can reduce these impacts, but requires significant levels of funding. Significant funding is required to address the existing adaptation deficit, as well as to prepare for future climate change.

An initial estimate of immediate needs for building adaptive capacity and enhancing resilience against future climate change is US$100 - 150 million per year, according to the report. Mr Richard Muyungi, Assistant Director in the Vice- President's Office (Climate Change) told the 'Daily News' recently that the need for adaptation funding in Tanzania is at least US$600 million per annum. Other experts say the cost of adaptation increases rapidly in future years.

By 2030, financing needs of up to US$1 billion per year are reasonable, and potentially more if further accelerated development is included.

In another recent study that focussed on malaria, a mosquito- borne disease that infects around 220 million people a year, researchers from Britain and the United States found what they describe as the first hard evidence that malaria creeps to higher elevations during warmer years and back down to lower altitudes when temperatures cool.

This in turn "suggests that with progressive global warming, malaria will creep up the mountains and spread to new high-altitude areas," said Menno Bouma, an honorary clinical lecturer at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

And because people who live in these areas have no protective immunity because they are not used to being exposed to malaria, they will be particularly vulnerable to more severe and fatal cases of infection, he added. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) data, malaria infected around 219 million people in 2010, killing around 660,000 of them -- the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Tanzania malaria is responsible for between 60,000 - 80,000 deaths annually. But robust figures are hard to establish for a disease that affects mainly poor communities in rural areas of developing countries, and some global health experts say the annual malaria death toll could be twice the WHO figure.

Bouma's study, published in the journal Science, stretched back more than 20 years to when the LSHTM first collected data on malaria and climate in the Debre Zeit area of central Ethiopia.

It had been predicted that malaria as a disease could be especially sensitive to climate change, because both the Plasmodium parasites that cause it and the Anopheles mosquitoes that spread it thrive as temperatures warm, Bouma explained.

Some researchers have argued, however, that socioeconomic improvements and more aggressive and effective mosquito-control efforts would have large enough positive effect on the spread and intensity of malaria to neutralize the potential threat of changing climates.

Other studies by researchers in Tanzania and East Africa have also revealed devastating damage on the ecosystem, including forests and mountains.

The Kilimanjaro glaciers and snow cover have been retreating significantly over the years. Debate over past and current climate change and ice cap coverage, however, persists. It is said that in the 20th century, the spatial extent of Kilimanjaro's ice fields has decreased by 80 per cent.

It is suggested by some researchers, that if current climatological conditions persist, the remaining ice fields on the Kilimanjaro are likely to disappear between 2015 and 2020 -- for the first time in 11,000 years.

Further studies point to the loss of 'cloud forests' since 1976 resulting in 25 per cent annual reductions of water sources derived from fog, affecting annual drinking water of 1 million people living in Kilimanjaro area.

Along with warming surface waters, deep water temperatures, which reflect long-term trends of the large East African lakes -- Victoria and Nyasa have warmed by 0.2 to 0.7°C since the early 1900s. Deep tropical lakes are experiencing reduced algal abundance and declines in productivity because stronger stratification reduces upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water, so says researchers in a study funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

It is said that primary productivity in Lake Tanganyika may have decreased by up to 20 per cent over the past 200 years, and for the East African Rift Valley lakes, recent declines in fish abundance have been linked with climatic impacts on lake ecosystems.

The 1997-1998 coral bleaching observed in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea was coupled to a strong ENSO (an indication of the potential impact of climate-change induced ocean warming on coral reefs).

In the western Indian Ocean region, a 30 per cent loss of corals reduced tourism in Mombasa and Zanzibar and resulted in financial losses of about 12-18 million US dollars annually.

Mangroves and coral reefs, the main coastal ecosystems in Africa, will likely be affected by climate change. Endangered species associated with these ecosystems, including manatees and marine turtles, could also be at risk, along with migratory birds such as flamingoes.