Tag: Africa

DeSmogBlog, May 8, 2021

Articles include: Oregon Utility Using Greenwashing and ‘Renewable Natural Gas’ To Push Back on Potential Gas Bans; New Government Report Highlights Federal Failures to Oversee Offshore Drilling [report is here]; New Lawsuit Challenges ‘Fast-Track’ Permits Used for Oil and Gas Pipelines Nationwide; Over a Half-million Americans Live Near Oil Refineries With High Levels of a Cancer-causing Air Pollutant, Report Finds [report is here]; Ugandan Farmers Whose Land Will Soon Become a Crude Oil Pipeline Pathway Lose Years of Livelihood;  Climate Disinformation Database: Energy4US

The Daily Climate, April 22, 2021

Articles include: Earth Day; Young activists; EU climate agreement; Biden’s climate goals; Biden and Putin; building electric vehicles; Brazil and the Amazon; climate change and the world’s economy; African peace and climate change; car-free inner cities; Putin, Russia, and GHGs; Canada’s GHG pledge; Ikea and renewable energy.

The Daily Climate, April 15, 2021

Articles include: 2050 Goals are inadequate; champagne & climate change; 100% clean power; renewable energy powers decarbonization; electric vehicles by 2035; Interior Department and Manchin; Epic Drought; Indian monsoon season; ticks moving into the Arctic; East African oil pipeline; American research station abandoned; food web in the Great Lakes.

Study: Climate Change Could Impact Your Favorite Cup of Coffee

Eco Watch: Study: Climate Change Could Impact Your Favorite Cup of Coffee.

Climate change could make it harder to find a good cup of coffee, new research finds. A changing climate might shrink suitable areas for specialty coffee production without adaptation, making coffee taste blander and impacting the livelihoods of small farms in the Global South.

Published in Scientific Reports on Wednesday, the study focused on regions in Ethiopia, Africa’s largest coffee-producing nation. Although studies have previously documented the impact of climate change on coffee production, what’s less understood is how varying climates could change the flavors of specialty coffee, the researchers wrote.

Climate change: 5 places where global warming is a security risk

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Climate change: 5 places where global warming is a security risk. As the U.N. Security Council meets to discuss growing threats from a heating planet, here are some places where storms, wildfires and drought are fueling security risks.

From Louisiana’s battle with two hurricanes and an icy polar vortex in the past year to Kenya’s struggle with locusts, drought and floods, climate risks are piling up – and colliding with other threats like COVID-19, making them harder to manage.

“By the time you start to recover from one direct hit, another one is coming,” said Erin Sikorsky, director of the International Military Council on Climate and Security.

As leaders of countries on the U.N. Security Council meet Tuesday to talk about climate pressures and global peace, it is increasingly clear that rising temperatures will fuel instability, from conflict to displacement, she said.

The impacts of a heating planet, such as scarcer water in shared rivers and more failed harvests, can hike existing tensions between countries, said Sikorsky, who is also deputy director of the U.S.-based Center for Climate and Security.

Study: ‘Invisible killer’: fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018

The Guardian: ‘Invisible killer’: fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, research finds. Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals.

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.

Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower.

Is Fonio the Ancient Grain of the Future?

Civil Eats discusses Is Fonio the Ancient Grain of the Future? Yolele hopes this nutritious, climate-crisis-ready crop w2ill compete with quinoa globally, while supporting smallholder farms in West Africa.

Multinational corporations (and foundations) generally take one approach to agricultural development in Africa. They encourage farmers to grow high-yield varieties of crops—mostly corn—developed in the U.S. and Europe, using expensive seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. In many cases, the crops fail to thrive due to the differences in climates and soils. And the same negative environmental impacts associated with industrial agriculture in the U.S., including the loss of biodiversity and water contamination, follow. Overall, these efforts rarely decrease hunger or make farmers more financially secure.

The Daily Climate, December 18, 2020

The Daily Climate discusses: Native American art; First Native American Interior Secretary; John Kerry; NC environmental chief to lead EPA; Iceberg heading towards island; preventing wildfires; winter storms and climate change; coral versus climate; report on cost of climate change; Biden picks.

How climate change threatens African coffee farmers

DW discusses How climate change threatens African coffee farmers. Rising temperatures, drought and erratic rainfall are making growing coffee harder. In just 30 years, climate change could destroy half of all coffee growing land, threatening millions of African farmers.

Some savor the taste, others drink it to stay awake. Whatever the reason, the world has a seemingly insatiable taste for coffee.

Some 169 million bags of coffee were produced in the 2019/2020 coffee year, according to the International Coffee Organization.

But the future of coffee is gloomy. About 60% of wild coffee strains worldwide are in danger of extinction, according to a study by the US journal Science Advances. This includes Arabica, a coffee species that accounts for over half of worldwide coffee production.