By Denis McClean

ABUJA, 16 May 2014 – A disaster-resilient future for Africa will have to take account of the fact that it is the region of the world that will suffer the most from climate change and which struggles the most when it comes to capacity to manage present and future disaster risk, the 5th Africa Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction heard yesterday.

Keynote speaker, Prof. Oliver C. Ruppel, coordinating lead author on the Africa chapter of the 5th Assessment Report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said Africa would suffer particularly in the areas of water scarcity/drought, food insecurity and ill health. “Climate-related hazards that we experience more and more have very negative outcomes especially on people living in poverty,” he said.

The Stellenbosch University academic warned that climate change has the capacity to exacerbate and multiply existing threats to human security including many of the threats which are known to be drivers of conflict. “The degradation of natural resources in Africa is a result of both over-exploitation of natural resources and climate change,” he said.

For more information follow this link: http://www.unisdr.org/archive/37509