Chillies, grown in Zambia, used locally as an elephant deterrent.Credit: Peter Alexander / Alamy Stock Photo
Sub-Saharan Africa’s export of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane, oil palm, and soybean to the European Union (EU) could be disrupted due to climate-vulnerability. A new study found that a large proportion will in future come from areas in severe drought, especially in the Sub-Saharan Africa region including Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
The findings, published in Nature Communications by Ertug Ercin, from R2Water Research and Consultancy, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues, compared vulnerabilities under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 2.6 and RCP 6.0). It revealed a clear trend of decreasing climate vulnerabilities from RCP 6.0 to RCP 2.6 for all crops, and for most of the exporting locations.
Ercin says “climate vulnerabilities vary per crop and per location in Africa. West African cocoa production will be more vulnerable because of climate change (around 35% higher compared to current conditions). The climate vulnerability of the major olive-exporting countries, Tunisia and Morocco, is highly vulnerable to drought under climate change as well. On the other hand, coffee imports from Ethiopia and Kenya will become less vulnerable to drought under climate change. One of the key relevant outcomes is that African countries have a low capacity to cope with the adverse effects of future droughts”.
Richard Munang, Regional climate change coordinator at the United Nations Environment Programme in Kenya says climate change applies both directly where emissions released elsewhere affect regions that have been least responsible and indirectly, where the vulnerabilities of one region are transferable to another. The risks impact sectors and sub-sectors that are crucial to the global economy.
