World Bank: Weather extremes to become ‘normal’

The World Bank has released a report on climate change that projects grave consequences of global warming including declining crop yields and a serious threat to the livelihoods of millions of people.

This report may send cold chills down the spines of Kenyans as the country grapples with the impact of climate change.

The report titled Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal notes that as the planet warms further, heatwaves and other weather extremes that today occur once in hundreds of years, if ever, would become the “new climate normal”, creating a world of increased risks and instability.

The new scientific report released on Sunday indicates that development would lead to a decline in crop yields, shift of water resources, rise of sea levels and the livelihoods of millions of people put at risk.

The report comes barely a year after a report by Nile Basin Discourse (NBD) indicated that Nile Basin countries were the most affected by the impact of global warming. The discourse, which analysed the climatic variations along the Nile Basin, now indicates that the ever-reducing forest cover in the country is one of the reasons for the rapid global climate change.

Water retention

Extreme heat events may now be unavoidable because the earth’s atmospheric system is locked into warming close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, the report said. Even very ambitious mitigation action taken today will not change this, it said.

The report marries the NBD report, which also pointed out the retreating glacier ice caps on Mount Kenya, Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and shorter and more intense rainy seasons as some of the climate change indicators.

Most wetlands that have been used to hold water for use during dry seasons have also been destroyed, leading to low water retention.

In the latest 2012-2017 strategy, NBD said adaptation to climate change was the best way to fight the looming social crisis in countries within the Nile Basin.

“Today’s report confirms what scientists have been saying - past emissions have set an unavoidable course to warming over the next two decades, which will affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people the most,” said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.

“We’re already seeing record-breaking temperatures occurring more frequently, rainfall increasing in intensity in some places, and drought-prone regions like the Mediterranean becoming drier. These changes make it more difficult to reduce poverty and put in jeopardy the livelihoods of millions of people,” he added.