Cape Town - According to the United Nations, more than 2.8 million people have been impacted by Nigeria’s worst floods in a decade, with 1.3 million displaced.
As the impact of climate change continues to have a devastating impact on Africa, recent floods have had a major impact on infrastructure and farmlands across the West African country.
The UN estimates that flood damages have hurt the country’s infrastructure and farmlands, essentially putting millions of lives at risk of malnutrition in Africa’s most populous country.
While climate change does play a role, poor infrastructure and poor preparation have intensified the situation.
In this podcast, Philip Jakpor, the director of programmes at Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, a social action organisation, puts the blame on poor dam management.
Alagoa Morris, who is a flood victim, environmentalist and the head of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, in Bayelsa state in Nigeria, shares what it is like to live through the flood.
COP27
The Executive Action Plan for the Early Warnings for All initiative has called for initial new targeted investments between 2023 and 2027 of $3.1bn (R55bn) to fight climate change, United Nations General Secretary António Guterres said on Monday.
Gutteres said that it will cost the equivalent of just 50 cents per person per year for the next five years to reach everyone on Earth, with early warnings against increasingly extreme and dangerous weather.
“Ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions are supercharging extreme weather events across the planet. These increasing calamities cost lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in loss and damage. Three times more people are displaced by climate disasters than war. Half of humanity is already in the danger zone,” said Guterres.
“We must invest equally in adaptation and resilience. That includes the information that allows us to anticipate storms, heat waves, floods and droughts. To that end, I have called for every person on Earth to be protected by early warning systems within five years, with the priority to support the most vulnerable first,” he said.
IOL