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- Climate change kills Africa’s plants – computer simulation proves – our evidence is reverse causal
African BiodiversityWarming kills African biodiversityMano, ’10 – writer for The Herald [Costa, 9/28/2010, The Herald, “Zimbabwe: Climate Change Threat to Biodiversity – Nkomo,” Lexis, DS] Climate change has the potential to pose major challenges to biodiversity-based tourism in many parts of Africa including Zimbabwe, Vice President John Nkomo has said. In his address at the commemoration of the World Tourism Day here yesterday, VP Nkomo said climate change could negatively affect the livelihoods of thousands of people and their national and local economies. This year's commemorations were held under the theme, "Tourism and Biodiversity." "In recent years, the biggest threat to biodiversity has been climate change, which in itself is mainly a result of global warming. "A decrease in rainfall could threaten important wetlands and water bodies and ecosystems they support, not withstanding devastation to agriculture." He said incidences of veld and forest fires, which were major causes of biodiversity loss already were affecting the tourism industry in this country. The result would be significant ecosystem changes that could cause species loss and changes in biological composition and diversity. "There is therefore, need for extensive high level research into the likely effects of rapid climate change at local level since changes have envisaged on global or regional scales do not always apply at the local level or affect local ecosystems. "Scientific and policy institutions must be capacitated to enable responses to the changing climate to be focused, relevant and at the least cost possible." Since the mid 1980s, VP Nkomo noted, the trend towards local communities be encouraged to be actively involved in conservation efforts, has led to the emergency of eco-tourism as a more responsible form of nature based activity that promotes conservation of biodiversity and also brings benefits to local communities. He said in a growing number of instances, tourism generated funds for the sustenance of local communities and that's providing local people with an economic incentive to protect biodiversity. Communities that receive significant income from tourism may be motivated to conserve biodiversity. "However, if benefits are small or not sufficiently linked with conservation inputs, they may be reinvested in activities that undermine biodiversity such as clearance or destruction of forested areas for agricultural purposes and livestock rearing," he said. He said biodiversity was especially important in rural areas since approximately 70 percent of the country's 12 million people lived in communal areas covering 42 percent of the country's total land area. These people V.P Nkomo added, depended on bio diversity to provide a subsistence livelihood and in some cases a modest cash income. The VP said in Zimbabwe the socio economic challenges, which the country faced in the aftermath of the land reform programme resulted in all biodiversity conservation initiatives that had hither to be launched, gradually dying due to lack of funding. "Most of these projects were supported financially and materially by NGOs, mainly the Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources. "As funding and other support dwindled so did the fortunes of campfire and other community based tourism enterprises as well as the hopes, aspirations and livelihoods of the concerned communities. "He added that sustainable development of economic sectors, including tourism should now be top priority for all countries worldwide. The Governor and Resident Minister of Matabeleland North Province, Thokozile Mathuthu said communities and all stakeholders should thrive to control environmental degradation as that had a negative impact on the state of the environment. She said degradation of the environment also had a direct influence on the tourist arrivals. "If environmental degradation is not controlled, it will lead to decline in tourist arrivals and that will in turn lead to the decline in revenue generation and that will see the communities getting affected through unemployment. "So it is of utter importance that we take care of our environment wherever we are," she said. She noted that the tourism sector had witnessed an upsurge in arrivals during the third quarter. "The country is a well-known green destination and therefore we must strive to maintain that status, sustaining bio diversity. We need conservation programmes so that we get the competitive edge. Local communities should be educated on what biodiversity is so that they appreciate it in promoting and conserving bio diversity," she said. Climate change kills Africa’s plants – computer simulation proves – our evidence is reverse causalSciDev, ‘5 [“Climate Change ‘Threatens to Evict African Plants,’” SciDev.net: Africa News, Lexis, DS] Climate change could drastically alter the distribution of thousands of plant species across Africa, say scientists. The researchers, led by Jon Lovett of the University of York in the United Kingdom, looked at 5,197 species of African plants -- about 10-15 per cent of the continent's plant species. Using computer models that predict future climate, the researchers concluded that by 2085, the habitats in which nearly all of these plants can live would either shrink or shift, often to higher altitudes, as a result of anticipated changes in Africa's climate. Lovett says the team did not look explicitly at the risk of species extinction, but at the loss of areas with a suitable climate for the plant species studied. They say that for between one-quarter and one-half of the species they studied, there will be no part of Africa with a suitable climate by 2085. The study will be published this month in the Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a leading journal for research on African vegetation. The researchers say changes will be particularly drastic in the forests of West Africa, stretching from Guinea to the Congo basin. They believe the predicted changes in plant distribution could mirror the large-scale decline in West African forests that occurred 2,500 years ago during the last Ice Age. Other areas expected to be hard hit are eastern Africa and the continent's south-west coast. Climate change is a factor that needs to be taken into account when identifying areas in Africa that are important to plant conservation, say the researchers. Lovett told SciDev.Net that his research suggests climate change could greatly reduce the availability of medicinal plants in Africa. According to the World Health Organization, nearly three-quarters of Africans rely on traditional medicines derived from local plants. "This is an important piece of work, providing a more comprehensive picture of the threats to African plants from climate change than has previously been available," says Chris Thomas, also at the University of York, though not part of Lovett's team. He says Lovett's team estimates are based on conservative estimates of future climate change. Last year, Thomas and colleagues published research in Nature that claimed that a substantial proportion of the world's biodiversity was under threat of extinction from climate change (see Climate change 'threatens one million species'). The study came under fire from researchers at the University of Oxford who doubted the possibility of predicting with accuracy the fate of global biodiversity using a computer model of just 1,103 species, as the authors had done. They also criticised the press announcement issued to the media, which claimed that a quarter of land animals and plants could eventually go extinct if climate change was left unchecked (see Inaccurate media reports hinder conservation efforts). The changes predicted by Lovett's team do not necessarily imply that the species will go extinct, but ecologists tend to agree that significant reductions in the area a species can inhabit will reduce their likelihood of survival. "The percentage of species at risk of extinction is expected to increase with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations," says Thomas. "These emissions are changing the climate, and effectively exporting extinction to other parts of the world, including Africa. Therefore, the obvious answer is to take action to minimise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels." Lovett's team compared the climate in 1975 to future scenarios predicted for 2025, 2055 and 2085 using climate models created by the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre. They used three distinct computer models to predict which plants would be affected by changing climate. Although the models disagreed on the exact extent of the problem, they each suggested that changes to Africa's vegetation would be profound. 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