Climate change: spotlight on Western Cape

Climate change: spotlight on Western Cape
by Leonie Joubert

The Western Cape may be one of the wealthiest provinces in southern Africa. But its residents would be naive to think that the environmental and socio-economic fallout of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable continent will not reach this far south. Leonie Joubert reports.

Remember the Great Depression of 1930 – one quarter of the US population was rendered unemployed and the fallout rippled across every economy of the developed world. Imagine being a purveyor of luxury items in a market like that – for you can be sure that fine wine, along with glossy magazines and cellphones, will be the first items to fall off the shopping list as household budgets get slashed in a global recession.

Last month the former Senior Vice President of the World Bank and specialist economic adviser Sir Nicholas Stern told the British Cabinet that if the world’s population continues to shunt greenhouse gas pollution into the sky as we are today, within a century we will bring about an economic slump equivalent to that of the 1930's.

The consequences for the wine industry will not just be felt in the loss of consumer spending amongst traditional wine-buying markets. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change served to confirm some of the ways in which climate change is playing out on our subcontinent.

Socio-political instability
Africa is the continent most at risk due to climate change. A 2°C temperature climb will bring about 'sharp declines in crop yield in tropical regions', estimated at 5 to 10 percent in Africa with an associated increase in malnutrition and related deaths. Half of all malnutrition-related deaths (4 million in total globally), occur in Africa while a 2°C rise in temperature will 'increase the people at risk of hunger, potentially by 30 to 200 million' globally. Stern states that the declines in yield will be highest in Africa and Western Asia, where dependence on agriculture is highest along with the greatest limits in purchasing power.

Places like West Africa will be at risk of socio-political instability as 'drought and other climate related shocks' trigger conflict and violence as people struggle for scarce resources.

This, like the growing malaria footprint, may occur far from the relative comfort of the Cape, but it would be naïve to think that the Cape won’t be touched by the large-scale migrations associated with people displaced by drought and water shortages in poorer and more conflict-ridden parts of the continent. Stern said that 'approximately 7 million people migrated in order to obtain relief food out of the 80 million considered to be semi-starving in sub-Saharan Africa primarily due to environmental factors'; climate change will aggravate this further. South Africa, one of the more stable economies of the region, is likely to see a significant increase in migration from the north and those moving populations are not likely to stop just south of the border.

Loss of agricultural output in the Western Cape
A 2°C increase in average temperature will bring about an estimated 20 to 30 percent decrease in available water in southern Africa. Western Cape water managers are already struggling to meet the growing demand for water here, as urbanisation continues apace. While construction is underway on the Berg Water Project near Franschhoek, the dam is only expected to meet the need for seven years after it is completed in 2007. By 2014 the demand for fresh water in the region will once again outstrip the supply augmented by this dam.

Meanwhile the soft fruit industry has recorded a 1°C increase in temperature during the past three decades. The Stellenbosch University horticulture department reported in 2004 that many farmers were finding it increasingly difficult to produce export quality fruit as rising temperatures prevented trees from resting sufficiently during winter while fruit was becoming sunburned during ripening season.

The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) has confirmed the shifting 'home range' of the tree aloe (or kokerboom), supporting theories that the desert is pushing south into the Cape. The westerly storm tracks which bring the region’s winter rainfall are also expected to shift south, thereby increasingly missing the continent and dumping their water out to sea.

Drought and delay in seasonal rains have had a significant impact on the Cape’s wheat production in recent years – something which will increasingly occur as the region succumbs to predicted drought, rainfall decline and increasing temperatures.

Dryland vineyards of the Swartland may increasingly need to turn to irrigation to keep their vineyards productive. However, the demand for water may require municipalities to divert the restricted resource to expanding urban areas, at the expense of regional agriculture.

Increased temperatures, drier soils and more potent south-easterly winds will fuel the often problematic summertime fires of the Cape.

Many scientists argue that the planet is already committed to a 2°C increase in temperature – this is due to a lag in the system whereby the sun’s energy, trapped today in the increasingly greenhouse gas-rich atmosphere, will take 20 to 30 years to redistribute throughout the system. This means that climatic shifts witnessed today are the result of pollution put out into the atmosphere when I was born. And if we continue with a 'business as usual' approach, we could push global average temperatures up by as much as 5°C. Stern predicts that this will slash global living standards by 5 to 20 percent – meaning that it will not just be Africa’s poor who will suffer, but that the rich will be impacted on too.

[ wine.co.za ]