Richer countries must increase climate support for African nations as accelerating impacts of global warming sicken and kill hundreds of thousands every year across the continent, scores of scientific health journals said yesterday, ahead of UN negotiations next month.
The call, written by 16 editors of leading biomedical journals across Africa, said damage already being wrought across the continent “should be of supreme concern to all nations.”
“It is highly unjust that the most impacted nations have contributed the least to global cumulative emissions, which are driving the climate crisis and its increasingly severe effects,” the editorial said.
Photo: Reuters
It was published in about 250 scientific journals, including 50 African titles and international medical journals such as The BMJ, The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the National Medical Journal of India. The authors slammed the international community’s failure to meet its promise of providing US$100 billion a year by 2020 for developing countries to spur a green energy transition and to help nations prepare for future climate impacts.
Global warming is taking a heavy toll on African economies and their population’s health, the authors said, calling for specific funding to deal with the costs of damage already being felt.
The editorial cited estimates that malnutrition, driven by climate change impacts on food and water, kills about 1.7 million people a year in Africa.
Meanwhile, floods and damage to environmental hygiene has also led to increases in malaria, dengue fever, Ebola virus and other infectious diseases across sub-Saharan Africa.
Some progress has been made, including on early warning systems and infrastructure to defend against increasing weather extremes, the authors said.
However, they said richer nations historically responsible for the fossil-fuel emissions driving warming had a responsibility to step up, both morally and in their own self-interest.
“It is time the global community acknowledges that the climate crisis, while disproportionately affecting the continent, is a global crisis,” said Lukoye Atwoli, a professor and Dean of the Medical College East Africa. “Action must begin now, and begin where it is hurting most, in Africa. Failure to act will make the crisis everyone’s problem very soon.”
The authors are from journals including African Health Sciences, the African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine, and the East African Medical Journal.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS