Your continent produces less than 5% of the world’s fossil fuel emissions, yet you hold yourself and your countrymen responsible for the worldwide phenomenon of climate change? That’s what the BBC is reporting. A new survey called the Africa Talks Climate Report found that a large number of Africans blame themselves, or God, for global warming. The report is “the most extensive survey ever conducted on public understanding of the issue,” and consisted of discussions with over 1,000 African people in 10 countries. The specifics of the findings are described as follows:
The report found a near-universal sense that what people call “weather” is changing and affecting lives.
But most of those interviewed did not connect these changes with global causes such as emissions of carbon dioxide.
Instead people tend to blame themselves or their peers for local environmental degradation and some see the changes as a form of divine punishment.
As with the AIDS crisis, inoculations, and other social welfare issues, the key here is lack of education (though the situation is thankfully less critical than AIDS — since Africa is doing so little to cause/worsen climate change, a lack of immediate educational efforts won’t make global warming that much worse than it already is). Millions of people in Africa have no access to information about the causes and effects of climate change, and in some regions a language barrier makes it even harder to translate concepts like excess fuel emissions. Of course, it’s a tragedy to allow those who are doing the least to cause the problem (and are often living a far more sustainable lifestyle than most Americans) think that they’re the ones causing it. Wide-scale educational efforts are needed to bring a general awareness of climate change to the populations who stand to suffer the worst from it.
Unfortunately, as with all mass initiatives brought to Africa by Westerners, such educational efforts are easier said than done. Particularly since we can’t even get our own population to understand the details and intricacies of climate change.
Image: Transitioniow
March 19th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
I have to disagree here and I am surprised at the shortsighted nature of the commentary. There are now 43 cities in Africa with populations over one million people which are no more sustainable than many other less developed regions. In many places the agricultural practices of the past forty years have destroyed much of the balance of nature in the continent. Although I don’t discount the impact of global emissions, but deforestation and desertification is more a local phenomenon and easily visible to the average African resident. Their belief of local blame for climate change is more of a sign of protest of their government’s environmental policies rather than a lack of education about emissions from the North.
Fortunately, environmental education and advocacy is occurring across the continent. The Green Belt Movement is just such a organization that seeks sustainability for the African continent and headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai:
http://greenbeltmovement.org/w.php?id=40
March 19th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
[...] Shocking Survey: Africans Blame Themselves for Climate Change … [...]
March 19th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Well, in one way those million-plus cities in Africa are more sustainable than most of their Northern peers: they don’t emit that much of anything. An urban area with 8,000 people per km^2 and one car per 20 people is not causing more environmental damage than an urban area with 2,000 people per km^2 and one car per 2 people.
March 20th, 2010 at 5:35 am
Deforestation by logging companies that are owned and subsidized by big corporations from around the world/ the wholesale cutting down of large areas -taking out the trees - uses massive cutting techniques…here is an problem - as its having an impact on the African and global climate. Africans for hire are spearheading the
work gangs and doing the grunt work.
Why can’t the government of these countries stop this ? Probably
they could except their being paid off….and for the lowly workers .
they need jobs badly as there is no work for the population which
remain mostly undereducated.
Al
March 20th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
We should blame ourselves because we have allowed the West — and now China — to rape our continent for the materials they use build the empires that pollute the most.
March 28th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
The last paragraph of this article seems to infer that any widespread educational effort on climate change will be a ‘mass initiative brought to Africa by Westerners’. I take issue with this point, since many African groups are doing great work on climate change awareness and we in the West could actually learn from them - including the fantastic Green Belt Movement mentioned above and the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change.
Instead of struggling to develop a Western-led educational plan that will reach over a billion people across an incredibly diverse continent, why don’t we support local groups that are already doing this work so that they can do it better?