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NAIROBI - The devastating impact of climate change, mainly caused by the ever-ballooning carbon emissions from rich Western nations, will hit hardest in Africa, a new report has warned.
Major African cities will be submerged under rising sea levels, more than 40 per cent of wildlife habitats could disappear, and cereal crop yields - already desperately low in a continent unable to feed itself - could fall by a further five per cent.
The United Nations report warned that the effect of climate change in Africa is "even more acute" than experts had feared.
Up to 70 million people could be at risk from rising sea levels while droughts, which have overwhelmed the Horn of Africa with increasing regularity, will become even more common.
The effects of global warming on some of the world's poorest people must be the main focus of discussions at the two-week-long climate change talks starting in Nairobi today, the report's authors said.
More than 6,000 delegates from governments and charities around the world, will gather in Nairobi to discuss how the world deals with climate change after the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012.
The protocol, which was supposed to cut the carbon emissions of industrial nations, was only implemented by 35 countries.
The US refused to sign up, while China and India, - two of the fastest growing economies in the world - are not party to the agreement.
The new report gives a stark assessment of what could happen to some of the world's poorest citizens if developed nations do not rein in their carbon emissions.
Up to 30 per cent of Africa's coast could disappear as sea levels rise between 15 to 95cm in the next 100 years.
Major cities such as Cape Town, Dar Es-Salaam and Maputo are at risk.
If sea levels were to rise by one metre, part of Lagos, the economic centre of Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, would be submerged.
Alexandria, a popular tourist destination in Egypt, could also suffer, The number of people at risk in Africa from coastal flooding will rise from one million in 1990 to 70 million by 2080.
Africa is particularly at risk because of the reliance on food from such a large amount of arid land - more than half of the continent's cultivable land is arid or semi-arid.
Some 70 per cent of people in Africa and nearly 90 per cent of the poor primarily work in agriculture.
When rains fail, or are unpredictable, they are forced to rely on emergency food aid.
Africa, a continent of more than 800m people, is already feeling the effects of climate change.
It has warmed by 0.7 degrees centigrade during the 20th century.
Rainfall in the Sahel region, just below the Sahara, has fallen by 25 per cent in the last 30 years.
Africa's tropical rainforests have also witnessed a fall in precipitation of 2.4 per cent each decade since the mid-1970s.
Droughts in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa have become more regular since the 1960s.
A severe drought at the end of last year created a food crisis in eastern Africa which put some 11m people at risk.
One of the report's authors, Dr Baglis Osman Elasha, of the Sudanese Ministry of the Environment, said: "We are already seeing climate-related changes in my country.
The Gum Arabic belt, an economically important crop, has shifted southwards below latitude 14 degrees north and the rains which used to occur from mid-June to the end of August now start in mid-July until the end of September with important ramifications for agriculture and livelihoods."But while climate change is already having a major impact on the lives of Africans, the climate and weather-monitoring systems needed to track changes on the continent are not in place.
There are just over 1,150 World Weather Watch stations in Africa giving a density of one per 26,000 square km - eight times lower than the World Meteorological Organisation's minimum recommended level.
Meanwhile little of Africa's historical climate and weather data is being used to further improve climate forecasting because of a lack of funds.
Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said: "Climate change is underway and the international community must respond by offering well targeted assistance to those countries in the front-line which are facing increasing impacts such as extreme droughts and floods and threats to infrastructure from phenomena like rising sea levels."
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