Water For Justice

Lesotho reeling with harsh climatic conditions

By Mzimkhulu Sithetho

MASERU – Lesotho is most vulnerable to climate change caused by natural disasters, drought and desertification. The country's vulnerability is further aggravated by her higher altitude . The harsh climatic conditions that have beset Lesotho are of natural causes than they are of human causes such as emissions of greenhouse gases. Lesotho 's geographical location on the plateau of the tapering Southern African subcontinent exposes the country to significant influences of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans . These two oceans have wide temperature differences. A study undertaken by the Lesotho Meteorological Services (LMS) of the country's climate reveals that her viable weather conditions have put Lesotho on critical constraints on crop production. Factors that have been identified by the study include absence of rainfall and evaporation and terrain characteristics. These unstable climatic conditions have affected arable land, duration of the growing season as well as limiting the potential of crop production.

Frost risks, temperature regimes and precipitation occurrences during the growing season have affected planting time, choice of crop and ecological regions. Lack of capacity among relevant institutions to capture erratic climate conditions has proven detrimental to crop production. The agricultural sector has been the most affected by erratic climatic conditions given that Lesotho 's crop production is dominated by maize which accounts for 63 percent of the area planted a decade ago. Historically, other products such as sorghum share an area of 28 percent, wheat 12 percent, and beans and peas 5 percent. The total area shared by these crops has since fluctuated between 136, 500 and 300, 500 hectors over the ten years. Therefore, the cultivable area, production and yields have since been erratic and closely related with rainfall figures. On a global scale, the world is caught up at daggers' point with harsh climatic conditions that have rendered agricultural produce counterproductive. It is assumed that chief culprits of these worsening climatic conditions the world over are the United States of America , Australia and Canada . Certain parts of the world have been hit by rain and wind storms, hurricanes, cyclones, floods, tsunamis and a host of other disasters that have displaced millions of people and resulted in loss of life as well as total disturbance of human life. In many other parts of the world, harsh climatic conditions have dried up natural processes such as constant rainfall leading to good food production, weakened precipitation in low-level countries, threatening their total survival.

In attempts to halt these climatic conditions, world states and governments have converged in various summits to discuss effects of these conditions. The states have hammered out plans, signed and ratified agreements on how to arrest the escalation of these conditions that have put human life on a pedestal and have a potential of wiping out future generations. However, chief culprits have ignored calls of accepting responsibility for their sins from other states that bear the brunt of harsh climatic conditions that are not of their making. It is known fact that USA is the chief polluter of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases that she has constantly emitted to the air without providing solutions for averting the situation. In the years, USA and its cohorts, Australia and Canada have arrogantly underplayed global attempts to find long-lasting solutions to problems brought about by climate change. The USA and Australia have bluntly refused to endorse the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, whose premise was to set a twelve-year target for states that topped the list of chief polluters of the environment. USA tops the list, coming position no.1 among states known for polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

USA 's argument has been that it would not tone down to ‘across the board targets' imposed on them. The country's premise is that states' responsibilities vary according to the amount of gases they emitted to the atmosphere, hence a differentiated target reduction was more preferable. The Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon by states at the third conference of the parties (COP3) in December 1997 in the Japanese city of Kyoto .

The goal of the Kyoto Protocol was that industrialised countries should have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5% compared to the 1990 level, calculated as an average over the period of obligation, 2008 – 2012.
The agreement, which is an amendment negotiated in 1997 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) treaty, is aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gasses across the world. The Kyoto agreement also includes a set of rules for how the parties to the agreement can reach their reduction goals with the help of international trade in quotas – the so-called flexibility mechanisms. The culprits' contention has been that industrialised countries have differing obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. The EU has agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8%. The USA agreed to an obligation of 7%, Canada and Japan 6%, Russia and New Zealand might have emitted the same as in 1990, whereas Norway and Iceland may emit 1% and 10% more respectively.

The Kyoto Protocol also includes the five other greenhouse gases - methane, nitrous oxide and the industrial gases HFCs, PFCs and SF6.
China with other developing countries termed ‘Group 77' who signed the protocol argues that it is unfair for them to be expected to reduce emissions in the wake of their industrialization because the Annex I developed nations had no regulations during their industrialization periods. This argument according to USA and Australia is irresponsible, environmentally insensitive and entirely fueled by financial greed. China has recently become one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters and is expected to become the number one emitter by 2010. It is has one of the fastest growing economies in the world at the moment. The world today has developed scientific advances that have helped realize effects on the environment. A wake up call to the potentially devastating effects of climatic change came in the late 1980s when fears were raised by some people in the scientific community that emissions of greenhouse gases were causing global warming. Policymakers, faced with this enormous task f evaluating the evidence, established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reported for the first time in 1990. Two years later in 1992, ministers from around the world met in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where they signed a Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) whose objective was to ‘stabilise' greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The third conference of the FCCC held in 1997 in the Japanese city of Kyoto hammered out the Kyoto Protocol which sets targets and timetables for restricting emissions of greenhouse gas by industrialised states.

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