18 April 2010
When Mother Nature speaks, we humans sit up and take notice.
This was brought home again last week when a volcano erupted in Iceland, hurling a plume of ash 11 km into the atmosphere. Flights all over Europe were grounded for days in what has been described as the worst travel chaos since the September 11 attacks, costing airlines hundreds of millions of dollars.
The effects of the eruption were mostly immediate, but a much more gradual and potentially more devastating process - global climate change - is beginning to make its impact felt on our everyday lives.
There is overwhelming evidence that the Earth is getting warmer as a result of climate change. Globally, eleven of the last fourteen years rank amongst the warmest years since 1850. There are strong predictions of further increases in temperature as well as changes in the intensity and timing of rainfall events.
In an online poll by local newspaper Beeld last month, 89% of the respondents indicated that they felt sure that weather patterns were changing. A paper released by British scientists last week disclosed that British plants are flowering earlier now than at any time in the last 250 years as the UK warms.
Changes in climate will impact on important sectors such as water, health, agriculture, forestry and biodiversity conservation. This is of particular relevance in the lowveld with its diverse range of economic activities (from subsistence and commercial agriculture to conservation) and sectors, many relying heavily on the natural resources and climate of the area.
This leads to a crucial question, "How should we deal with these changes?".
With Africa having been identified as one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change, South Africa's Department of Science and Technology launched its Global Change Grand Challenge two years ago. This initiative aims to focus and direct the research of our country's internationally acclaimed environmental scientists to address the issue of global change.
The South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas - a new atlas of local risk and vulnerability in the context of global environmental change - is a flagship initiative of the Global Change Grand Challenge. The Atlas project is managed by the CSIR, with key inputs from South African institutions and research groups. The Atlas aims to consolidate global change science across the region and make the findings accessible to support improved planning and development in the face of global change.
The project consists of a number of products, at the core of which is an electronic spatial database and information system. Data captured by SA researchers from various disciplines include aspects such as groundwater, surface water, forestry, biodiversity, human health, crops, demographics, economics and social dimensions. The data is continuously updated with new research results.
Importantly, the Atlas also contains a number of case studies compiled by global change researchers to illustrate how the Atlas information could be used in decision-making. The case studies allow users to virtually explore global change impacts, risk and vulnerability, as well as adaptation and mitigation strategies. One of the case studies specifically deals with the Kruger to Canyons region, exploring the risks and vulnerabilities of this diverse landscape and ways in which to address these.
People who ought to benefit from the information in the Atlas include policy-makers and decision-makers at all levels of government, consultants, researchers, farmers, students and other individuals who would like to know more about global change and its impacts on South Africa.
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