[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] It has been claimed that if continuous climate change persists, the perennial snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa will completely disappear by 2040.
On the 19th (local time), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) forecasted in its recently published Africa Climate Report that if temperatures continue to rise at the current rate, the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Kenya in Kenya, and the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda will all melt away by around 2040. It also projected that by 2030, 118 million people living on less than $1.90 (approximately 2,239 KRW) per day will be exposed to natural disasters such as droughts, floods, and heatwaves.
There are also claims that economic development on the African continent will significantly regress due to climate change. Although African countries account for less than 4% of global carbon emissions, the socio-economic damage caused by climate change is greater than that experienced by other continents. While chronic drought damage has been occurring in Africa, record-breaking floods also took place last year. Approximately 1.2 million climate refugees lost their homes due to last year’s floods, which is known to be 2.5 times the number of refugees who left their hometowns due to conflicts in the same year.
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