Durban - Climate change threatens to undermine many of the development objectives of African countries and the developing world, says Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tina Joemat-Pettersson.
Speaking at Forest Day 5 on behalf of the South African government on Sunday, Joemat-Pettersson iterated expert opinions which indicate that a new wave of deforestation is sweeping across Africa.
"South Africa regards climate change as one of the greatest threats to sustainable development and believes that climate change, if unmitigated, has the potential to undo or undermine many of the positive advances made in meeting South Africa's own development goals and the Millennium Development Goals," said Joemat-Pettersson.
President of the African Wildlife Foundation, Helen Gichohi said: "The disappearing forests, the overgrazed rangelands, and conversion to crop agriculture of grasslands and wetlands that had served as a refuge to drought, have all diminished the resilience of ecosystems."
Joemat-Pettersson called for a collective, comprehensive international programme on adaptation that provides access to significantly up-scaled finance, technology and capacity building for all developing countries.
"The socio-economic impact of climate change is predicted to range from severe to disastrous for all, and will require extensive action to adjust and adapt to a changing climate," said Joemat-Pettersson.
Bob Scholes from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa said: "The next major wave of deforestation is already here and it is happening in Africa. If we can do something to influence deforestation we can have a greater effect on everything that has happened so far under the Kyoto Protocol."
Frances Seymour, the Director General of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) said: "It is urgent to safeguard Africa's forests, not only because they slow climate change, but also because they act as a final barrier to creeping desertification, underpin sustainable agricultural production, and support the livelihoods of tens of millions of rural poor."
She said to address these challenges, all stakeholders needed to ensure that forest planning tools took into account carbon sequestration in a way that could provide necessary planning information.
"We need to recognize that the two degrees Celsius goal cannot be achieved by one part of the world on its own."
Gichohi said nine percent of forest cover had been lost between 1995 and 2005 across sub-Saharan Africa, representing an average loss of 40 000 square kilometres of forest per year.
Kenya has lost the majority of its forest cover to settlements and agriculture, leaving only 1.7 percent of its land still forested.
"Forests cannot be sustained if people are hungry or governance of natural resources is inadequate," said Rachel Kyte, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank.
"Hunger places a direct burden on forests when people are forced to push deeper into forested areas to grow crops... or resort to making and selling charcoal in order to buy food."
