Northumbria University gather climate evidence
Sep 12 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal
SCIENTISTS from Northumbria University are gathering the findings from six years of analysing the effects of climate change in 14 developing countries.
Their research identifies possible causes and potential solutions to environmental change in some of the world’s most beautiful but fragile places.
The work – with rapidly developing countries including Vietnam, Mongolia, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Yemen, Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, Columbia and Bolivia – was commissioned by the Dutch government, and forms part of the Netherlands’ obligation to support developing nations in addressing climate change, agreed under the Kyoto protocol.
Professor Phil O’Keefe and Dr Geoff O’Brien, from Northumbria University’s School of Applied Sciences, are now collating their findings online.
In Tanzania, more than 1,000 households on the slopes of Kilimanjaro were interviewed to understand how climate change affected subsistence agriculture.
The analysis indicated that, along with decreasing rainfall and shorter rainy seasons, the decline of coffee production as a cash crop, and a change in the traditional carbohydrate diet from bananas to maize, was leading the local Chagga people to cut down the taller trees in the agro-forestry system. This deforestation could well be a contributing factor to the decline in the snows of Kilimanjaro.
The findings are to be published in a book for December’s Copenhagen Summit, where a new global climate deal is to be brokered.
