Environment-themed Week in Review

Hello everyone and welcome on board, for this week’s environment-themed review. This week we have:

•          This article by Alexis Akwagyiram, Africa rising- but who benefits?, inquires on whether the continent’s steady growth equates to an improvement of the quality of life of its habitants. While most locals don't appear to be benefiting from the natural resources boom,  the article show the different paths taken by African countries where in Botswana, the economic growth has improved the healthcare and education systems, while in Nigeria it fails to bear its promises.
•          Turn down the heat: climate extremes, regional impacts, and the case for resilience focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and South Asia. Building on the 2012 report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day, 2°C and 4°C warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations. These impacts are likely to push many vulnerable households below the poverty trap threshold with high temperature extreme's negative impact on the yields of food crops. A 3°C in Africa could mean 90% less arable lands in Africa. This video below highlights the main points of the report.

•          The Sustainable Energy for All: Africa's Hub Initiative was launched at the AfDB meetings in Morocco, and aims to meet the objectives set by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon to ensure universal access to modern energy services, double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency, and double the share of renewable energy among world energy sources, until 2030.
•          The Climate Change Knowledge Portal of the World Bank is an open-data platform that aims to reinforce capacity building and knowledge development and helps to provide development practitioners with a resource to explore, evaluate, synthesize, and learn about climate related vulnerabilities and risks at multiple levels of details.
•        Towards Climate-Resilient Development in Nigeria by the World Bank proposes ten practical short-term priority actions that could help to address the threats that climate change poses to Vision 20:2020 (Nigeria’s ambition to be among the 20 first economies in the World by 2020). These actions include strengthening overall governance for climate action, enhancing agricultural research and extension services, integrating climate into the planning and design of water infrastructure, and promoting sustainable land management practices
•          The blog post by Ed Carr of the University of South Carolina, Climate Change as an Integration Issue, addresses the impact of more integration on climate change-related consequences in Africa. The author argues that integration is a key mean of addressing climate change in Africa, but climate change a critical challenge to integration itself
•           Wikichild’s online discussion on how to measure child well-being in view of future development frameworks has started since June 19^th. Make your voice heard! It will go on until July 2^nd. Follow the talk on Twitter by clicking here: #childwellbeing.

We hope to see you next week for more progress-themed articles. Stay tuned by following us on Twitter (@wp_africa) and on Facebook (here).

Ousmane Aly DIALLO

Wikiprogress Africa Coordinator