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Why melting permafrost and glaciers matter for southern Africa

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Craig Smith is the senior manager of WWF South Africa’s marine programme.

A new climate report on oceans and the cryosphere paints a bleak picture of how climate change is reshaping our world from the deepest seas to the poles. What does this mean from a southern African perspective?

My father introduced me to the fascinating world of life under water when I was a young boy, and the variety, abundance and sheer wonder of marine life captivated me then and has continued to shape my interests and my career as a marine biologist.

The blue jewel of South Africa’s coastal waters is larger by a quarter than our country’s land surface area, but for most of us, it starts and ends at the beach.

This is a problem because oceans are a critical life-support system for the earth: they regulate the climate and are critical to the well-being of local communities and the global economy. Throughout the past century, our impact on the oceans has been unprecedented, including overfishing, pollution, sea-bed mining, and unsustainable coastal development.

Added to this is the growing and unfettered threat of climate change, as we were ably reminded at the UN Climate Action Summit on Monday.

It is in this context that the leading international body on climate change science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released the Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. Focusing on climate impacts on seas and the frozen parts of the globe (cryosphere) such as glaciers, permafrost and polar ice caps, this sobering report warns that collective mitigation measures to reduce carbon emissions are woefully insufficient to stem the tide of climate change.

You may not think that the cryosphere is of any relevance to sunny South Africa – but you’d be wrong. For one thing, the melting of permafrost in the northern hemisphere has the potential to release up to 1,600 billion tons of carbon currently locked in permanently frozen ground, causing a positive feedback that would dwarf the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to date. But that is down the line.

Right now, rapid melting of glaciers and the unexpectedly rapid collapse of polar sea ice have driven an accelerated global mean sea level rise (SLR) of between 0.7 and 1mm per annum. When combined with thermal expansion of the warming oceans, sea level increases of more than one metre by the end of the century are possible, driving predictions that storm events and storm surge will become three times more frequent and severe, and pose a major risk to low-lying coastal areas.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has indicated that our major coastal cities of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban, in addition to towns adjacent to beaches and estuaries, are all vulnerable to an increased rise in sea level and storm surge.

Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique in March 2019, was one of the worst recorded storms to impact Africa, leaving more than 1,300 people dead and affecting more than three million others. It caused in excess of R30-billion of damage as it tore through our neighbouring countries of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and Malawi.

Warming oceans feed hurricanes with more energy and each additional increment in global temperature ramps up the intensity of such events and worsens their impacts.

If earth experiences two degrees of warming there is a distinct possibility that hundreds of millions of people around the globe could have their homelands submerged before the turn of the century, and coral reefs would cease to exist. At the present trajectory, we will pass the two-degree milestone well before the end of the century. The reality is that accelerating warming has already demonstrably impacted our oceans, which have already absorbed 93% of the extra energy from climate change, and up to 30% of human-produced carbon dioxide.

On top of rising levels and temperatures, increasing oceanic CO2 levels cause acidification of the oceans and reduced oxygen levels. Acidic oceans dissolve the exoskeletons of corals, plankton and other species with carbonate shells, reducing the productivity of the oceans and their ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This is critical, because at present the oceans are the biggest sink for greenhouse gases, notwithstanding the huge contributions from tropical rainforests. And occasional de-oxygenation can cause massive die-offs of multiple species, with major impacts on marine resources and on fisheries.

The urgency of global climate mitigation action is not new. The IPCC’s new report rather sheds a light on what failure to act may look like for the hundreds of millions whose livelihoods are linked to the oceans, or who live in proximity to the coasts – it is a tragedy with real human dimensions.

While there is a certain amount that can be done in terms of restoring coastal plant species, the bulk of mitigation must be through a transformation of our energy systems and steering away from fossil fuels with all speed. Every ton of carbon dioxide that we do not emit increases the likelihood that we will be able to adapt to changing climate, but at present success in achieving that goal is slipping through our fingers. Despite all the government’s rhetoric in international climate negotiations, South Africa is still issuing permits for oil drilling off the KZN coast, doubling down on risks to the oceans there.

For this reason, the special report highlights the urgency of implementing adaptation measures, particularly for coastal communities who will bear the brunt of the impact of climate change. South African coastal communities are far from exempt as they are extremely vulnerable to climate change.

The Cliftons of this world notwithstanding, many of our coastal communities are struggling with widespread poverty, limited job opportunities and food insecurity, and they are plagued by many other social ills. By threatening both their homes and their livelihoods, climate-driven change in the oceans may undermine any developmental gains we achieve over the next few years.

The marine resources on which these communities depend are not only declining due to anthropogenic threats, but are also displaying changes in distribution patterns and reproductive behaviour which increases unpredictability and further compounds challenges to prudent resource management.

As an example, we have already witnessed the eastward shift of sardines in South African waters over the last decade. Once abundant on the west coast of South Africa, changing conditions have caused this species to move to the south coast. Added to this, the south coast lacks the rich upwelling Benguela current that is critical for sardine breeding, which has led to reduced stock productivity. This has had huge impacts for South Africa’s largest fishery by volume (second by value), whose sardine fishery infrastructure, vessels, factories and labour force are situated on the west coast.

And it’s not only people who have felt the impact: other marine organisms that feed on sardines such as African penguins, Cape gannets, cormorants, geelbek, snoek, Bryde’s whales and many more are having to adapt and are likely to see similar reductions in numbers if they are unable to cope with the changes.

So how do we save this blue jewel that we’ve inherited when faced with a tragedy of economic, ecological and personal impacts? The challenge seems insurmountable on a national level, never mind the personal. But there is indeed much that each South Africa can and must do – starting with making our voices heard and demanding greater ambition from our political leaders in the global effort to achieve a low-carbon future.

This latest IPCC report is another reminder that our house is indeed on fire because we have not done enough!

A crisis I never thought could happen in my lifetime and never, ever imagined my children would face is now a reality. We need to take swift and decisive action, and to brace for impact so as to limit losses to our society and our natural heritage.

In so doing our “blue jewel” and, indeed, our entire blue planet may yet remain the wonder of many generations to follow. DM

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