Tanti Leon, a Nigerian fisherman who lost his boat in a storm last summer, clung tightly to the hull with his children.
Leon’s home was also destroyed by the heavy rains. It was built on sticks in the lagoon facing the office towers and mansions of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. The father-of-6 is unable to support his family and continues to fish in Makoko. This informal settlement, on low-lying ground, is vulnerable to climate change-linked sea level rises and weather extremes according to the United Nations climate science panel.
Leon, 42 years old, said that he felt so sad that he decided to stop fishing again. But then, this was all he knew how to do. According to the Monday report, Africa has contributed very little in climate-warming greenhouse gases emissions. However, the world’s hottest continent is home to some of the most vulnerable people to current and future fallouts from the planet’s continued warming.
LIVING WITH EXTREME WEATHER Lagos’ poorly planned construction to house the rapidly growing population of 20 million people is also contributing to flood exposure, according to a 2021 study published in Environmental Hazards.
According to the report, more than 34% Lagos’s territory was at risk from flooding in 2019, up from 1% at beginning of this century. Makoko residents adapt to extreme weather by attaching metal sheets to the bottoms to their boats to fish and navigate the narrow waterways between houses. Children can splash in the shallows.
Segun Jisoro, a carpenter, stated that every boat he makes now is covered with zinc, coal-tar, and aluminium so that it will not be damaged or destroyed by the storm. However, not all of these efforts are successful. A floating school was destroyed by heavy rains in 2016 after it was constructed to adapt to changing water levels and withstand storms.
Lagos, the world’s biggest city, is poised to surpass the United States in 2100 on a continent that will likely see the fastest global population growth. Tanti Leon’s empty fishing net shows a stark illustration of another U.N. assessment. Rising sea temperatures could lead to a decrease in fish harvests as people increase. If global warming results in temperatures of 1.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, leaner fishing could leave 1.2–1.7 million people in Africa vulnerable to iron deficiencies and hundreds of millions lacking vitamins by mid-century, the report said. Leon plans to adapt his life to the inevitable storms that are sure to come. He said, “The plan was to be in a position to save and purchase a speedboat motor.” “It is very difficult when I have the task of manually paddling a boat through a storm.”
(This story was not edited by Devdiscourse staff. It is generated automatically from a syndicated feed.