Earlier this year I attended a Climate Reality training in Johannesburg, at the end of which I was officially a Climate Reality Leader. The training was informative and engaging and even electrifying but then again how could it not be with such an impressive lineup of speakers like the renowned Australian Conservationist and Activist Don Henry who impressed me with the vastness of his knowledge and commitment to climate change or the infectious Henry Pollack who charmed me with stories of his time teaching in Zambia. It was nice to see and meet all those people from around the World united against one issue. I learned a lot and was grateful for the opportunity but truth be told, I have and continue to struggle with my duties and responsibilities…suppose I will for quite some time. Reports are that last year was one of the hottest years on record; I don’t know what that means to you but last year I started noticing something; a tiny white fluff on my golden trumpets, jasmine and rose bushes and basically every other bush and tree which turned out to be a bug. I have seen this before but on cassava plants never on anything else and definitely not with this intensity. I asked an agriculture extension officer about it and he told me not to worry cause the fluff would be washed away with the onset of the rains. ‘That’s a relief I thought to myself.’ The rains came but with less intensity and the season was generally shorter. Not long after the end of the rain season the fluff returned. I can safely say every Mango tree in Mongu is affected. Mongu is Mango Country so we are talking thousands of trees. I grew up in this town and have never seen anything like it and yet to encounter someone who has. Around these parts Mango generally begins to ripen round mid November, this year it has been ripening since early October courtesy of the unusually high temperature. This has resulted in such waste of Mango fruit as I did not think possible in this town. The fruit is ripening faster than it is being eaten and the traders that flood in from the capital to buy it only started to trickle in mid November. Wasted fruit, wasted income and meanwhile the mounds of rotting fruit around town are attracting hoards of flies carrying all manner of disease. It has me thinking about the vulnerability of my community and others like it around the world. With these record-breaking temperatures, what do we do when there is an outbreak of a disease that thrives in heat when our hospitals are so ill-equipped to deal with the usual outbreaks of cholera and dysentery? What about when irregular temperatures adversely affect yields not just of one crop but two, three maybe more so that local populations can no longer rely on local mainstays? To learn what ProjectEDUCATE is doing to support young people in protecting and conserving the environment, please visit projecteducate.interconnection.org/cn.html
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:47:25 +0000
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