Our future nightmares are already haunting Africa

• Source: Global Times
• [21:35 March 17 2010]
• Comments

Kenya has the fastest economic growth in East Africa. Among its neighbors, the threat of drought is even more severe, and has claimed the lives of more of the poor.

"Have you seen the movie 2012? It has no scene set in Africa!" While writing about my trip to Africa, I have been thinking about my friends' words. Kenya is the birthplace of the human race. Unearthed skull fossils have shown that more than 2.5 million years ago, our remote ancestors lived in this region. The specter of climate change is attacking the cradle of humanity.

I thought of the massacres in Rwanda in 1994, not far from Kenya. Investigations into the ethnic conflict there between Hutu and Tutsi by some scholars showed that the climate issue was one cause, as ever scarcer arable land was fought over by a growing population.

The famous American scholar Jared Diamond wrote in the book Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, "Population pressure, human impact on the environment and the drought are the ultimate factors. Like the powder in the powder keg, they will slowly push people to the point of desperation. A series of serious problems caused by overpopulation, environmental impact and climate change will not continue forever. If we cannot manage to solve these problems through our own actions, sooner or later, these problems will find their own way out."

The author is a senior editor with the People's Daily. forum@globaltimes.com.cn