Climate Red - News and Views on Climate Change Issues.

Launched by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is hosting the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, the atlas features over 300 satellite images taken in every country in Africa in over 100 locations. It was compiled by the UN Environment Programme, UNEP, based in Nairobi, Kenya.


In this pair of satellite images, the contrast between the relatively lush vegetation of January 2005 and the parched landscape of January 2006 reveals the intensity and extent of drought in Kenya and Tanzania. (Images courtesy NASA)
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UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, "As shown throughout the atlas, there are many places across Africa where people have taken action - where there are more trees than 30 years ago, where wetlands have sprung back, and where land degradation has been countered."


"These are the beacons we need to follow to ensure the survival of Africa's people and their economically important nature-based assets," Steiner said.

Yet, there are critical environmental problems, and the atlas describes them. "The swell of grey-coloured cities over a once-green countryside; protected areas shrinking as farms encroach upon their boundaries; the tracks of road networks through forests; pollutants that drift over borders of neighbouring countries; the erosion of deltas; refugee settlements scattered across the continent causing further pressure on the environment; and shrinking mountain glaciers."


The remains of a palm forest outside a refugee camp in Guinea (Photo courtesy UNEP)

In addition to well-publicized climate changes, such as Mount Kilimanjaro's shrinking glaciers, the drying up of Lake Chad, and falling water levels in Lake Victoria, the Atlas presents, for the first time, satellite images of lesser known but crucial environmental changes.

They show that glaciers in Uganda's Rwenzori Mountains have shrunk by half between 1987 and 2003.

In the northern Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1975, widening corridors of deforestation have accompanied expanding roads. New roads threaten to increase traffic into this biologically rich rainforest and further fuel the commercial trade in wild animals for meat, known as bushmeat.

In South Africa, at the northern edge of Cape Town, much of the native fynbos vegetation has been replaced by farms and suburban development since 1978.

Fynbos make up 80 percent of the plant varieties in the Cape Floristic Region. The diversity of fynbos plants is greater than that of the tropical rainforests, with over 9,000 species of plants occurring in the area, around 6,200 of which occur nowhere else.


Fynbos flowers near Cape Town (Photo by Damien du Toit)

Of the world's six floral kingdoms, this is the smallest and richest in biological diversity, and visitors come from around the world to see these unique plants.

Satellite images in the Atlas show the loss of trees and shrubs in the fragile environment of the Jebel Marra foothills in western Sudan. These plants are disappearing as a result of population growth partly due to an influx of refugees fleeing drought and conflict in neighboring Northern Darfur.

Other images show the rapid expansion of Senegalese capital Dakar over the past half century from a small urban center at the tip of the Cap Vert Peninsula to a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people spread over the entire peninsula.

Between 1990 and 2004, many African countries achieved some small but promising environmental improvements, mainly in the field of water and sanitation, according to the atlas. A few countries have expanded protected areas, which number more than 3,000 across the continent.

Positive signs of protective management also can be seen in the satellite images.


A small herd of scimitar-horned oryx (Photo by Antonio di Croce courtesy IUCN)

Action to halt overgrazing in Tunisia's Sidi Toui National Park has produced a rebound in the natural ecosystem. The park has hosted the reintroduction of the scimitar-horned oryx, Oryx dammah, which is on the verge of extinction.

New policies and improved enforcement have reduced unsustainable exploitation of the forests of Mount Kenya, which is a crucial area for water catchment and hydro-power generation.

Farmer initiatives focusing on the planting and protection of trees have led to land revitalization in Tahoua Province, Niger. A recent study shows there are now 10 to 20 times more trees across three of Niger's southern provinces than there were in the 1970s.

A review of forest concessions in Liberia has helped protect the forest in Sapo National Park from logging as well as illegal mining and poaching.

Steiner said, "The atlas also, however, clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of people in the region to forces often outside their control, including the shrinking of glaciers in Uganda and Tanzania and impacts on water supplies linked with climate change."

"These underline the urgent need for the international community to deliver a new climate agreement by the Climate Change Convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009, one that not only delivers deep emission reductions but also accelerates the flow of funds for adaptation and the climate proofing of economies," he said.