Subscribe & Follow

Advertise your job vacancies

The race to adapt

2 Jul 2014

AFAR/JOHANNESBURG: Momina Ali is a teenager in one of the toughest and hottest places on earth - Ethiopia's Afar region where average annual temperatures hover around 35 degrees Celsius.

Momina Ali, 13 has to take a day off from school to search for water Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Increasingly intermittent rainfall in her village, Anderkelo, means that every three or four days Momina takes a day off school to search for water. In future the chances are that Momina's treks for water could take even longer, depending on how rising temperatures affect the rains around her village and hence its water table.

In 2015 global policymakers aim to take decisions which may affect the futures of people like Momina. The outcome of the December 2015 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Paris, new development goals, and the successor to the Hyogo framework on natural hazards will be key.

The climate deal will only be implemented in 2020, according to an agreement countries adopted in Durban in 2011. It will be the culmination of almost two decades of international negotiations. But before that can happen, a draft deal needs to be prepared for the penultimate UNFCCC conference (COP20) in Lima, Peru, in December 2014.

Read the fulll article on www.irinnews.org.