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Study on climate change impacts
A STUDY on the vulnerability and climate change impact on Namibia’s protected areas is one of the activities that a project aimed at strengthening these areas will undertake.
This was said by the co-ordinator of the Strengthening of Protected Areas Network (SPAN) project, Midori Paxton, at a two day-training course for environmental journalists at Swakopmund.
SPAN is a six-year project of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, funded by the Global Environment Facility through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The objective of the project is to improve park management effectiveness for biodiversity conservation.
Early last year, an environmental consultant with the Centre for Research Information Action for Development in Africa (CRIAA-SA-DC) said the Succulent Karoo Biome – a unique vegetation area located in the Sperrgebiet National Park – is especially vulnerable to climate change.
At a talk on the impact of climate change on park management in Namibia last April, Pierre du Plessis said the Succulent Karoo plants are adapted to winter rainfall and it is predicted that climate change will shift winter rainfall towards the South Pole, denying plants the cool, wet weather needed for seed to grow.
The Sperrgebiet National Park is one Namibia’s 20 protected areas and will be launched tomorrow by Environment and Tourism Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah at the southern ghost town of Kolmanskop.
Paxton said last year, N$50 million in park gate fees was collected, having tripled since 2003, while parks contributed N$2,5 million to the national economy.
Namibia’s national protected areas now cover 140 394 square kilometres or 17 per cent of the country’s land surface.
Barriers towards effective park management in Namibia include insufficient park infrastructure, insufficient monitoring and research, and inadequate human and institutional capacity.
In their study presented at the climate change talks held in Bali, Indonesia, last year, scientists from Conservation International, the University of Maryland and the University of Wisconsin said climate change will affect national parks, forest reserves and other protected areas around the world.
In some cases, said the study, this will alter conditions so severely that the resulting environments will be virtually new to the planet.
absalom@namibian.com.na