Africa "forgotten continent" in climate fight

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Africa is the "forgotten continent" in the fight against climate change and needs help to cope with projected water shortages and declining crop yields, the U.N.'s top climate change official said on Sunday.

Yvo de Boer told Reuters that damage projected for Africa by the U.N. climate panel would justify tougher world action to slow global warming even without considering likely disruptions to other parts of the planet.

"Africa has been the forgotten continent," in efforts to combat warming, de Boer, head of the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said by telephone from a meeting of African and Mediterranean nations in Tunis about climate change.

He noted that big developing countries, such as China and India, had won far more funds than Africa from rich nations to help cut greenhouse gases, for instance by investing in wind farms, hydropower dams or in cleaning up industrial emissions.

Africa has won relatively little aid to help it adapt to ever more drought, desertification, changing ranges for diseases and rising seas.

"Africa is not getting a lot out of climate change policy at the moment," he said. "But climate change will affect Africa very severely."

The U.N. climate panel's final 26-page summary report, released in Spain on Saturday, says that Africa, the Arctic, the deltas of major rivers in Asia and small island states are likely to be especially affected by climate change.

For Africa, it says that between 75 and 250 million people on the world's poorest continent are projected to face increased water stress by 2020. "That in itself is enough for more world action," de Boer said.