Climate Change

Fifteen-year-old Harida looks after herds of goats belonging to several families in Kenya. Her own family's herd has shrunk dramatically in numbers as a result of the drought. She injured her eye in a fight over water during the last tanker delivery and now fears she might lose the sight in this eye because she has no access to medical assistance. Climate change is likely to make droughts like this more common.

Abdullahi Abdi, executive officer of Christian Aid partner Northern Aid, says: "Every day I witness climate change impacting the lives of Kenyans. The pastoralist way of life is under serious threat. Climate change has turned people’s lives into a nightmare: the drought cycle that used to recur every 11 years now happens every second year." Northern Aid tankers supply communities with water at the height of each drought.

Climate Change is here and the clock is ticking

In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group containing over 2,500 international scientists, reported that:

"warming of the climate is unequivocal" and that "most of the observed increase in temperature is very likely due to human activity"

Scientists are aware that the Earth's climate is complex and influenced by many things - particularly changes in the Earth's orbit in relation to the Sun, which has driven the cycles of ice ages in the past, as well as volcanic eruptions and variations in the energy being emitted from the Sun. But even when we take all these factors into account, we cannot explain the temperature rises, of nearly 1ºC, that we have seen over the last 100 years both on land and in the oceans.

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