Climate change is one of the major treats that are not only facing humanity but the entire world. According to the American Meteorological Society, there is a 90 percent probability that global temperatures will rise by 3.5 to 7.4 degrees Celsius (6.3 to 13.3 degrees Fahrenheit) in less than one hundred years, with even greater increases over land and the poles. It involves many dimensions – science, economics, society, politics and moral and ethical questions – and is a global problem, felt on local scales, that will be around for decades and centuries to come.
Carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that has driven recent global warming, lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and the planet (especially the oceans) takes a while to respond to warming. So even if we stop emitting all greenhouse gases today, global warming and climate change will continue to affect future generations. In this way, humanity is “committed” to some level of climate change.
Though, most of the leaders, scientific agencies and policy makers in developed countries have taken the challenge and working assiduously to curb and mitigate climate change. Unfortunately, African leaders have yet to come up with any clear solutions or ways of dealing with climate change. In the light of this, we, at African BioHub have taken up the challenge to raise the awareness and danger of climate change and ways to mitigate it through biotechnology.
