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African farmers said on Monday, that floods and droughts expected to worsen with climate change have already brought poor harvests, and women workers are turning to prostitution and falling victim to HIV/AIDS.
Testifying at the first pan-African climate hearings, the farmers' stories will be relayed at December's climate talks in Copenhagen, where Western countries and poorer nations are expected to adopt new carbon emission targets to curb global warming.
Caroline Malema, a smallholder farmer and mother of six from Malawi, said increased cycles of floods and drought meant she was struggling to feed her family and pay for her children to attend school.
Malema said hunger and poverty caused by global warming were leading many women in her village to resort to prostitution out of desperation.
"Women are suffering because they don't harvest more, so women are going about selling their bodies ... These women at the end of the day are infected with HIV and AIDS," she said of her village in Karonga.
Besides AIDS, which has already killed more than 800,000 people in Malawi since 1985 and left more than one million orphans, experts fear an increase in diseases such as malaria and cholera should temperatures rise.
Source: Reuters Africa
Comentários
29 October 09 | smarzouk
Older people and climate change
It's great to read something about the secondary effects of climate change. HIV/AIDS is already a huge problem, which is only be added to by the effects of climate change. Working for HelpAge International we find that a lot of the time, it is older people who become carers to AIDS orphans, yet they are offered little support.
If older people were listened to, they could use their experience and knowledge to join and contribute to the climate change debate. However, at best they are considered a 'vulnerable group' and at worst, are excluded and ignored. People forget that they have years of experience predicting weather patterns and using traditional methods to ensure their crops grow so that they can provide for their families. Now that climate change is jeopardising their livelihoods, they are being kept in the dark as to why this happening and how they can mitigate its effects.