Prayer needs in the run-up to COP17 Durban, South Africa - 28 Nov - 9 Dec 2011

The forthcoming climate conference COP17 will foreshadow the end of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 and there is little hope of agreeing new worldwide targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. Without leadership from the USA, how can we hope to have a realistic chance of capping carbon emissions? Could your prayers even at this late stage make a difference?

If countries cannot agree reduction targets there will be no cap on emissions and the scenario of runaway warming will continue unabated. This is frightening for hungry people in tropical countries who have the sun directly overhead every day and do not have hot and cold seasons as we know them. Areas with a savanna climate in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Ghana, Burkina Faso, Darfur, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Botswana used to have a distinct wet season. Farmers there could depend upon regular wet seasons to time their sowing and reaping. Respected NGOs such as Oxfam have linked rising food prices to climate change already this year. Pray for a new global agreement to replace Kyoto with something more effective.

Leading climatologists have frequently warned that the sub-Saharan Africa will dry out in the decades to come. Other scientists point the finger at a familiar culprit: La Niña. Both are right. However until the cause of erratic cycle of La Niña is understood there will be no reliable long term forecasts and weather predictions will depend upon the early detection of its onset in the Pacific ocean. We need therefore to pray for the scientists who work to piece together the human and natural influences on climate to improve their computer models and make better predictions of the future weather patterns, especially the wet seasons.

One topic which can be more reliably progressed in COP17 is adaptation to climate change. People have always been able to adapt, especially those who long ago emerged ‘out of Africa’ and have learned to live in the frozen north. Imagine my surprise when, as a telecommunications engineer, I was asked to provide a report to this year’s climate conference by the Minister of Communications in Ghana. The question this report addresses is: How can telecommunications network operators cap their emissions and enable communities to use the network to find out what they need to do to adapt to climate change? For people in Ghana, migrating north or south is not a realistic answer but the smart phone could be the tool they need to make the best out of a bad situation. Pray for the will and the resources to help poor countries adapt to the effects of a changing climate.

This report has now been drafted by me and three other UK authors and is being reviewed by experts in the United Nations in Geneva. Your prayer support is needed so that this document will be agreed, published and well-received in Durban during the conference (28 November-9 December).

David Faulkner