The UAB publishes "África: cambio climático y resiliencia" by Johari Gautier

According to Gautier, if Ernest Hemingway returned to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, "it would be very difficult to see the snow" included in the title of Hemingway's short story, given that it is estimated that the amount of snow on the mountain has decreased by over 85% in the past fifty years. And this is not an isolated case: the cycle of water has been gravely altered all throughout the continent, so that in some parts, water does not arrive when it should or numerous floods appear at an alarming rate. Some other examples presented by Gautier include the Chad lake, which has lost 90% of its surface area, affecting millions of people who fish and grow far there, or rain in Somalia, which does not arrive early enough to prevent crops from getting ruined. Hunger and displacement are now the consequences of climate change in Africa.

These consequences are occurring on a continent which is responsible for 3.8% of greenhouse gas emissions. According to Gautier, "compared to the emissions from China, the US and Europe (23%, 19% and 13%, respectively), the weight of the African continent is absolutely irrelevant". It is neverhtless the most vulnerable due to factors such as "being exposed to a rising sea level, river floods, droughts and conflicts, and particularly to the precarious structure of its healthcare system and special budgets going towards mitigating the effects of climate change”.

In addition to the effects climate change will have on the continent, Gautier talks in his book about the options available to overcome these dramatic scenarios. According to the author, the future of Africa inevitably depends on investing in renewable energies and strengthening a new green leadership. Given the vulnerability of the territory, Gautier believes that "resilience is an imperative. It is the norm. The common denominator". He highlighted ambitious projects such as the Sahel's great green wall which aims to stop desertification. And he pointed out that at any future climate summits, Africa must be recognised as "one of the most outstanding actors in searching for new agreements even if its visibility has not been in proportion to its efforts".

The last chapter of his book focuses on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Africa. As Gautier explains, "some predicted that there would be an immediate and unprecedented chaos and, nevertheless, the continent ended up being a positive example of the importance of taking rapid measure in social distancing with the aim of containing infections and deaths". African countries adopted strict control measures much quicker than other countries, such as Spain or the United States, and achieved to "considerably halt the spread of the virus in the first stages of the pandemic". However, the book also warns about COVID-19 "acting as an accelerator of the damage caused by climate change" in areas such as food insecurity, increased due to the economic effects of the pandemic.

The book includes a prologue by journalist and president of the Spanish section of Reporters Without Borders Alfonso Armada, who also goes over some of the social, political and environmental problems intertwined with the climate crisis in Africa: "relations between China and a very young continent demographically, the enormous water enigma, farming challenges, demographic pressure and the loss of population due to migration, the great wall of the Sahel and renewable energies, and what the pandemic represents for this political and human geogrpahy on which to a great extent the future of humanity is depending".

Presentation and Debate 

África: cambio climático y resiliencia was published on paper and electronically, and presented in an online debate which took place on 25 April, organised jointly with the Association of Friends of the UAB, AmicsUAB, and moderated by lecturer Daniel Rico, direcotr of the book series El Espejo y la Lámpara, who stated that the book reflects "the solitude of Africa" in the fight against climate change. In this sense, Gautier defended the diplomatic efforts of African countries, which were essential in making "the United States, China and Russia sit down and negotiate".

Chema Caballero, co-author of the blog "África no es un país", spoke on the importance of applying "African solutions to problems posed by climate change" such as "recovering traditional farming methods". He praised the awareness existing among the new generations against neo-colonialisms and also warned that many people in Africa, "if they could, would live differently, very similarly to how we live here". In contrast, Victoria Reyes, ICREA research lecturer at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the UAB, affirmed that Europe should propose "living in a way which would allow other to live as well" and alerted that the effects of climate change in Africa are related to "pre-existing vulnerabilities" due to the historical relations the continent has had with Western colonial powers. Caballero and Gautier ended the debate discussing the ambivalent role China currently plays as a "source of opportunities which offers aid in building up the continent" but at the same time is a power which "seeks to take advantage of the continent".

Expert in Africa and its History

The book forms part of research conducted by Johari Gautier Carmona (París, 1979) into the impact global warming has on the life of humans and the geography of the Africa continent. Gautier spent fifteen years writing about and investigating the African continent. He has collaborated with Casa Àfrica and with newspapers such as El País-Planeta Futur, FronteraD, Afribuku and other journals specialising on Africa and Afro-descendents. After several trips and hours of research, he published Cuentos históricos del pueblo africano (Almuzara, 2010), which focuses on the unknown history of the continent before it was colonised, and the book Del sueño y sus pesadillas (Atmósfera Literaria, 2015), where Gautier reflects upon the profound reasons for Senegalese to migrate to Spain.