Wildlife Dying in Kenya

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With world leaders attending the global climate summit in Glasgow, herders watch their animals suffer from a lack of water and food. Yusuf Abdullahi, a Kenyan farmer, says he has lost 40 goats.

“If they die, we all die,” Abdullahi says.

Kenya’s government has declared a national disaster in 10 of its 47 counties. The United Nations says more than 2 million people suffer from severe food insecurity. And as people go after food and water sources in remote areas, observers warn that tensions among communities could intensify.

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Wildlife has begun to die, too, says the chair of the Subuli Wildlife Conservancy, Mohamed Sharmarke.

“The heat on the ground tells you the sign of starvation we’re facing,” he says

Experts say that Africa will face such climate shocks more often, and although it contributes the least to global warming, it will suffer the most from it.

“We do not have a spare planet in which we will seek refuge once we have succeeded in destroying this one,” the executive director of East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Workneh Gebeyehu, said last month while opening a regional early warning climate center in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta couldn’t but agree.

“Africa, while currently responsible for a negligible amount of total global greenhouse gas emissions, is under significant threat from climate change,” he said at the center’s opening. The continent is responsible for just 4% of global emissions.