Climate Change and Global Warming in Namibia: Environmental Disasters vs. Human Life and the Economy

Abstract

Climate change is one of the concepts in Namibian languages that does not have any meaning or cannot be easily translated into the native dialects. It is very alien to many Namibians but yet growing in popularity, as it has become a problem that is affecting the economy, natural resources, and tradition and culture of the native people. Climate change is probably going to worsen the dry circumstances that are currently experienced in Southern Africa or Namibia to be specific. If it happens that rainfall does come in good amounts regularly, it will probably erupt in greater power. This will eventually lead to floods and erosion damages in some parts of the country, though these expectations have had very little influence on Namibian policy. Reid et al. (2008) stated that over the past 20 years there has been annual decrease in the Namibian economy of up to 5%, which has been a result of the climate change mostly impacting natural resources in the country. The result was reported using the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model simulations for Namibia. However, this result has negatively impacted the poorest people the most, which is a consequence of decline in wages and employment opportunities, especially for uneducated or unskilled labor in rural areas. It is of utmost importance for Namibia to take initiatives to ensure that most of its policies and activities are environmentally proofed. Namibia should have a unique approach to deal with displaced farmers and farm workers and citizens of such nature by looking into its issues of colonialism. In addition, there is a clear need to mainstream climate change into policies of developing countries like Namibia, because it is the responsibility of these countries to muddle through with climate change impacts and plan for a climate-constrained future.