Ask about global warming, and the old man says he doesn’t understand the term. But he and the 1 million or so other inhabitants of Kilimanjaro’s flanks are getting a firsthand education in the phenomenon and its human impact. Government water experts say the mountain’s annual rainfall has declined every year since 1984. Two years ago the drought got so bad that Minja’s crops failed; for the first time in his life, he had to buy food to survive. Last year his crop fared better but was still thin. Farther uphill, past the farms and villages, the rain forest that covers the mountain’s midsection is receding, consumed by illegal logging and wildfires in the dry heat. And above it all, at the top of Africa’s highest peak, the snows of Kilimanjaro are vanishing.
It’s happening at a frightening rate. Dave Sprissler and David Luber found out for themselves last year when they set out for the 6,000-meter summit, relying on a map just three years old. The two Americans planned to climb the southern route by hiking up the Heim glacier. It turned out to be impossible. In the short time since the map had been drawn, the glacier had shrunk by half. Its leading edge had broken off and melted, leaving a towering wall of ice to block the way. That kind of thing happens a lot lately, says Thomas Meela, a professional guide who has been to the top more than 100 times. Every time he goes up, he finds less ice and more bare rock. More than once his parties have been forced to turn back and try a different ascent. “I’m not sure I believed in global warming before I came here,” says Sprissler. “I do now.”
Lonnie Thompson is another believer. The Ohio State University geology professor has been studying glaciers and climate change for more than 20 years. Last year he published the findings from research he has done on Kilimanjaro. According to Thompson’s data, some 30 percent of the mountain’s ice cap has disappeared since 1979. Fully 82 percent has melted since the glacier was first mapped in 1912. “If the glacier continues to melt at its current rate, it will have completely disappeared by 2020,” says Thompson. “And that’s a conservative estimate.”
The rain forest is in similarly desperate shape. Here, scientists can’t distinguish the effects of global warming from the damage directly caused by humans. Subsistence farmers, their crops stunted by the fickle weather, have turned to the woodlands for income. “Once they’re inside the forest, they cut everything indiscriminately,” says Claudia Hemp, a zoologist who has spent 13 years studying Kilimanjaro’s fauna. That’s a problem because rain forests generate most of their own rain. When large areas are clear-cut or burned, what’s left becomes drier and more susceptible to fire. When rain does fall, it tends to escape downhill rather than soak into the soil or evaporate to make new clouds. During the drought of 2000, wildfires claimed roughly 5,000 hectares–nearly 5 percent of the rain forest that’s still standing.
That could mean more runoff for the farms downhill–but the water isn’t finding its way to Minja’s village. “Our irrigation channels have dried up,” he says. “And now we have the mosquito disease here.” He’s talking about malaria. The weather at this altitude used to be too cool for the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite. The flying pests thrive in the warmer temperatures. But the villagers are struggling. Cheosa Sira, a young neighbor of Minja’s, grows corn and beans to feed his family and a little coffee to trade for seeds and fertilizer. Behind his farm there’s a small settlement of deserted wattle-and-mud huts. “They all left during the drought,” he says. He thought about moving away himself. “Our land used to make us a good living,” he says. Now he’s barely surviving.
It’s a different story on the far side of the mountain. The rains have dried up there, too, but water is plentiful anyway. No one seems to know why, but the melting glaciers and the surface runoff seem to flow just one way–out of Tanzania. Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, just north of Kilimanjaro, is turning into a swamp. Elephant conservationist Cynthia Moss has spent 29 years here. The advancing wetlands have repeatedly forced her to move her base camp to higher ground. Some local animals, such as giraffes, impala and the lesser kudus, have left the park. Their hooves weren’t adapted for running on marshy ground. Elephants and many bird species are thriving; they love the water. Flamingos, unheard of 10 years ago, are common now. But Moss worries that the lush times will end before long. “If the glacier is on the verge of disappearing, that means the flow of water will also stop,” she says. “If that happens, we’ll be in a lot of trouble.”
Trouble has already arrived in Wilbert Minja’s village. “I do not worry for myself, because I will soon be dead,” the old man says. “But for the sake of my children and my tribe, I worry greatly.” The threat goes far beyond the mountain’s immediate neighborhood, Thompson adds. “I believe that ice fields like those on Kilimanjaro are the Earth’s early-warning systems,” the glaciologist says. “They are like the canaries once used in coal mines. They are indicators of massive change.”
Alex Alusa agrees. The meteorologist, the U.N. Environmental Program’s deputy director for Africa, helped draft the Kyoto Protocol, and its collapse still bothers him. “People tell me we have more pressing problems than climate change, like poverty eradication,” he says. “I tell them they are missing the point.” It’s no use trying to lift African subsistence farmers out of poverty while their crops are dying of drought. What advice does he have for those farmers now? “Pray,” says Alusa.
