This column by Simon Gear first appeared on the Don’t Be a Passenger blog (www.dontbeapassenger.com) in January of 2011

The Kilimanjaro ice cap has become a poster child for global warming.  The glaciers are retreating daily and we are unlikely to be more than a decade or so away from losing them entirely.  The science behind this is, as with everything climate change related, complex.  It isn’t just a question of warmer temperatures melting the ice.  In fact, the temperatures at the summit of Kili haven’t changed substantially in the last century.  What has changed is a shift in the wind patterns across the top of the mountain.  Where before, the ice cap was fed by a warm conveyor of wet Indian Ocean air, shifts in the circulation now mean that the summit is dryer with less snowfall.

All around the world, tropical glaciers are in retreat. The same processes in the Himalayas threaten the livelihood of a billion people across the Indian sub-continent as the ice runoff that feeds the rivers gradually diminishes to a trickle. In Tanzania, the Kili glaciers provide out of season water to 68 000 small-scale coffee farmers and countless more subsistence farmers who eke out an existence on the flanks of this mighty mountain.  Coffee and tourism are the only games in town for young Chagga men hoping to provide something other than bananas and millet for their families.  Every mountain guide and porter has an acre or two of coffee Arabica sown in among his family’s food crops. The effect of the drying mountain on the crops is obvious but many guides are concerned at the impact that the vanishing glaciers may have on the steady flow of tourist revenue too.

The drawcard of Kili’s glaciers is twofold.  First, the opportunity to visit Africa and climb the world’s tallest freestanding mountain is massively enhanced by the chance to visit tropical glaciers. Second, the climbers themselves rely on water runoff from the glaciers.  The logistics involved in transporting water from a dry savannah up onto a 5900m mountain doesn’t bare thinking about. Without its glaciers, Mount Kilimanjaro will become both more less attractive and harder to climb for tourists, severely hampering an industry that currently brings 50 000 tourists to east Africa each year.

And the local Tanzanians cannot do anything about the changes.  Not even 68 000 coffee farmers can make their voices heard over the needs of Chinese coal merchants and Johannesburg SUV drivers.  The Kilimanjaro National Park’s response to climate change is going to have to epitomise what all our responses need to be: Forearmed is forewarned. Money needs to be spent now creating projects and infrastructure to buffer the coffee farmers and tour guides from the drying of their mountain. The same forward planning is going to be necessary from coffee buyers in Seattle and retailers in  South Africa. The time of not needing to know or care where our produce came from is long gone.  We may not be able to reverse global warming.  Hell, we may not even have the political will to slow it down much.  But if we fail to plan for it we only have ourselves to blame.