Guinea-Bissau

It takes only 21 days for the average Canadian to produce as much greenhouse gases as the average Bissau-Guinean will produce over the course of the entire year.  Therefore, January 21st (21 days into the year) is "Climate Change Impacts in Guinea-Bissau Day."

Guinea-Bissau is already feeling the impacts of climate change.  Over the past 30 years, the country has seen an overall decrease in the volume of rainfall, and seen an increase in temperatures.  The country is also experiencing coastal erosion, and intrusion of salt water leading to a loss of rice fields and contamination of fresh water resources.

Guinea-Bissau’s National Adaptation Programme of Action summarizes the predicted climate change impacts as a decrease “in agricultural, forest and grazing production, loss of human lives arising from malnutrition and food insecurity, risk of endemic disease such as diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, etc.”