No environmental issue has been of such truly global magnitude as the issue of climate change. And no other global environmental issue has been so controversial, not because of lack of scientific knowledge but rather because it is a result of every human action and will have a direct impact on all human endeavour everywhere, North and South, East and West.

Some hide behind the lack of scientific certainty, making it an excuse not to act to deal with a major potential catastrophe. As a scientist, I have never seen any scientific subject where scientists agreed on all its aspects one hundred per cent. We go by the majority – not just a simple majority, but a real, solid majority. And that is what we have now.

We now know enough to indicate that the poor developing countries are the least equipped to adapt, on their own, to climate change, although most of them played, and will certainly continue to play, an insignificant role in causing it.

African countries are among the poorest of the developing countries. Most of the least developed countries are in Africa.

So, this book is really coming at the right time, and it presents the issues of relevance to Africa – sea-level rise to a continent surrounded by two oceans and two seas; energy in a continent where the most used source of energy is firewood (destroying a carbon sink and an oxygen generator and a soil stabilizer for a continent with large areas of marginal soil); and desertification in a continent suffering from repeated droughts and hard-hitting desertification problems.