Mountains, as we know, are special places.
Cooler, wetter, greener. Picture-postcard places, in short.
What's more, the few peaks of global significance on the African continent are home to plants that would never take root elsewhere, animals that you wouldn't even find in an encyclopaedia, and at the top you can still find that luxury for Africa called snow.
But doomsayers can rest assured: even these paradises have an expiry date printed on them, thanks to climate change.
Yes, because mountains act as the planet's refrigerators. As long as there is ice and snow, sunlight bounces back into space (scientists call this the albedo effect). When the snow melts, however, the dark rock remains, absorbing heat, warming up even more and accelerating the melting process. In short, it is a brilliant mechanism of self-destruction.
As if that weren't enough, mountains are warming twice as fast as the global average. This means that the few African glaciers – Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, Rwenzori – are fighting a losing battle: they will be extinct by the middle of the century. Goodbye snow-capped peaks, goodbye safari photos with romantic backdrops. And above all, goodbye water reserves for millions of people living at the foot of these giants.
And as always, when humans lose something beautiful, not only is there an aesthetic void, but practical problems also arise. The retreat of the ice triggers landslides, rockfalls and mudslides: dangers that can erupt even centuries later, perhaps when no one expects them anymore. Meanwhile, soils and rivers change, droughts alternate with floods, and the landscape becomes a climatic roulette wheel.
That's not all: African mountains are home to a biological heritage that even museums cannot match. Afromontane forests, with unique species such as podocarps, are true biodiversity hotspots. Higher up are the alpine pastures, on which local shepherds depend, and lower down is the tourism industry, which still dreams of “wild and authentic” mountains. All of this is at risk of disappearing, not so much because of nature, but because of the usual lethal cocktail of invasive species, aggressive agriculture, deforestation and climate change.
And in the midst of all this are the mountain communities. Populations that live off water, pasture, wood and tourism. For them, the word “resilience” is not a conference term, but a matter of survival. They need solid infrastructure, constant monitoring and, above all, the ability to accept that the mountains they live on will no longer be those of their grandparents.
In short: African mountains are small, unknown, fragile and already under pressure. But let's not kid ourselves that the problem stays there. What happens up there, above the clouds, also affects us down here, on the plains. Because if the planet's refrigerators shut down, the heat will reach our living rooms.