Stories that sound too good to be true usually are; an honest journalist learns that pretty early in his or her career. But every so often there is an exception. The exception I’m about to describe is from Africa, which makes it doubly welcome. For Africa is not only the continent where our species was born; it is also the continent climate change will hit the hardest.
Part of what makes Africa so vulnerable is that it is already one of the hottest, driest places on earth. The most famous desert in the world, the Sahara, occupies the northern third of the continent. Below that is the Sahel, a strip of savanna that stretches like a belt across the width of the African landmass, separating the Sahara and Sahel from the rainforests to the south.