"Africa requires urgent assistance to adapt to climate change and action by industrialized countries to deliver deep cuts in emissions if the continent and its people are to thrive in the 21st century," the report said.

The regional report, which was availed to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York Wednesday, stated that "continued increase in greenhouse gases will later this century put up to 1.8 billion more people in Africa at risk of water shortage".

It said that "even a modest temperature rise can lead to falls in water flows in some river systems equal to volume to one large dam being lost annually".

It also said that tourism in Africa would be grossly affected as 25 per cent to 40 per cent of animal species in the national parks of sub-Saharan Africa might become endangered.

According to the report: "Arid and semi-arid lands are likely to increase by up to eight per cent with important ramifications for livelihood, poverty eradication and maintaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)".

Also, the document prepared by Working Group 11 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that rise in sea level, especially on the East African coast will increase flooding.

It also predicted that wheat might disappear from Africa by the 2080s, while soya beans harvest in Egypt could drop to 30 per cent by 2050 "under a worst case scenario" and maize yields would fall "significantly" in Southern Africa.

UN Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director, Achim Steiner, who co-founded the IPCC, said: "the report underlines the enormous costs facing Africa as a result of unchecked climate change".

Steiner described the situation as "costs that are wholly unacceptable for the 800 million people alive today and for the generations to come".

"It is the continent with the least responsibility for the climate change and yet is perversely the continent with the most at risk if greenhouse gases are not cut," he said.

"Some measure of climate change is, however, a reality that the world must be already to live with. That reality requires assistance for Africa to adapt. It requires investment, but equally requires climate proofing of economies now and in the future."

The report also highlighted the effects of climate change on rain pattern in the continent, which it said "is very likely to decrease along Africa's Mediterranean coast by a fifth with a fall also expected in the Northern Sahara and the Northern West Africa coast".

"Declines are also forecast from Southern Africa with the extreme west of the region likely to experience falls of as much as 40 per cent through June and August," it disclosed.

In contrast, it stated that tropical and Eastern Africa might experience increased rainfall of seven per cent.

NAN reports that the IPCC findings about Africa also outlined that the climate change is likely to aggravate water scarcity, extreme weather conditions, heightened health and disease patterns and further lead to decrease in agricultural and fisheries productivity. (NAN)