Back in Ethiopia, Geldof warns about climate change

By Barry Malone

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Irish singer and activist Bob Geldof returned to Ethiopia this week 25 years after arousing a global response to its 1984 famine and said climate change could undo progress the country had seen since then.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi will represent Africa at next month's U.N. climate change talks in Copenhagen. Meles has become the continent's most outspoken leader on climate and blames European pollution for the 1980s disaster.

"The resilient Ethiopians I have met tell of two types of change over the last 25 years," Geldof told Reuters by email.

"They tell of famines avoided, diseases fought, roads, dams and mobile phone networks built, children in school and immense economic growth. But then there is the negative, unwelcome change -- that of the climate," Geldof wrote.

Some climate experts have called for rich countries to pay up to $100 billion annually to counter the effects of global warming on Africa.

"It is having a terrible impact on their economy and their communities," Geldof said. "What is happening to them now, science says will happen to the rest of us in the near future should we not change as these Africans are being forced to do."

Geldof's Band Aid charity in 1984 brought together pop stars of the day and provoked a massive outpouring of charity as governments and individuals contributed a total of $144 million.

More than 1 million Ethiopians died in 1984. A quarter of a century on, foreigners are still feeding them in huge numbers.