Africa is at a tipping point. With projected temperature rises higher than the rest of the world and an increase in the occurrence of droughts, floods and other natural disasters – the people, economy and ecosystems of Africa are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Early pilot initiatives for climate change adaptation have provided important lessons, data and insights to inform the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of future climate change adaptation programming across the continent. Taking these pilot initiatives to scale will require increased capacity and collaborative management approaches, improved engagement with the private sector, empowering actions that engage women and youth, capacity development to improve climate governance, and a holistic approach that looks at climate change not as a series of linear challenges, but as a systematic challenge that requires transformational shifts, innovative thinking and bold action.
Addressing climate drivers in Africa requires a continued focus on human development. As we take steps to mainstream and accelerate a new generation of climate change adaptation and mitigation projects designed to address both baseline needs as well as long-term targets for environmental protection and economic and social development, these projects need to connect climate drivers with community development, community development with zero-carbon growth, and zero- carbon growth with a climate-resilient future.
People are at the centre of the climate change equation. They are the common denominator that connects adaptation with mitigation, and the common driver of human-induced climate change. Adaptation may take the form of improving farm production to leave no one behind in our goals of ending hunger and poverty by 2030, strengthening effective, inclusive and accountable climate governance and natural resource management practices, enhancing national prevention and recovery capacities for resilient societies, promoting nature- based solutions for a sustainable planet and closing the energy gap. It will also involve reducing risks and informing evidence-based decision making through the introduction of climate information and early warning systems, strengthening gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and other bespoke approaches designed from the ground up to help people, society and economies transform the way they do business in a new climate reality.
In a world where every economic sector be it farming or aviation will need to rethink the way it does business, the human power, intellect and innovative spark of the people of Africa will be the essential driving force behind climate change adaptation. Human-driven design, connected with evidence-based decision-making will be key in ensuring the sustainability of investments in climate actions in Africa.
For developing countries in Africa, this innovative human- based design will require continuous supports from the United Nations Development System, civil society, the private sector and donor funds. The cost of inaction or poorly executed action is simply too high to ignore the problem at hand. The real question is, how will the world rise to the challenge and support the people of Africa in building a resilient future?
The link between climate and conflict in Africa and across the globe is cause for concern. According to recent estimates from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), of the 815 million chronically food-insecure and malnourished people in the world, the vast majority 489 million live in countries affected by conflict. The proportion is even more pronounced for undernourished children. Almost 122 million, or 75 percent, of stunted children under age five live in countries affected by conflict, with the difference in average prevalence between conflict and non-conflict affected countries at nine percentage points. Climate change is also contributing to human migration, which can trigger conflict over scarce resources such as lands and water.
Downstream impacts on African economies could be wide-ranging. Africa’s food production systems are among the world’s most vulnerable because of their extensive reliance on rain-fed crop production, high intra- and inter-seasonal climate variability, recurrent droughts and floods that affect both crops and livestock, and persistent poverty that limits the capacity to adapt. For example, farming systems in at least half of the cropping area of most African countries may have to deal with climate conditions that are beyond current norms by 2050, which will have an overall negative effect on yields of major cereal crops across Africa. Projections estimate yield losses of maize from 18 percent for southern Africa to 22 percent aggregated across sub-Saharan Africa, with yield losses for South Africa and Zimbabwe in excess of 30 percent. Other modelling results for sub-Saharan Africa suggest drops in cereal crop production in Africa ranging from 2 percent for sorghum to 35 percent for wheat by 2050.
Other projections based on continued high emissions levels suggest a decrease of up to 40 percent in fishery yields in the tropics by 2055 and reductions in fish production in Lakes Kariba, Kivu, Tanganyika, Victoria and Malawi, where small variations in climate are already causing nutrient dispersion; changes in terrestrial ecosystems throughout Africa, with additional warming posing high risks for the survival of some species; reductions in ground water for low rainfall areas, including the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and southern Africa; and sea level rise leading to aquifer salinization, with salinity potentially reaching very high levels.
A fundamental point is that climate change will interact with and exacerbate baseline stresses that, in many cases, are the primary drivers of vulnerability and poverty. For example, water resources will be subject to much larger pressures such as population growth, urbanization, agricultural growth and land use change. Health outcomes are significantly challenged by deficient human and financial resources, inadequate public health and health care systems, insufficient access to safe water and improved sanitation, food insecurity and poor governance.
Without global action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will accelerate and our opportunity for planned and controlled change management will diminish. The effects on African economies could be devastating. Adaptation is a matter of social justice because those most impacted by climate change have contributed least to the problem.
Hence, there should be adaptive capacity for sustainability and scaling-up underpins all strategies to strengthen resilience and adaptation to climate change because our climate system is inherently variable and because it is impossible to predict the weather with certainty. Agency, empowerment as well as the skills, knowledge, networks and active monitoring and results learning processes are key drivers of resilience and adaptation.
Access to markets to enable scaling-up is critical to enable and sustain adaptation benefits. These efforts can encompass market linkages, value chain development and business planning. The selection of technical options and management plans should be based on their market potential (for livelihood expansion) and, where payment for a continued level of service beyond the grant is concerned, the affordability levels for the communities should be a key determining factor.
Policy mainstreaming is key to enabling scaling-up. Pilot projects should be set up with robust monitoring frame-works connected to them so that evidence of what works and why the causal pathways between the investment and the result are fed into policy processes. That way, the knowledge banks of the costs of adaptation, the transferability of experience and the factors that would enable successful adaptation can begin to be built. Effective policy design is critical for the scale-up of successful pilots, recognizing that government is an enabler of household and private sector investment. Likewise, regulation and economic instruments will be important tools.
- Oladeji writes from Lagos.