Transcript title

Climate Change Adaptation: looking back
at lessons from an ‘early research’
Key note address Ton Dietz
7th Knowledge for Development Conference,
Utrecht, November 5, 2010.
An ‘early research’ in 19982004: Impact of Climate
Change on Drylands, with a
focus on West Africa
ICCD PROJECT
FUNDED BY NETHERLANDS
RESEARCH PROGRAMME ON
GLOBAL AIR POLLUTION AND
CLIMATE CHANGE
COLLABORATION BETWEEN
CERES, WAGENINGEN UR,
RIVM AND WEST AFRICAN
SCHOLARS
COORDINATED BY TON DIETZ,
RUERD RUBEN AND JAN
VERHAGEN
MAJOR RESULT: BOOK
KLUWER 2004
The impact of climate change on drylands, with a
focus on West Africa; Kluwer academic
publishers 2004
Africa: semi-arid and sub-humid areas, with high or low
degradation, high or low population densities
and urban or non-urban
What do we know about climate
change in Africa?
• Long-term climate change not easy to establish from
‘normal climate data’
• Lack of long-term reliable statistics: late start of weather
measurements, poor network of climate stations,
unreliable data collection and reporting
• Upward temperature change: maybe, but what about the
‘urban heat island impact’?
• Indirect evidence (Kilimanjaro!): conflicting
interpretations
• Rainfall variability much more evident than a rainfall
trend.
Rainfall variability is evident
but downward trend?
Example Mali 1918-1998
Another example:
Bawku north east Ghana
Africa: comparing aridity classes 1930-1960
with 1960-1990: major changes, but…
Expectations until 2050
Expectation:
increased drought risks
However:
many different predictions
Indirect evidence
• Study people’s own perceptions of changes in their
natural environment and in their land use and agricultural
success
• This study should be embedded in an overall study of
changes in people’s livelihoods and their livelihood
options
• That is what we tried to do in Mali, Burkina Faso and
Ghana and our starting point was the ‘intensification
theory’: what happens if there are growing tensions
between people’s demand for food and other natural
resources and local supply?
f
Climate risks
Normal’ climate risks:
• risks related to peak rainfall (a high volume of rainfall in
short periods, and often with high rainfall energy)
• risks related to peak river discharge, often following peak
rainfall in river catchment areas;
• risks related to severe storms, often near sea (and major
lake) coasts; often part of monsoon periods, or of hurricane
and cyclone seasons;
• risks related to heat (relative heat waves);
• risks related to droughts (‘normal’ dry seasons, dry spells
in ‘normal’ wet seasons, or failing rainy seasons);
• risks related to frost, particularly if unexpected (e.g. early
in autumn, or late in spring seasons).
Additional Climate Change
Risks
•
higher temperatures,
= higher evaporation rates; = higher heat risks; = lower frost risks.
changing rainfall patterns:
often: more rain; more flood risks.
more variability; more unpredictability
rising sea levels,
+ more severe coastal storms
= threatening coastal cities
melting ice in upper catchments of
major rivers,
= faster and higher river water discharge,
= threatening downstream cities.
RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN AFRICA
gradual change to higher temperatures and
hence higher evapotranspiration
changing rainfall regimes
change of ecozones, agro-ecozones, and biodiversity and crop niches
with impact on livelihood options
higher chances of extreme weather events (droughts, floods, storms)
TYPES OF RISKS
species extinction
human and animal death
damage to property and physical infrastructure
directly threatened livelihoods
lower resilience
lower innovative capability
lower (insurance) buffers
collapse of the social trust system: violence and threatened livelihoods
(including ‘no go areas’) (e.g. Welzer: ‘climate wars’ or ’climate refugees’)
Sahel: vulnerable agricultural, livestock and mixed
agricultural areas,
with increasing drought-prone conditions in the 1970s
and 1980s, but fast recovery afterwards!
People have ´normal´ seasonal and general coping
mechanisms, adaptation capability, with ´normal´
support networks.
What happens during more extreme conditions, if
they start again? What can we learn from the
1970s and 1980s?
Social differentiation of impact of drought:
Increased vulnerability hits the poor more than the rich,
but the poor are more risk-averse, and have less taboos
with regard to extreme coping behaviour
Extreme shocks/disasters can devastate the rich
as well as the poor
But the rich are generally better protected
physically, socially and economically
And there is path dependency for people and for
areas!
Diversification is a key strategy
However:
The poor have a poverty-driven diversification profile
and the rich an opportunity-driven diversification profile
Both the rich and the poor have
multi-spatial and multi-sector livelihoods
Middle-level wealth groups are
most vulnerable for shocks
especially:
one-place, economic specialists, dependent on external
markets, and with relatively low buffers, and in particular
if they ‘have to keep up appearances’ (taboos on
adjustment, or hanging on to less-successful ones until
nothing is left).
Example: northern Ghana
Indeed: strong signs of climate deterioration
and changing behaviour between 1970 and 2000
Evidence:
• Dryer natural environment: more ´northern´ species, traditional
species disappear (including some important economic trees)
Lower reliability of the seasons
Shift towards later start of the planting season
More dry weeks during the agricultural season
More sudden floods
More early-maturing, drought tolerant varieties
Shift to riverine fields and fields in former marsh lands
More diversified portfolio of fields
Continuation:
•Water table in wells lower
•More seasonal rivers
•Earlier stagnant water pools (malaria!)
•More salty water sources
•Growing importance of goats
•Higher reliance on irrigation and on niche crops (onions,
tomatoes); shifts to other water-harvesting methods
•Southern shift of the cotton belt
Strongly increased farmer’s willingness to invest in soil and water
enhancing environmental management
+ on-farm tree planting
+ higher labour input
+ during bad seasons shift from cereals to legumes
Much higher dependence on remittances from elsewhere
Much higher migration (seasonal and casual, but also permanent)
to “down south”, even during the cropping season at home (“hunger
trips”)
Much more emphasis on social networks and social security
arrangements
More powerful position of rich families and of successful migrants
elsewhere
Considerable
population
redistribution
1960-1994:
Emptying of the
extreme
drylands
and war zones
Move to
the coast
Very strong
urbanisation
Urbanisation prospects until 2020
Policy priorities
according to a West African expert panel in 2002:
1 Better early warning systems and better communication about its
findings
2 Integrate knowledge about changing nature and changing
behaviour
3 Develop more adaptive agricultural, pastoral, sylvicultural and
horticultural practices (and support ‘northern nature and crops’
moving south)
4 More attention to and support for social security networks
and for diversified livelihood profiles
5 More attention for migration and for the role of remittances
6 More attention for entitlement changes (e.g. land, water and
forest rights) and for conflict prevention between groups with
different identities (e.g. cultivators vs herders).
And what
happened
after 2004?
Institutionalisation of CC
agencies
• Many African countries now have agencies responsible for
mitigation measures and participating in the global negotiation
meetings
• There is growing awareness of the need for systematic thinking
about adaptation, but mainly oriented to extreme events (floods,
storms, droughts) and some connection with PRSPs.
• Here and there start of ‘sustainable cities’ concept
• Often a major external push (aid, NGOs); lack of African ownership?
• Very little African examples yet of REDD and new compensation
regimes or GHG trading; exception: South Africa.
More emphasis on health risks
WHO study 2003:
“Any increase in frequency of extreme events such as storms, floods,
droughts and cyclones would harm human health through a variety
of pathways. These natural hazards can cause direct loss of life and
injury and affect health indirectly through
• loss of shelter;
• population displacement;
• contamination of water supplies;
• loss of food production;
• increased risk of infectious disease epidemics (including diarrhoeal
and respiratory diseases;
• and damage to infrastructure for provision of health services
(These can be) devastating impacts, particularly in densely settled
populations with inadequate resources”
Health risks!
Floods:
• increase in bacteriological diseases
like cholera and typhoid,
• and in an increase in parasitic
diseases like amoebiasis, giardiasis,
and cryptosporidiosis
Droughts:
• limited water supplies can have a
higher concentration of pathogens,
• and hence higher risks of water-borne
diseases,
• but low supplies may also affect
personal hygiene and result in skin
infections
More emphasis on adequate water
provision, but an uphill task in growing cities
• Ouagadougou;
1960: 59,000 people
• Now: > 1 million
Per person available:
• In 1978: 57 l/d
• In 1986: 39 l/d
• In 1993: 26 l/d
•
Needed:
Extra water dams, far away
+ urban water harvesting
+ subsidised water for the poor
+ health care for those without
clean water
1996
and
1986
But this is
also
Ouagadougou
3-9-2009
And then, in 2007/2008, the
hypes
• Sudden increase of food prices and food
price speculation: new emphasis on
agriculture and on the need for an ‘African
Green Revolution’ (Kofi Annan); aid
agencies begin to adapt.
• Sudden massive attention for biofuels as a
way out of global energy scarcity: full of
controversies
• Sudden massive attention for ‘land grab’.
Consequenses of the financial
crisis 2008-2010
• Food and other prices of basic commodities
down again
• Many land acquisition plans on hold or if land
has been acquired: little action yet
• But Asia much less affected: towards a multipolar world order.
• Africa as a victim of a new round of resource
grab? Or chances for Africa to better ‘negotiate’
this multi-polarity and break away from poverty?