Adapting To Climate Change In Africa

 By Felix Oladeji

Africa is at a tipping point. With temperatures rising 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. An early pilot initiative for climate change adaptation has provided important lessons, data and insights.

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, zero-carbon growth, and 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 on the continent. 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 support 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 human-induced climate change and rainfall patterns in Africa is uncertain. Changes in rainfall trends such as the onset, duration, dry spell frequencies and rainfall intensity have been detected in eastern Africa, southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. East Africa has experienced intense rainfall and drought more frequently in recent decades during the spring and summer seasons, and southern Africa is experiencing more droughts.

In Africa and parts of the Middle East, droughts and conflicts in 2019 created famine and food insecurity, and propelled a global spike in malnutrition– the first time in over a decade that we have fallen back on targets to end hunger by 2030. Globally, hunger affects more than one out of 10 people, with the estimated number of undernourished people increasing from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016.

Policy mainstreaming is key to enabling scaling up. Pilot projects should be set up with robust monitoring frameworks 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 of the costs of adaptation, transferability of experience and the factors that will enable successful adaptation can be built. An effective policy design is critical for the scale-up of successful pilots, recognising that the government is an enabler of household and private sector investment. Likewise, regulation and economic instruments will be important tools.

*Felix Oladeji, a commentator on public issues writes from Lagos