Chapter 22: Africa
Executive Summary:
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Conservation agriculture provides a viable means for strengthening resilience in agroecosystems and livelihoods that also advance adaptation goals (high confidence). A wide array of conservation agriculture practices, including agroforestry and farmer-managed natural tree regeneration, conservation tillage, contouring and terracing, and mulching, are being increasingly adopted in Africa. These practices strengthen resilience of the land base to extreme events and broaden sources of livelihoods, both of which have strongly positive implications for climate risk management and adaptation. Moreover, conservation agriculture has direct adaptation-mitigation co-benefits. Addressing constraints to broader adoption of these practices, such as land tenure/usufruct stability, access to peer-to-peer learning, gender-oriented extension and credit and markets, as well as identification of perverse policy incentives, would help to enable larger scale transformation of agricultural landscapes. {22.4.5.6, 22.4.5.7, 22.4.6, 22.6.}
Despite implementation limitations, Africa’s adaptation experiences nonetheless highlight valuable lessons for enhancing and scaling up the adaptation response, including principles for good practice and integrated approaches to adaptation (high confidence). Five common principles for adaptation and building adaptive capacity can be distilled: (1) supporting autonomous adaptation through a policy that recognizes the multiple-stressor nature of vulnerable livelihoods; (2) increasing attention to the cultural, ethical, and rights considerations of adaptation by increasing the participation of women, youth, and poor and vulnerable people in adaptation policy and implementation; (3) combining “soft path” options and flexible and iterative learning approaches with technological and infrastructural approaches and blending scientific, local, and indigenous knowledge when developing adaptation strategies; (4) focusing on building resilience and implementing low-regrets adaptation with development synergies, in the face of future climate and socioeconomic uncertainties; and (5) building adaptive management and social and institutional learning into adaptation processes at all levels. {22.4} Ecosystem-based approaches and pro-poor integrated adaptation-mitigation initiatives hold promise for a more sustainable and system-oriented approach to adaptation, as does promoting equity goals, key for future resilience, through emphasizing gender aspects and highly vulnerable groups such as children. {22.4.2, 22.4.5.6, 22.6.2, Table 22-5)
22.3.5.4.9
Heat waves and high ambient temperatures Heat waves and heat-related health effects are only beginning to attract attention in Africa. High ambient temperatures are associated with increased mortality in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Nairobi with associations varying by age, gender, and cause of death (Azongo et al., 2012; Diboulo et al., 2012; Egondi et al., 2012). Children are particularly at risk. Heatrelated health effects also may be of concern in West and southern Africa (Dapi et al., 2010; Mathee et al., 2010). Section 11.4.1 assesses the literature on the health impacts of heat waves and high ambient temperatures. Low ambient temperatures are associated with mortality in Nairobi and Tanzania (Egondi et al., 2012; Mrema et al., 2012). Chapter 11 discusses the relationship between heat and work capacity loss. This is an important issue for Africa because of the number of workers engaged in agriculture.
22.4.3. Adaptation, Equity, and Sustainable Development
Moreover, effective adaptation responses necessitate differentiated and targeted actions from the local to national levels, given the differentiated social impacts based on gender, age, disability, ethnicity, geographical location, livelihood, and migrant status (Tanner and Mitchell, 2008; IPCC, 2012).Additional attention to equity and social justice aspects in adaptation efforts in Africa, including the differential distribution of adaptation benefits and costs,would serve to enhance adaptive capacity (Burton et al., 2002; Brooks et al., 2005; Thomas and Twyman, 2005; Madzwamuse, 2010); nevertheless,some valuable experience has been gained recently on gender-equitable adaptation, human rights-based approaches, and involvement of vulnerable or marginalized groups such as indigenous peoples and children, aged and disabled people, and internally displaced persons and refugees (see Table 22-5; ADF, 2010; UNICEF, 2010, 2011; Levine et al., 2011; Romero González et al., 2011; IDS, 2012; Tanner and Seballos, 2012).
22.4.5.2. Climate Risk Reduction, Risk Transfer, and Livelihood Diversification
Early warning systems (EWS) are gaining prominence as multiple stakeholdersstrengthen capabilitiesto assess and monitor risks and warn communities of a potential crisis, through regional systems such as the Permanent Inter-States Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) and the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), as well as national, local, and community-based EWS on for example food and agriculture (Pantuliano and Wekesa, 2008; FAO, 2011; Sissoko et al., 2011). Some of the recent EWSs emphasize a gendered approach, and may incorporate local knowledge systems used for making short-, medium-, and long-term decisions about farming and livestock-keeping, as in Kenya (UNDP, 2011b).
22.4.5.4. Knowledge Development and Sharing
There is agreement that culture—or the shaping social norms, values, and rules including those related to ethnicity,class, gender, health, age, social status,cast, and hierarchy—is of crucial importance for adaptive capacity as a positive attribute but also as a barrier to successful local adaptation (Section 22.4.6); further research is required in this field, not east because culture is highly heterogeneous within a society or locality (Adger et al., 2007, 2009; Ensor and Berger, 2009;Nielsen and Reenberg, 2010; Jones, 2012).
22.4.6. Barriers and Limits to Adaptation in Africa
A complex web of interacting barriersto local-level adaptation existsthat manifests from national to local scales to constrain adaptation, which includes institutional, political, social, cultural, biophysical, cognitive, behavioral, and gender-related aspects (high confidence).While relatively few studies from Africa have focused specifically on barriers and limits to adaptation, perceived and experienced constraints distilled from the literature encompass the resources needed for adaptation, the factors influencing adaptive capacity, the reasons for not employing particular adaptive strategies or not responding to climate change signals, and the reasons why some groups or individuals adapt but not others (Roncoli et al., 2010; Bryan et al., 2011; Nyanga et al., 2011; Ludi et al., 2012).
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Characteristics such as wealth, gender, ethnicity, religion, class, caste, or profession can act as social barriers for some to adapt successfully or acquire the required adaptive capacities (Ziervogel et al., 2008; Godfrey et al., 2010; Jones and Boyd, 2011). Based on field research conducted in the Borana area of southern Ethiopia, Debsu (2012) highlights the complex way in which external interventions may affect local and indigenous institutions by strengthening some coping and adaptive mechanisms and weakening others. Restrictive institutions can block attempts to enhance local adaptive capacity by maintaining structural inequities related to gender and ethnic minorities (Jones, 2012). Constraints faced by women, often through customs and legal barriers, include limited access to land and natural resources, lack of credit and input in decision making, limited ability to take financial risk, lack of confidence, limited access to information and new ideas, and under-valuation of women’s opinions (McFerson, 2010; Djoudi and Brockhaus, 2011; Peach Brown, 2011; Codjoe et al., 2012; Goh, 2012; Jones, 2012; Ludi et al., 2012).
