Project updates

Workshop on IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land

Delegates from the organisations CILSS/AGHRYMET, UEMOA and ECOWAS as well as IPCC and UNFCCC focal points and key scientists from ten West African countries met in Ouagadougou to discuss the upcoming IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems (SR Land) at WASCAL Competence Center on 27 and 28 May. Participants discussed key issues for the region and ways of strengthening regional scientific cooperation at the event organised by Climate Analytics and WASCAL under the IMPACT project.

Learn more about the workshops organised under IMPACT.

 

Africa climate projections - online tool

Many policymakers and researchers have to deal with climate related questions in fields such as agriculture, energy or human health but finding easily accessible and user-friendly climate projections can be a challenge. RegioClim is an online tool that gives non-expert users simple access to regional climate projections for African countries for five climate indicators: temperature, hot extremes, precipitation, wet extremes and 5-day wet extremes. Its key feature is the ability to access projections not just at the national but also at the province level. The tool offers great flexibility in terms of selecting seasonal data, configurable depending on seasonal change in question – rainy or dry season, country vs. sector specific or crop growing season.

 

Crop yield projections for Africa

Understanding how rising temperatures might affect staple crops is a key element of planning adaptation measures in many countries. RegioCrop is an online tool that gives non-expert users simple access to crop yield projections for all African countries – down to the province level – derived from state-of-the-art global crop models.

This tool gives access to spatial patterns of relative change in crop yields at different levels of global average temperature warming and corresponding aggregated impacts at the country level for a selection of crops.

 

What’s happening in West Africa

This Is What It’s All About: Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change in Africa
7 March 2019 – The World Bank Group is stepping up its efforts to help countries adapt to a changing climate through its first ever Adaptation and Resilience Action Plan.

Un « plan d’investissement climatique » de 400 milliards de dollars pour le Sahel
21 February 2019 – Pour lutter contre les effets du réchauffement, les 17 pays de la bande sahélienne vont bénéficier d’un « programme prioritaire » décidé lors de l’Accord de Paris.

African Climate Risks Conference 2019
The African Climate Risks Conference (ACRC2019) is therefore an open platform for sharing latest climate research on African climate among researchers, and with policy makers, practitioners and development partners and will take place 7-9 October in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Project activities

NDC Implementation in West Africa

The next immediate collaboration with the CILSS/AGRHYMET and ECOWAS will be on the NDCs implementation guidelines and definition of national implementation plan of NDCs and Paris Agreement in the region. A guide for NDC revision, strategies for sectoral planning for NDC implementation and enhancing climate change integration into policies.

Science policy interface

West African LDCs have been facing a number of challenges to address efficiently SPI in developing climate change adaptation strategies. To some extent, some policy makers in the region seem to be making choices without adequate information because of poor articulation between political and administrative roles in the policy process. Moreover, research institutions have been marginalized to an extent that their findings do not meaningfully impact on the policy process. This assessment will help to identify the challenges and potential approaches to overcome them.

Development of climate science in the region

The quantity of information describing how climate is changing in the region remains a challenge mainly due to the lack of datasets and long-term records. IMPACT aims to provide improved knowledge and evidence on current climate conditions, to better manage climate variability over seasons and from year to year. It will enhance the capacity to analyse climate variability and climate change in different timescale.

GCF climate finance criteria

IMPACT supports regional institution and countries to improve institutional and scientific capacities to develop successful proposals to access international climate finance: capacity-building, training and readiness support.

Face to a name

Dr Djibril Dayamba
Climate Impact and Adaptation Expert

Dr. Djibril S. Dayamba is a Regional Senior Scientist and Climate Impact and Adaptation Expert based in Ouagadougou, who, for the past 18 months at Climate Analytics, has focused on science-based support to national adaptation planning processes though conduct / coordination of climate vulnerability studies. Djibril has experience in diverse agro-sylvo-pastoral systems-related domains and has worked on a number of projects dealing with climate change, adaptation and resilience in production systems in West Africa, particularly upscaling climate-smart agriculture (CSA); supporting capacity building of stakeholders on aspects related to CSA and climate services for agriculture.

Under IMPACT, his responsibilities include:
Contributing to the coordination of the regional Country Request Mechanism in West Africa, namely by:
- Liaising with regional and national partners to identify priorities and needs and to shape concrete products to be delivered
- Liaising with IMPACT project management to align requests to available resources and overall project delivery
- Delivering on scientific analyses for the IMPACT Country Request mechanism, under which partner countries identify specific needs in terms of science support form national strategies such as NAPs and NDCs.
Contributing to the planning, implementation and facilitation of IMPACT regional workshops and facilitation of stakeholder consultations in the region

 

Climate Analytics Lomé

Our office in Lomé, Togo is an implementing partner of IMPACT and focuses on climate issues relating to Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Our presence in this particularly vulnerable region has enabled us to considerably expand our networks in West- and Sub-Saharan Africa, creating strong ties to key regional institutions, government ministries and agencies as well as civil society actors.

This allows us to tailor projects to meet these countries’ specific demands, in consultation with these stakeholders, and ultimately enable climate policy decision making to be based on robust scientific evidence. Our Lomé team focuses on developing an interface between climate science and policy, in the context of climate plan (NDC) implementation and building resilience to climate change through technical support to countries in mainstreaming their National Adaptation Plan (NAP) processes. These play a significant role in promoting comprehensive climate action and adaptation to the adverse e—ffects of climate change on vital aspects such as food security, water, health and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. In this context, we are able to support by providing capacity building for ministers, high-level officials,climate negotiators and practitioners and facilitating access to climate finance. Our experts also provide scientific capacity building to institutions and climate service providers.

 

Partner institutions

WASCAL

WASCAL (West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) is a large-scale research-focused Climate Service Center designed to help tackle this challenge and thereby enhance resilience of human and environmental systems to climate change and increased variability. It does this by strengthening the research infrastructure and capacity in West Africa related to climate change and by pooling the expertise of ten West African countries and Germany.

Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), WASCAL is implemented in a collaborative effort by West African and German partners.

 

CILSS/AGRHYMET

Created in 1974, AGRHYMET is a specialised agency of the Permanent Inter-State Committee against Drought in the Sahel (CILSS) of thirteen countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania , Niger, Senegal and Togo.

It has an international status with headquarters in Niamey, Niger.

 

Featuring

A Climate Change portal for West Africa

The CILSS’ Climate Change Portal aims to show the crucial role this Inter-Governmental Organisation plays in the field. The portal provides thematic articles, resource materials and databases, the ongoing or past field actions, training aspects, and many other topics related to Climate Change, with a focus on West Africa.

 

Blog West Africa

COVID-19 another shock for vulnerable countries facing multiple crises

The coronavirus pandemic adds yet another shock to the multiple challenges that more than a billion people living in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) already face in day-to-day life. It is much more than a health crisis. It has the potential to create devastating health, social, economic and environmental crises that will leave a deep, long-lasting mark. However, it is an opportunity to adopt and implement sustainable solutions during the recovery process, also for LDCs, without losing sight of the climate crisis.  
29 May 2020

Relevant recent publications - Adaptation

This special feature of the journal Regional Environmental Change examines biophysical impacts under different warming scenarios (1, 1.5, 2, and 4 °C warming) and considers scientifically derived development impacts to gain a better understanding of vulnerability to climate change. The main contributions to this special feature are five regional impact papers summarising climate impacts in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Middle East and Northern Africa.