Africa and climate change: Adapt, survive, thrive?

SciDev.net: …The first to be affected by any changes in the weather are those people who live by the seasons and are dependent on rainfall: the farmers. And because farmers and rain-fed agriculture are critically important to food security and African economies in general, helping them adapt is a prime focus of many adaptation projects.

Learning what farming practices work best in changing climates and putting those changes into practice is an important part of adaptation, and something that the programme 'Climate Change Adaptation in Africa' (CCAA) — jointly funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development — is focusing on.

The programme will document the experiences of various communities, especially smallholder farmers, looking at the vulnerability of their farms to changes in rainfall, and how communities have acclimatised to these changes ― specifically how they have adapted their farming practices and how resilient they have been.

…Funded with US $8.6 million over several years, the first round of ten projects has recently commenced in 18 countries in northern and sub-Saharan Africa.

A team based at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania will implement a CCAA project in the Greater Horn of Africa, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan. Project leader Henry Mahoo told SciDev.Net, "These countries are particularly vulnerable to drought, exacerbated by widespread poverty and dependence on rain-fed agriculture. Even with normal rainfall, the region does not produce enough food to meet its needs. The result is frequent climate-induced famines that are addressed using short-term emergency relief."

…Researchers will collect information from farmers on the impact of droughts, and their successes and failures. Farmers will then collectively be able to use this information, in conjunction with climate predictions, to make better decisions on when to plant crops or what type of seeds to plant.

…If these climate adaptation strategies are to take root and flourish, many believe the projects and ideas should be driven from within Africa.

Activities must begin at the local level, says Gilles Forget, the West and Central African director for Canada's International Development Research Centre, one of the funding bodies of the CCAA programme. If there is grassroots support, this will soon develop into community and national action, he says….

CCAA climate specialist Anthony Nyong, of the International Development Research Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, emphasises the importance of finding answers to the challenges of climate change from within Africa."We seek to promote African leadership in finding solutions to support both the science and practice of climate change adaptation," said Nyong…