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 Climate Change and Climate Variability in West Africa
The African Studies Centre - Leiden
Since the mid-1990s, The African Studies Centre
(ASC) in Leiden, The Netherlands, has been
studying climate change in West Africa in a
multidisciplinary research programme. With its
partners, Wageningen University and Research
Centre and the University of Amsterdam, it
launched the multi-scale and multi-disciplinary
research programme, Impact of Climate Change
on Drylands (ICCD) in 1999, financed by the
Dutch national research programme on Global
Climate Change and Air Pollution.
The objectives were:
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To analyse the effects of climate change and
rainfall variability on drought risk and yield
potential; |
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To develop a comprehensive framework to analyse regional scale impacts; and, |
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To identify different risk-coping strategies at farm household level. |
Specific methodologies were developed to link climate change models with a
social science approach to investigate mitigation strategies towards climate
change and rainfall variability. The ASC team was primarily responsible for the
social science contribution.
Findings
Several findings stand out. On the local, regional and national levels, climate
variability, not climate change, is the most significant problem people have.
The variability of rainfall, defined as the average deviation from the mean, is
enormous, sometimes up to 40-80% and increases with decreasing annual rainfall
totals. Especially in marginal areas, such as the Sahara desert, the Sahel and the
sub-humid Sudan zone, rainfall unpredictability poses enormous threats to food
security and deficits lead to localised and general food crises every year. Intraseason
drought may lead to harvest losses and crop failure even in years where
rainfall totals would allow a normal harvest. Spatial variation and end of season
showers can mean the difference between a bad and a good harvest across a
distance of just several kilometres and the vulnerability of rural populations to
food shortages is extreme.
Another major point drawn from this study is the tremendous variety in responses
to climate variability at the regional, local and individual level. At the regional
level, there are specific complexes and combinations of cropping and animal
husbandry systems often operated by different ethnic and occupational groups
in response to climate conditions. Depending on access to resources, ethnicity,
social networks and labour and commodity markets, an amazing number of
solutions and organisational arrangements to secure
food and other life
necessities are found by
people within these regions.
Rural-rural Migration
Of old, these specific
regions have been
migration zones.
Unsurprisingly, the impact
of climate variability
translates in increasing
mobility of the people
in these zones. This does not only concern rural-urban migration - where these
migrants join the poor masses of African cities - but also, and more remarkably,
rural-rural migration. People continue to be on the move (peripatetics and
dwellers) creating mobile lifestyles. The rural proletariat seems to be increasing in
arid zones in the Sahel. Apart from the increasing numbers of ‘drought’ migrants to African cities as a consequence of climate change, there are other effects on
the urban areas, related to the provision of towns with rural products, such as fuel
wood, food and animal products.
Socio-Cultural Differences
 New methodological devices were developed to tackle the relation between
climate change and societal changes. Attention was given to climate conditions
and human strategies at regional and local levels, while linking these to higher
order structural and contextual conditions.
One methodology is called ‘Pathways’ because it means unravelling historically
rooted trajectories of people’s decision-making with regard to changes in
their environment. Across families and over generations there are changes in
patterns of decision-making that may be connected to climate change. The
focus on contextual decision-making processes has been an important tool in an
interdisciplinary research where the social sciences often have difficulty in getting
their message through. Ten of such case studies have produced enough material
to discover trends that also lead to new social and economic configurations. If
these trends continue, the social and economic landscape of West Africa may
change profoundly.
Scenario studies with the help of global change models executed within this
programme produced contradictory results. One model (MPI-GCM) predicted a
progressive desiccation of large parts of the region whereas another model (GFDLGCM)
predicted precisely the opposite. In the first, measures will have to be
oriented at increasing the buffering capacity for the region for larger fluctuations
and a progressive decline in food production. In the other, increasing rainfall will
pose enormous challenges in the form of floods, erosion and possibly adaptations
in cropping regimes and land use strategies.
Given the general lack of social and economic infrastructure and widespread
extreme and chronic poverty, with 80% of the population living on less than US$1
per capita per day, these areas belong to the poorest in the world. They are hardly
connected with world markets and human resources are very little developed. Life
expectancy is low, child mortality and malnutrition rates are among the highest
in the world and will continue to be so for decades. These areas should receive
prime attention for measures to mitigate the consequences of climate change and
climate variability.
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