Negative impacts of climate change and climate variability on the sub-Saharan region are well documented (Folke 2006: 253; Fussel and Klein, 2006: 316; IPCC 2001, 2007, 2014). These adverse impacts are already obliterating the climate sensitive natural resources that poor communities depend on for daily survival. Regional and international development cooperation organisations are implementing prolific adaptation tools in an attempt to build the requisite capacity of poor communities to cope with climate variability and adapt to climate change. Despite their abundance, there have not been efforts to take stock of the direction development cooperation is taking in response to climate change in climate sensitive natural resource dependent communities particularly with the application of adaptation tools. This paper aims to map responses to climate change adaptation by exposing popular discourses in this area, clarify the developmental, climate-proofing, or impact focus of development cooperation organisations towards climate change adaptation, and draws contradistinctions between climate change adaptation approaches in developed and developing countries. To achieve this end, this paper is organised in the following sections:
Section 1: gives a birds’ eye view of climate change impacts in sub-Saharan Africa,
Section 2: conceptualises and contextualises climate change within socio-economic development and international development cooperation,
Section 3: outlines the methodology used,
Section 4: presents a synthesis of the categorisation framework, and
Section 5: reports on findings, discussion, and conclusion
1. CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS ON THE SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA REGION
Evidence of warming over land regions across, consistent with anthropogenic climate change, has increased. Mean annual temperature is likely to exceed 20C by the end of this century. Sub-Saharan African ecosystems are already being affected by climate change (Niang, Ruppel, Abdrabo, Essel, Lennard, Padgham & Urquhart, 2014) with South Africa estimated to lose half of its biodiversity in 50 years time (IPCC 2007). Climate change will amplify existing stress on water availability in Africa with South Africa already experiencing droughts leading to government emergency interventions. Droughts in the horn of Africa have fermented violent and armed conflict amongst pastoralists. Climate change may increase the burden of climate-relevant health outcomes (e.g. fight against Malaria) in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change interacts with non-climatic stressors (i.e. food insecurity, HIV/AIDS etc.) to exacerbate household vulnerability. Non-climatic and climatic stressor renders households in sub-Saharan Africa vulnerable to climate change. In cognisance of this reality, climate change adaptation tools might increase the resilience of households to climate change.
2. CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT NEXUS: AN IMPETUS TO ADAPTATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA REGION CONTEXT
As shown above, climate change is negatively affecting socio-ecological systems on the sub-Saharan Africa region. International Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report defines climate change as a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. It refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity (IPCC, 2001). This definition acknowledges that climate change is both a natural and man-made phenomenon. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 2008) unequivocally attributes climate change (global warming) and climate variability (extreme weather events) to human activities of production and consumption that increase atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG), namely; carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), mostly through the burning of fossil fuels such coal, gas and oil, and land use management and agriculture. This political definition aims at rallying the global community towards adopting climate change adaptation measures.
Population growth and socio-economic development have increased the prevalence of climate change. Anthropogenic, or man-made, climate change already threatens the capacity of the global ecosystem to meet the demands of an increasing population (Folke, 2006; IPCC, 2014; United Nations, 2007; Waas and Hugé 2012, Waas, Hugé, Verbruggen, and Wright, 2011). United Nations estimates that Africa’s population will increase from 1.0 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2050 accounting for 24% of the world’s population (UN World Population Prospects, 2010). Poverty, population growth, and climate change are multiple stressors acting on the African continent (UNFCCC 2008; UNDP 2010, UN World Population Prospects, 2010). Table 1 illustrates the Human Development outcomes of world countries including African countries.
Table 1
Human Development outcomes for World countries with African countries highlighted in bold
Human Development Index groups | Human Development Index Value | Number of world countries | Number of sub-Saharan African countries | Total |
Very high human development | 0.889 | 47 | 0 | 47 |
High human development | 0.741 | 47 | 0 | 47 |
Medium human development | 0.630 | 39 | 8 | 47 |
Low human development | 0.456 | 16 | 30 | 46 |
Source: Author’s own elaboration using UNDP (2010).
Confronted with these multiple challenge, international and regional development cooperation organisations (both public and non-governmental) have developed over one hundred and thirty two (132) climate change adaptation tools (UNFCCC 2008) to tackle the twin-challenges of socio-economic development and climate change adaptation.
According to the World Bank (2012: 22) climate change adaptation is an “adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects. Adaptation can be carried out in response to (ex-post) or in anticipation of (ex-ante) changes in climatic conditions (World Bank 2012). Moser and Ekstrom (2010: 22026) add that “adaptation involves changes in social-ecological systems in response to actual and expected impacts of climate change in the context of interacting non-climatic changes. Adaptation strategies and actions can range from short-term coping to longer-term, deeper transformations, aim to meet more than climate change goals alone, and may or may not succeed in moderating harm or exploiting beneficial opportunities”. In this regard, climate change adaptation are categorised as low regret, no regret, and win-win adaptation options. Low regret adaptation options include adaptive measures that deliver net-socio-economic benefits under current and project climate change impacts. An example includes avoiding locating buildings in high-risk areas (e.g. flood plains). No regret adaptation options include adaptive measures for which the associated costs are relatively low and for which benefits, although primarily realised under projected future climate change, may be relatively large. An example may include restricting the type and extent of development in flood-prone areas. Win-win adaptation options minimise climate change risk while exploiting adaptation opportunities. Typically, these are climate change mitigation options that realises social, economic, and environmental benefits simultaneously. An example might include the installation of utility scale renewable energy infrastructure particularly in developing countries. Such ‘green’ infrastructure creates jobs, cut GHG emissions, and have a low carbon footprint and so forth. Climate change adaptation tools can foster either low regret, no regret, and/or win-win adaptation options.
Climate change adaptation tools include process guidelines, generic and/or step-by-step frameworks, guidance notes, and toolkits that are used to realise climate change adaptation (UNFCCC 2008). Examples of tools include: Adaptation Policy Framework (APF), Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM), Climate Change Knowledge Portal (CCKP), Community-Based Risk Screening Tool-Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL), and SERVIR-Regional Visualization and Mapping System (see Appendix 1 for more examples).
Poverty and a heavy reliance on climate sensitive natural resources render African countries susceptible to climate change and climate variability. Non-climatic stressors include poverty that superimposes climatic stressors caused by climate change. This feedback mechanism makes African countries vulnerable to climate change and variability thus requiring resources to cope. African Development Bank (AfDB, 2011) estimates that Africa requires USD 20–30 billions per annum over the next two decades to adapt to climate change. It is unambiguously clear climate change adaptation requires immense financial and technical resources that most African countries do not possess. Then logic would dictate that Africa requires more socio-economic development to provision it with resources, including technical know-how, for climate change adaptation. The caveat with this logic is that traditional development as pursued by Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) countries has caused dangerous climate change. Hence, developing countries have to avoid this trap by thinking innovatively about socio-economic development and environmental protection.
Informed by this background, international and regional development cooperation organisations have developed and applied climate change adaptation tools in African countries at national, regional, and local levels. Development cooperation refers to an activity that aims explicitly to support national or international development priorities, is not profit driven, discriminates in favour of developing countries, and is based on cooperative relationships that seek to enhance developing country ownership. Development cooperation organisations include national governments (such as United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United Kingom Agency for International Development (UKAid)), international organisations (including Red Cross/Red Crescent, ActionAid etc.), multilateral organisations (i.e. United Nations agencies, European Union). Support for developing countries is divided into financial (and in-kind) transfers (including grants and public climate change finance), capacity support (technology cooperation, organisational and human resource development), and policy change (i.e. changing global rules) (Alonso & Glennie, 2015).
The UNFCCC (2008) categorises climate adaptation tools into-Complete frameworks and supporting tools (IPCC Technical Guidelines for Assessing Climate Change and Adaptations, US Country Studies Program), Cross-cutting issues and multi-sector approaches (general tools, climate downscaling tools, socio-economic scenarios, decision tools, stakeholder approaches and other multi-sector tools), and Sector-specific (agriculture, water, coastal resources, human health, terrestrial vegetation sector) tools.
This wealth of climate adaptation tools is indicative of the various forms climate change adaptation can take, from purely developmental initiatives (i.e. serendipitous adaptation) to measures that directly confront the impacts of climate change (i.e. discrete adaptation).
Despite this reality there have not been efforts to categorise climate adaptation tools according to their stated objectives (i.e. addressing the drivers of vulnerability, building capacity, confronting climate change etc.) and specificity (i.e. disaster risk management, information-provision, climate proofing etc.)-a challenge we take on in this paper.
We began by selecting fifty (50) out of the one hundred and thirty-two (132) climate adaptation tools. We then used climate change adaptation literature (inspired by (McGray, Hammil, Bradley, Schipper, and Parry 2007) to develop a continuum of approaches to climate change. We continued to categorise 50 climate change adaptation tools according to this newly developed continuum.
Our findings reveal that there are three broad groups of climate adaptation tools namely: Serendipitous adaptation, Climate-proofing, and Discrete adaptation tools. The Serendipitous adaptation group is dominated by development-oriented tools. The Climate-proofing category is dominated by risk management and capacity-building tools. Discrete adaptation tools are predominantly impact-focused (i.e. directly confronting the impacts of climate change).