The Impact and Response to Climate-Related Disasters in Burkina-Faso

Burkina Faso is a West African Sahelian country with climate-related risks because the disaster risk prole, and drought and oods are the main damaging natural disasters, aggravated by the phenomenon of climate change. An effective design and implementation of disaster reduction management strategies requires an understanding of risk factors and vulnerabilities, but also and an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of national disaster response systems. In this perspective, a literature review and an analysis of climate information were conducted in order to reveal the risks and vulnerabilities to droughts and oods in the country. This was accompanied by a critical evaluation of the performance of the national prevention and intervention system. Vulnerabilities to drought and oods are exacerbated by the combined effect of climate change and the low performance of the national disaster risk reduction management system. National institutions and frameworks exist for disaster prevention and management, but diculties persist in implementation due to nancial constraints and insucient human skills. Current trends and estimates suggest that the drawbacks of these natural hazards may be more serious in the future if solutions are not taken to improve early warning forecasts, infrastructure and the implementation of adequate agricultural policies.


Introduction
Burkina-Faso is a landlocked country of the Sahel region in West-Africa. The country is located between the 10 th and the 15 th northern degree latitude, with an area of 274,200 sq. km. (Bank 2011). The country has a dry tropical climate due to its geographic location; its climate is characterized by a long dry season and a short rainy season. In addition, the location in the hinterland between the Sahara Desert to the north and the coastal areas of the Gulf of Guinea to the south, gives to the country a climate with strong seasonal and annual variations. (Carrera 2018).
There are three climatic zones in the country. The northern part is the Sahelian zone, a climatic area which receives less than 600 mm as annual rainfall. In the centre, there is the north Sudanian climatic zone with an annual rainfall between 600 to 900 mm; and in the southern part, there is the south Sudanian climatic zone which receives more than 900mm as annual rainfall (Bank 2011).
Burkina Faso has about 19.7 million inhabitants in 2018 with a population growth rate of around 3% for the general population, the majority of which (71%) resides in rural areas (Bank 2011;Carrera 2018).
According to the United Nations Human Development Index, the country is very low ranked with a high level of illiteracy and poverty, 46% of the population is below the poverty line(2017).
The economy depends heavily on agriculture with a contribution to a third of the country's GDP and most of the population (80%) depends on this activity for their subsistence (Carrera 2018).
The development of a country could be seriously threatened by a disaster. Burkina Faso, like many African countries, has an extreme hydrometeorological event as a disaster pro le. Furthermore, these events are expected to increase in magnitude and frequency due to climate change (Bank 2011). Natural disasters are caused by too little or too much rain, in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Oli Brown 2009). The nature of most of the disaster in Burkina-Faso is climate-related, these disasters include chronic drought, oods, high winds, and heat or cold waves, but drought and ood are the main climate risks. Drought affects the largest proportion of the population and ood occurring in many urban areas during the rainy season (Bank 2011;Carrera 2018).
The national system of capacity to respond to the harmful effects of climatic hazards and the management of risks and adaptation to these natural hazards are determinants to reduce vulnerabilities and increase the resilience of populations. It is therefore essential to review these disasters and assess the response capacity of the national system in order to identify weaknesses, strengths and make recommendations.
In this regard, this document paper to highlight the main climate-related disasters and to appraise the national response system in Burkina Faso. At the date of 15 November 2018, from Google scholar we got 37 publications from the term "Drought AND Burkina-Faso" and 7 publications from the term "Floods AND Burkina-Faso". From ReliefWeb we got 26 publications From these 70 publications, after removal of duplicate, screening title or reading full publication for relevance. 20 publications were kept for analysis.

Methods
These 20 publications were analysed to obtain information on vulnerability and exposure to drought and oods, disaster management and response capacities, and generate recommendations.

Vulnerability and Climate-related hazards exposure
The impact of climate-related hazards in Burkina Faso is closely linked to the vulnerability of the population, the country's economy and the low capacity to adapt to these natural risks (Bank 2011).
Indeed, the food production is function of spatio-temporal rainfall distribution pattern in most of African country (Bekoe and Logah 2013). This is the case in Burkina Faso where livelihoods depend on rain-fed agriculture and where food security is threatened and vulnerable to unstable rainfall. (Lacombe et al. 2012).
Infrastructure like dam, and drainage system are not risk prone standards and there are often informal settlers in the oodplain, area vulnerable to disasters. In addition, Burkina-Faso has degraded soils and poor in nutrients in most regions, these soils have a low water retention capacity. During dry season, temperature spike, dust storms occur, and food supplies and yields are affected when rainfall decrease. Rivers are intermittent, apart the Mouhoun river in the western area of the country (Bank 2011).
In Burkina Faso, oods and droughts are recurrent and have consequences for the economy, livelihoods and life. About 2.1 million people suffer from chronic food insecurity and 61.7% of the population is exposed to multiple dangers (Carrera 2018 The delayed rainfall and extreme drought are exacerbated by the climate change phenomenon, and West-Africa is the region more vulnerable to drought because of climate change(Giesen et al.).
As a slow onset and complex natural hazard with adverse effects on the environment, society and the economy, drought is considered to displace more people and cause more deaths than other natural hazards(Mohamed Bazza et al. 2015).
In fact, a third of the African population lives in drought-prone areas and is vulnerable to the consequences of this natural disaster([CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.]).
Since early 1970's, Burkina-Faso has experienced a "quasi-drought" conditions (Carrera 2018). According to the data of EM-DAT, there were 11 events of drought, since 1960 in the country ( gure 1).
Drought is expected to increase in frequency, duration and spatial expansion and will expose many people in the country to food insecurity (Mohamed Bazza et al. 2015).

Flood
Continuing urbanization, land use practices, social and political barriers and climate change are factors that increase the risk of ooding (Arnell and Gosling 2016).
Heavy rainfall mainly triggers oods, but the worsening is due to the occupation of at-risk areas, lack of rainwater management, inadequate maintenance of dams, non-compliance with planning regulations and poor land use management practices (Mathon et al. 2002).
Large populated cities like the capital Ouagadougou and the second main city Bobo-Dioulasso face frequent ooding. But also the northern region of the country where soil degradation is due to livestock and the southwest region which has the highest annual rainfall (Niang 2006).
According to EM-DAT data, ood is the natural disaster which cause the most direct death in the country.
The number of events is increasing, we have 20 events from 1960 to 2018 and more people are affected by river oods than other types of oods.
There is an upward trend and positive correlation. The number of deaths grows with the number of The National Commission for Emergency and Rehabilitation Aid ( CONASUR), an interdepartmental unit whose mission is to raise awareness and educate people about disaster response and prevention. This commission provides assistance during an emergency event and the distribution of materials to help people restore their normalcy before the disaster (CONASUR report).
The CONASUR is chaired by the Ministry of Women, National Solidarity and Family and gathers representative of 13 sectors: food security, shelter, protection, infrastructures, health, nutrition, water and hygiene, logistic and transport, climate service, communication and education.

Legal framework and disaster management
To cope with disaster risks, the government of Burkina-Faso has designed many political instruments, framework and laws.
In 2014, le country has adopted the law nº 012-2014/AN from April 22-2014 which legislates on humanitarian crises and disaster response but also on risk management and prevention ([CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.]).
The policy instruments mostly concern action plan and strategies on climate change and adaptation, information and early warning system, food security and response.
Burkina-Faso is signatory of the Hyogo framework for action. And the country has a national framework for climate services, this framework deals with climate-related disaster management though climate service. It involves the improvement of weather forecast for fast onset disaster like oods and seasonal forecast for latent disaster like drought. But also involves the establishment of meteorological early warning system and the training disaster stakeholders in the use of meteorological information(M. 2017).
In 2009, a multi-risk contingency plan was developed and revised in 2010. This contingency plan is a framework of multi-sectorial integrated approach about preparedness and emergency response(Burkina Faso -government 2009).
This contingency plan:

States role between different national technical institutions and humanitarian stakeholders
Enhances coordination of action of different sectors.
Identi es and mitigates urgent risks.
Gives an integrate framework on emergency risks.
Keeps updated strategies for preparedness, prevention and response in national plan and programs.
Manages the intervention to reduce the delay and then reduce numbers of victims.
With this plan, the interventions are at three levels: The pre-disaster level by managing intervention structure for rapid intervention.
The disaster level, when the crisis occurs by saving victim life, coordinated assistance for rst aid, assessment of damage, and information management.
The post-disaster phase, period for rehabilitation and rebuilding for a return to normalcy.

Discussion And Conclusions
The impact of climate-related disasters depends on the nature and severity of the event, the vulnerability of the population and the level of exposure. Climate variability and socio-economic development of a country are factors that are interconnected and interact in the risk of natural disaster ([CSL STYLE ERROR: reference with no printed form.]).
The scarcity of information on the climate, climatic variability and the slow technological evolution in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa contribute to worsen the vulnerability to climatic hazards (Dinar et al.

2008).
The climate variability and change phenomenon make the use of most modern climate information technologies essential. Furthermore, climate information should be available and accessible for all people exposed to climate-related hazards. In many low-income countries, climate services are unable to provide time-tailored and quality weather and climate information's(Lindsey Jones 2016).
Despite the will and efforts of the government of Burkina Faso and national institutions for disaster preparedness and response, only a few emergency information and emergency response services can be provided. The response is delivery with low performance because of the insu ciency in institutional and human capacity and limited nancial resources. Also because of the lack in preparedness and intervention equipment tools to face disasters (Carrera 2018).
Even though Burkina-Faso has rati ed most of international conventions for disaster risk reduction, their implementation remains di cult. The implementations face limited nancial resources and low-skilled human capacities. The national legislative instruments are in the majority limited because of inadequate implementation protocol.
The national o ce for meteorology lack in performance to delivery weather forecast, and there is no ood early warning system in the country. The CONASUR and DGPC have limited capacity in delivery rst emergency response. DGESS/ SAP has low capacity to deliver information on food security (Bank 2011).
Referring to Lugen's research work on climate services in Burkina Faso, there are di culties in communication, understanding and providing precise information on climate information. And also a low density and quality of the climate network service and weather forecasts are not provided on a localized scale. Added to this, there is a problem of understanding of climate information by the most illiterate rural communities.(M. 2017).
The oriented solutions strategies could be more axed on : The reinforcement of climate service performance in the delivery of forecast as early warning tools. The training of communities in the understanding of climate information.
The improvement of drainage and sewage system and the strengthening of infrastructures to face ooding.
A better implementation of agriculture policies to face drought threat and prevent food insecurity., through the implementation of a sustainable farming practice with drought resistant crop Declarations