Improving irrigation project planning and implementation processes in Sub-Saharan Africa: Diagnosis and recommendations

Irrigation programs / Planning / Financing / Financial institutions / Irrigation management / Operations / Maintenance / Privatization / Cost recovery

IPCC emission scenarios: How did critiques affect their quality and relevance 1990–2022?

Long-term global emission scenarios enable the analysis of future climate change, impacts, and response strategies by providing insight into possible future developments and linking these different climate research elements. Such scenarios play a crucial role in the climate change literature informing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Assessment Reports (ARs) and support policymakers. This article reviews the evolution of emission scenarios, since 1990, by focusing on scenario critiques and responses as published in the literature. We focus on the issues raised in the critiques and the possible impact on scenario development. The critique (280) focuses on four areas: 1) key scenario assumptions (40%), 2) the emissions range covered by the scenarios and missing scenarios (25%), 3) methodological issues (24%), and 4) the policy relevance and handling of uncertainty (11%). Scenario critiques have become increasingly influential since 2000. Some areas of critique have decreased or become less prominent (probability, development process, convergence assumptions, and economic metrics). Other areas have become more dominant over time (e.g., policy relevance & implications of scenarios, transparency, Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) assumptions, missing scenarios). Several changes have been made in developing scenarios and their content that respond to the critique.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Characterising local knowledge across the flood risk management cycle: a case study of Southern Malawi

People possess a creative set of strategies based on their local knowledge (LK) that allow them to stay in flood-prone areas. Stakeholders involved with local level flood risk management (FRM) often overlook and underutilise this LK. There is thus an increasing need for its identification, documentation and assessment. Based on qualitative research, this paper critically explores the notion of LK in Malawi. Data was collected through 15 focus group discussions, 36 interviews and field observation, and analysed using thematic analysis. Findings indicate that local communities have a complex knowledge system that cuts across different stages of the FRM cycle and forms a component of community resilience. LK is not homogenous within a community, and is highly dependent on the social and political contexts. Access to LK is not equally available to everyone, conditioned by the access to resources and underlying causes of vulnerability that are outside communities’ influence. There are also limits to LK; it is impacted by exogenous processes (e.g., environmental degradation, climate change) that are changing the nature of flooding at local levels, rendering LK, which is based on historical observations, less relevant. It is dynamic and informally triangulated with scientific knowledge brought about by development partners. This paper offers valuable insights for FRM stakeholders as to how to consider LK in their approache

Behind the mask

By using Tajikistan as a case, this study adopted a qualitative approach to understand the different dimensions which make households of migrants with tuberculosis vulnerable to food insecurity. A vulnerability framework was used to identify the risks that tuberculosis poses on households’ availability, accessibility and utilization of food. Then, these risks were analysed in relation to the coping strategies that households employ in order to reduce harm. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, and observations. Findings highlighted that TB negatively impacts food accessibility, by affecting income-generating activities, labour productivity, and overall expenditure. On the other hand, it affects food utilization, by decreasing patients’ capacity to absorb nourishment and increasing their nutritional requirements. As a result, the gap between nutritional intake required, and household’s ability to access food becomes wider. Households manage the risks posed by tuberculosis by selecting different coping strategies such as borrowing from relatives in migration, taking loans, reducing their expenditures and food consumption, start working, diversify their income, and selling productive assets. As the treatment prolongs, the coping mechanisms employed become more detrimental, compromising their resources. In the long term, the combined effect of being continuously exposed to TB risks, and the negative consequences of the coping mechanisms employed endangers both household’s livelihoods and their food security