Supporting the vulnerable: Increasing adaptive capacities of agropastoralists to climate change in West and southern Africa using a transdisciplinary research approach

The world’s climate is changing rapidly and Africa will be severely affected by this, not only because of the effects on ecosystems but also because of the low adaptive capacity of communities due to poverty and lack of infrastructure, services, and appropriate policies to support adaptation strategies. A large share of Africa’s poor are dependent on livestock for some part of their livelihoods, most of these living in smallholder, rainfed mixed systems and pastoral systems, where livestock play a key role as assets providing multiple economic, social, and risk management functions. The goal of this transdisciplinary project is to increase the adaptive capacity of agropastoralists, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in Africa, to climate change and variability. The purpose of this project is to co-generate methods, information and solutions between local communities, local and international scientists, policymakers and other actors involved in climate change and adaptation programs, for coping mechanisms and adapting strategies to climate change and variability in West and Southern Africa, and more particularly in Mali and Mozambique. To quantify the magnitudes of the effects of climate variability and change on the productivity of rangelands, crops and livestock and how these changes affect agropastoralists, spatial data layers were created, collated and documented related to climate variability and change, production systems, primary production, vulnerability and feed resources. First a generalized downscaling and data generation method was used to take the outputs of a General Circulation Models (GCM) to describe some future climatology and to allow the stochastic generation of daily weather data that are to some extent characteristic of this future climatology, that can then be used to drive impact models that require daily (or otherwise aggregated) weather data. Secondly a global livestock production system classification scheme that integrates the notions of crop and livestock interactions with agro-ecological zones was extended by including indicators of the major crops grown in the mixed crop–livestock areas. Next a dynamic global vegetation crop model was used for simulating crop and rangeland yields, water and carbon fluxes and water productivities under different climate and land use scenarios. Areas of reduced primary productivity were identified and characterized and overlaid with information on poverty and livelihoods, to identify hotspots where productivity reductions may have serious repercussions on smallholders’ wellbeing. Communities have been adapting to change and variability for centuries. Household surveys and in-depth narrative analyses were conducted with agropastoral communities to document, synthesise and help disseminate their past and present coping mechanisms and adaptation strategies, particularly those related to livestock, for which there is relatively little information. Several institutions are already working on promoting adaptation strategies in West and Southern Africa. We collated and documented the strategies promoted, and together with the indigenous information provided by agropastoralist communities we initiated dialogues between the different stakeholders to jointly prioritize adaptation strategies, to select a few for pilot testing. By doing this we can provide active learning opportunities and promote the co-creation of adaptation options between different stakeholders. Implementation and dissemination of technical adaptation options often fails due to the lack of support from the policy environment. Together with key policymaking institutions and regional policymaking bodies we identified and promoted policy entry points to support the implementation of priority adaptation strategies, and we identified policy mechanisms that in themselves are an appropriate intervention to allow agropastoralists to buffer the effects of climate variability and change

The livestock-climate-poverty nexus: A discussion paper on ILRI research in relation to climate change

Climate change will have severe impacts in many parts of the tropics and subtropics. Despite the importance of livestock to poor people and the magnitude of the changes that are likely to befall livestock systems, the intersection of climate change and livestock is a relatively neglected research area. Little is known about the interactions of climate and increasing climate variability with other drivers of change in livestock systems and in broader development trends. Evidence is being assembled that the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of household responses may be very large. While opportunities may exist for some households to take advantage of more conducive rangeland and cropping conditions, for example, the changes projected will pose very serious problems for many other households. Furthermore, ruminant livestock themselves have important impacts on climate, through the emission of methane and through the land-use change that may be brought about by livestock keepers. Given that climate change is now being seen as a key development challenge, and that a very large global community is already working on climate-change-related issues, the CGIAR in general, and ILRI in particular, need to consider carefully how the research agenda might be adjusted to respond. While the global environmental change community is very large, ILRI as a small institute can still contribute effectively to the climate change / development debate by focusing on a few key niches, through alliances with carefully chosen collaborators. This discussion paper is an attempt to assemble and summarise relevant information concerning climate change, livestock and development, and to identify what these key niches might be. The report briefly summarises what is known about climate change and its effects on agroecosystems, and summarises the current limits to prediction. It reviews the literature on climate change impacts on livestock and livestock impacts on climate, and thus sets out to answer the question, what do we know? Knowledge and data gaps are then identified, and a synthesis presented in relation to our clients and stakeholders and to alternative providers of knowledge and information. The paper ends by looking at the questions, what do we not know, and what should we do about it, with a discussion of recommendations for ILRI activities in the area, and the strategic alliances needed, some of which already exist

Climate change: do we know how it will affect smallholder livestock farmers?

What is known about the likely impacts of climate change on resource-poor livestock keepers in the developing world? Relatively little, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) are working to improve this knowledge. This Brief outlines how a group of scientists at ILRI reviewed some elements of the complex relationship between livestock and climate change in developing countries with a forward-looking approach. The objective was to help set research priorities: to inform the debate as to what research for development organizations such as ILRI could and should be doing in the area of climate change work that could add value to the large amounts of work already being carried out by the Global Change community on cropping systems and natural resources management. Originally designed to guide ILRI’s research on climate change, this work has had a broader impact by informing the investment strategies of several other research-for-development organizations, including donors

Photocatalytic Performance of Undoped and Al-Doped ZnO Nanoparticles in the Degradation of Rhodamine B under UV-Visible Light:The Role of Defects and Morphology

Quasi-spherical undoped ZnO and Al-doped ZnO nanoparticles with different aluminum content, ranging from 0.5 to 5 at% of Al with respect to Zn, were synthesized. These nanoparticles were evaluated as photocatalysts in the photodegradation of the Rhodamine B (RhB) dye aqueous solution under UV-visible light irradiation. The undoped ZnO nanopowder annealed at 400 °C resulted in the highest degradation efficiency of ca. 81% after 4 h under green light irradiation (525 nm), in the presence of 5 mg of catalyst. The samples were characterized using ICP-OES, PXRD, TEM, FT-IR, 27Al-MAS NMR, UV-Vis and steady-state PL. The effect of Al-doping on the phase structure, shape and particle size was also investigated. Additional information arose from the annealed nanomaterials under dynamic N2 at different temperatures (400 and 550 °C). The position of aluminum in the ZnO lattice was identified by means of 27Al-MAS NMR. FT-IR gave further information about the type of tetrahedral sites occupied by aluminum. Photoluminescence showed that the insertion of dopant increases the oxygen vacancies reducing the peroxide-like species responsible for photocatalysis. The annealing temperature helps increase the number of red-emitting centers up to 400 °C, while at 550 °C, the photocatalytic performance drops due to the aggregation tendency

Climate variability and climate change and their impacts on Kenya’s agricultural sector

Report of the project “Adaptation of Smallholder Agriculture to Climate Change in Kenya”