Climate change responses among the Maasai Community in Kenya

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. The impacts of climate change to the dryland areas of East Africa are especially strong, especially if it is considered that these areas have weak institutions and governance systems. Climate change has also affected many rural communities in a severe way, reducing crop yields and sometimes causing crop failure. In Kenya and Tanzania, where drylands cover over around 80 and 50% of their respective land areas, rural populations have been especially affected. Among them is the tribal group of the Maasai, legendary nomad warriors, who have been suffering from persistent droughts and the negative impacts on their cattle herds. This paper describes how climate change affects the Maasai communities in Kenya and the changes seen in their habits and diet, in order to adapt to a changing climate

Fostering coastal resilience to climate change vulnerability in Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon and Uruguay: a cross-country comparison

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. This paper describes a comparative study of four different cases on vulnerability, hazards and adaptive capacity to climate threats in coastal areas and communities in four developing countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon and Uruguay. Coastal areas are vulnerable to sea-level rise (SLR), storm surges and flooding due to their (i) exposure, (ii) concentration of settlements, many of which occupied by less advantaged groups and (iii) the concentration of assets and services seen in these areas. The objective of the paper is twofold: (i) to evaluate current evidence of coastal vulnerability and adaptive capacity and (ii) to compare adaptation strategies being implemented in a sample of developing countries, focusing on successful ones. The followed approach for the case evaluation is based on (i) documenting observed threats and damages, (ii) using indicators of physical and socioeconomic vulnerability and adaptive capacity status and (iii) selecting examples of successful responses. Major conclusions based on cross-case comparison are (a) the studied countries show different vulnerability, adaptive capacity and implementation of responses, (b) innovative community-based (CBA) and ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) and (c) early warning systems are key approaches and tools to foster climate resilience. A recommendation to foster the resilience of coastal communities and services is that efforts in innovative adaptation strategies to sea-level rise should be intensified and integrated with climate risk management within the national adaption plans (NAPAs) in order to reduce the impacts of hazards

Agro-ecological Differentials in Soybean Crop Evapotranspiration and Implications for Adaptation to Climate Change

This study estimated soybean crop evapotranspiration from weather data using the cropwat model. The effects of reference evapotranspiration, crop coefficients, and yield response factor were quantified for three different agroecological zones in Cameroon. The evapotranspiration of soybean was observed to be 281.03 mm in the farming district of Ambam, 387.7 mm in Bamenda and 605.3 mm in Garoua, indicating pronounced differences in the agro-ecologies. Across the three regions studied, rainfall pattern determines soil water reserves and crop water uptake. In the farming zones of Bamenda and Ambam, water requirement for soybean are met by the rainfall. In the northern region of the country, irrigation needs are high. As a consequence, actual crop evapotranspiration is greatest in the hot dry zone of Garoua and lowest in the cool humid region of Bamenda. From this study it could be concluded that coping with climatic variations and future climate change will require complementary irrigation as well as improved crop management practices.Keywords: soybean, climate variation, crop water requirements, Cameroo

Accommodation of climate change in coastal areas of cameroon: selection of household-level protection options

Climate change, Coastal residents, Protection options,

Global climate change and vulnerability of African agriculture: implications for resilience and sustained productive capacity

Despite noticeable improvements in recent socio-economic performance in Africa, variations exist across countries and performance is constrained by plethora of factors that inhibit the attainment of Africa’s optimum production potential. Changing climate and environmental factors have contributed to increased transactions costs, lower productivity of factors of production, increased bottlenecks in the production process and investment challenges, especially for small and medium scale farmers in varying degrees across the continent. This paper reviews the impact of climate change on farming activities in Africa. Four countries across the continent are studied, viz. Burkina Faso, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa. We examine how long-term profitability of 4,000 farms vary with local climate, such as temperature and precipitation. To better ascertain the impact of climate variables, the marginal impacts of unit changes in temperatures and precipitation on crop farming activities are studied. Using selected climate scenarios, predictions are made on the extent to which projected climate changes will affect net revenues by the year 2050 and 2100. The findings suggest that climate affects agricultural returns in the four countries. The results further show that there is a non-linear relationship between temperature and crop revenue on the one hand and between precipitation and crop revenue on the other. Overall, the temperature elasticity suggests that global warming is harmful for agriculture across all the countries. These have profound implications for the policy requirements to address the productive capacity and resilience of the agricultural sector. Effort will be required to enhance adaptation at farm, regional and national levels. Policy adjustments will in addition require increased liberalization of the financial system and an implementation of agriculture civil service reforms for better performance of the extension service. This may have further implications for state budgeting and agriculture sector expenditures which will without doubt require new shifts

Adaptation for crop agriculture to climate change in Cameroon: Turning on the heat

Cameroon, Agriculture, Climate change, Policies, Food security,