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Calls for humanity to act on environmental changes are becoming increasingly critical. The growing polycrisis including the impact of ongoing conflicts in contested geopolitical spaces and the struggles for ways to sustain a livelihood in areas of precarity and poverty, are just some of the intersecting challenges which have given rise to a Code Red alarm by the United Nations surrounding issues related to climate change. Rich narratives and stories of climate actions from Africa offer examples of potential paths. This paper explores how such narratives inform local development and climate action. A key message is that stories and narratives, created by various peoples, disciplines, and systems of knowledge, can all be powerful genres and sources for agentic change that can inspire and embolden development practice and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on complex interdependence as a theoretical approach, this paper investigates the hypothetical damage that the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could represent for Africa in terms of climate finance. In June 2017, President Donald Trump publicly declared the U.S. intention to withdraw from further participating in the multilateral Paris Agreement. To keen followers and analysts of the U.S. climate policy beyond its borders, such unilateral action was never a surprise. Rather, it is nostalgic of the experience of the Kyoto Protocol, particularly how more or less similar move unduly prolonged the global climate negotiations up till late 2015 when the Paris Agreement came about. Although the Paris Agreement is remarkable as it represents the first states-wide climate deal, it however left a number of issues unresolved. Notable among which is climate finance which has remained the most contentious and of critical concern to developing countries, particularly in Africa. Pitted against the fact that Africa contributes less to climate change and, ironically, the hardest-hit by the phenomenon, the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement aggravates concerns around climate finance and, indeed, portends additional burdens for a continent that is still struggling to cope with the untoward fallout of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaria is a climate sensitive disease that is causing rampant deaths in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and its impact is expected to worsen under climate change. Thus, pre-emptive policies for future malaria control require projections based on integrated models that can accommodate complex interactions of both climatic and non-climatic factors that define malaria landscape. In this paper, we combined Geographical Information System (GIS) and Bayesian belief networks (BBN) to generate GIS-BBN models that predicted malaria hotspots in 2030, 2050 and 2100 under representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5. We used malaria data of children of SSA, gridded environmental and social-economic data together with projected climate data from the 21 Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 models to compile the GIS-BBN models. Our model on which projections were made has an accuracy of 80.65% to predict the high, medium, low and no malaria prevalence categories correctly. The non-spatial BBN model projection shows a moderate variation in malaria reduction for the high prevalence category among RCPs. Under the low prevalence category, an increase in malaria is seen but with little variation ranging between 4.6 and 5.6 percentage points. Spatially, under RCP 4.5, most parts of SSA will have medium malaria prevalence in 2030, while under RCP 8.5, most parts will have no malaria except in the highlands. Our BBN-GIS models show an overall shift of malaria hotspots from West Africa to the eastern and southern parts of Africa especially under RCP 8.5. RCP 8.5 will not expand the high and medium malaria prevalence categories in all the projection years. The generated probabilistic maps highlight future malaria hotspots under climate change on which pre-emptive policies can be based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the progress made in producing predictions of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over Kenya in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) for the October–December (OND) season is discussed. Several studies have identified a statistically significant relationship between rainfall and NDVI in the region. Predictability of seasonal rainfall by global climate models (GCMs) during the OND season over the GHA has also been established as being among the best in the world. Information was extracted from GCM seasonal prediction output using statistical transformations. The extracted information was then used in the prediction of NDVI. NDVI is a key variable for management of various climate-sensitive problems. For example, it has been shown to have the potential to predict environmental conditions associated with Rift Valley Fever (RVF) viral activity and this is referred to throughout the paper as a motivation for the study. RVF affects humans and livestock and is particularly economically important in the GHA. The establishment of predictability for NDVI in this paper is therefore part of a methodology that could ultimately generate information useful for managing RVF in livestock in the GHA. It has been shown that NDVI can be predicted skillfully over the GHA with a 2–3-month lead time. Such information is crucial for tailoring forecast information to support RVF monitoring and prediction over the region, as well as many other potential applications (e.g., livestock forage estimation). More generally, the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS), a project of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other specialized technical centers routinely use NDVI images to monitor environmental conditions worldwide. The high predictability for NDVI established in this paper could therefore supplement the routine monitoring of environmental conditions for a wide range of applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this viewpoint I argue for a perspective on climate change in African cities that focuses on challenges and also opportunities for action. Delivering climate change adaptation in cities in the first instance requires addressing immediate infrastructure and service provision needs, because increasing climate change resilience in cities also requires improving the delivery of services to all citizens. However, there is a risk that climate change discourses facilitate the deployment of technocratic, expert-led forms of planning, particularly when climate change is used as an excuse to facilitate the intervention of international planning consultants who most often know little about the local context of planning. This paper advocates instead approaches to climate change action that harness opportunities on the ground to engage with the creative potential that urban citizens already have and to draw attention to the need to develop planning skills from within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of the 20th century, the Nile River has been the source of political tensions and low-intensity conflicts among three of its major riparian countries (Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt). However, since the late 1990s, the Nile basin countries-with the encouragement and support of the international community-have made some attempts to establish basin-wide cooperative institutions. This process of engagement and collaboration is presently under severe stress due to increasing demand and decreasing supply of water resources in the basin. This situation may be complicated further by the global climate change, which is anticipated to result in long-term changes in the volume and pattern of runoff in the Nile River system. Moreover, the emergence of China as a major player in the power politics of the Nile basin has facilitated a number of unilateral initiatives for large-scale water development projects. In this context, this paper critically examines the survival and sustainability of water cooperation endeavours in the Nile basin as the river faces challenges from the global climate change and shifting regional geo-politics. Citation Swain, A. (2011) Challenges for water sharing in the Nile basin: changing geo-politics and changing climate. Hydrol. Sci. J. 56(4), 687-702. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa is most vulnerable to climate change, although it makes the least contribution to factors that result in global and regional climatic changes. High levels of vulnerability and low adaptive capacity across the continent have been linked to, among other things, poverty. This paper discusses and analyses the relationship between climate change and poverty in Africa. It investigates the relationship between climate change and poverty patterns in Africa, analyses the resultant impact, and discusses potential adaptation policies for moderating the consequences of climatic changes on poverty in the region. The record shows that climate change is happening. What is not discussed or is little researched is the potential devastating impact of climate change on socio-economic development in Africa and the policy measures available to the continent for adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of climatic change on the level of total agricultural production of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and non-Sub-Sahara Africa (NSSA) developing countries. In doing so it uses a new cross-country panel climatic dataset in an agricultural production framework. The results show that climate, measured as changes in country-wide rainfall and temperature, has been a major determinant of agricultural production in SSA. In contrast, NSSA countries appear not to be affected by climate in the same manner. Simulations using the estimates suggest that the detrimental changes in climate since the 1960s can account for a substantial portion of the gap in agricultural production between SSA and the rest of the developing world. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since 1990 carbon dioxide emissions in Africa have increased by about 50%. The total carbon dioxide emissions of the entire African continent are not, however, anywhere near those of countries such as India or China. Yet certain African countries have per capita emissions comparable to some European countries. What is the outlook for Africa? How should African countries respond as it becomes increasingly likely that climate change is occurring? Increased industrial growth and more foreign investment in Africa, especially in countries that are politically and economically stable, have led to huge commercial developments such as the In Salah gas project in Algeria, which releases more than a million tons of carbon dioxide annually; and synthetic fuel plants and power stations in South Africa that generate more than 350 million tons per year. In this perspective should some African countries be required to limit greenhouse gas emissions or should they be immune to 'environmental taxation'? This paper critically reviews the carbon dioxide problem in some parts of Africa and its role in climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper seeks to discern the influence of environmental variability on pastoral conflict in the Horn of Africa. While the literature on environmental factors in civil wars is rich in empirical research and explanatory power, the dearth of data is an obstacle to the study of other important forms of violence such as pastoral conflict. If environmental factors are associated with pastoral conflict then what are they, and can they be used as early warning indicators to prevent its escalation or mitigate its effects? These questions are increasingly important given the expected impact of climate change on pastoral societies worldwide. To help answer these questions we draw on data collected by field monitors with the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development''s (IGAD) Conflict Early Warning and Response Network (CEWARN) and environmental data for the same region. Field monitors collect incident and situation reports from more than two dozen areas of reporting along the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda collectively known at the Karamoja Cluster. We compare these conflict data with three environmental indicators: precipitation, vegetation and forage. Preliminary statistical analyses of the data suggest that aggravating behavior, along with a reduction in peace initiatives and reciprocal exchanges, is associated with an escalation in pastoral conflict, particularly when coupled with an increase in vegetation that may provide cover for organized raids. We therefore recommend that conflict early warning systems integrate both response options and salient environmental indicators into their analyses to better deal with the complexity of the relationships between pastoral conflict and the environment in an era of climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]