Climate risk report for the East Africa region

This report highlights the headline risks to consider in climate resilient development planning for the East Africa region. Key climate-related risks for East Africa have been identified by considering how the current climate interacts with underlying socio-economic vulnerabilities, and how projected climate change for the 2050s may exacerbate these risks.

East Africa is considered in this report as including: Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The region has a diverse climate, ranging from hot, dry desert regions, to cooler, wetter highland regions, and large variability in seasonal rainfall. The current climate is around 1-1.5˚C warmer than pre-industrial times, and there is high confidence of further warming in the future. There is less confidence about how rainfall has changed in the past or may change in the future. However, future projections indicate an increase in mean rainfall across most of the region, with high confidence for an increase over the Ethiopian highlands. Interannual variability in seasonal rainfall amounts and timings is expected to increase, as is the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events.

Climate change is one of several risks to resources, livelihoods, assets and ecosystems. East Africa is a dynamic region, experiencing rapid population growth, urbanisation and economic transformation, and assessments of climate change risks can only ever provide a partial picture of the role climate change plays in shaping development outcomes. Seeing the ‘bigger picture’ of climate risks where multiple socio-economic risks compound, will remain important for those charged with designing, monitoring and evaluating development programmes. Most risks identified in this report are not new for the region, but the severity and distribution of those risks are changing as the climate changes. Our analysis identifies the following key risks as the most critical across the East Africa region, all such risks are interdependent therefore one might heighten the impact of another. This report is based on regional analysis, therefore risks at a national level may vary and would require a more detailed country level analysis.

Risks to agriculture and food security

Despite rapid economic growth and urbanisation over the last two decades, most of the region’s poor live in rural areas and depend, directly or indirectly, on agriculture. The impacts of climate change in the region will be broadly negative in terms of agricultural production, though there will be significant variation of the scale of climate impacts across agro-ecological zones, farming systems and livelihoods. Impacts on food security, are more difficult to gauge. However, we would expect to see largely negative impacts on household purchasing power and supply chains (affecting access), as well as diminished nutrient absorption through an additional disease burden and malnutrition.

The most vulnerable to climate change particularly to changes in temperature and rainfall variability are those engaged in low intensity, low input rainfed farming, disconnected from markets and with few opportunities for building assets and breaking out of poverty. Pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods, significant across much of the hot, drier lowlands, may be impacted by forage and water shortages as well as heat stress, though threats to pastoralists’ wellbeing will likely be driven mainly by policies of sedentarisation and resource appropriation/fragmentation. Rising temperatures will also have a negative impact on maize and wheat yields in hotter areas, and important cash crops such as tea, coffee and cocoa are also expected to be impacted as the ability to shift farming to higher (cooler) altitudes is limited. Land degradation and soil erosion, already major problems across the region, will likely be further exacerbated by more intense rainfall events, and rising temperatures may alter disease vectors and pest populations, with adverse effects on output variability and yields, as well as on the costs of control.

Irrigation development offers an opportunity to buffer rainfall variability and increase productivity, but also carries risks where competition for water is increasing in basin hot spots, particularly during the dry season and drier years when other water demands peak. Within rainfed systems, the array of land management practices that fall under the banner of climate smart agriculture hold promise in managing rainfall variability and addressing persistent water shortages, though approaches are context-specific. As it stands, there is no regionally-applicable evidence base to guide interventions across diverse agro-ecological zones.

Risks to water resources and water-dependent services

The impacts of climate change emerge largely through the water cycle, but predicting impacts remains tricky because of the complex causal chain linking rainfall and temperature with water resources and water-dependent services. Overall water availability compares favourably with other regions, though metrics conceal problems of temporal and spatial variability. Mobilising water for lives and livelihoods remains a key challenge, though ‘hot spots’ of intensive use and over-exploitation are emerging at the urban-rural interface, and in basins where irrigation and hydropower development coincide. Groundwater storage will provide a vital buffer against rainfall variability and recharge may benefit from more intensive rainfall events. Overall impacts on water availability will likely be modest compared with demand-side drivers, particularly population growth. The impacts of climate change on water quality will be broadly negative and transmitted through rising temperatures and high flow/flood-related sediment and pollution loads. Deteriorating water quality may emerge as a bigger threat to domestic users than water availability, with knock-on impacts on health and (mal)nutrition.

Water for domestic use is a small component of national water withdrawals, but access to safe drinking water is vital for human wellbeing and climate resilience. Extending and sustaining water access remain challenging, but most groundwater-dependent rural services are resilient if existing best-practices are followed, which is currently rare. Larger, longer-lived investments in hydropower to address energy gaps risk locking in inappropriate design based on historical climate conditions. The concentration of generating capacity in the inter-connected Nile basin, an area of similar rainfall variability, means that periods of low rainfall and river flow could affect multiple sites, with concurrent reductions in electricity generation.

Source: Government of the United Kingdom