Climate Risk in Africa: Adaptation and Resilience

This open access book highlights the complexities around making adaptation decisions and building resilience in the face of climate risk. It is based on experiences in sub-Saharan Africa through the Future Climate For Africa (FCFA) applied research programme. It begins by dealing with underlying principles and structures designed to facilitate effective engagement about climate risk, including the robustness of information and the construction of knowledge through co-production. Chapters then move on to explore examples of using climate information to inform adaptation and resilience through early warning, river basin development, urban planning and rural livelihoods based in a variety of contexts. These insights inform new ways to promote action in policy and praxis through the blending of knowledge from multiple disciplines, including climate science that provides understanding of future climate risk and the social science of response through adaptation. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate students and postgraduate students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners in geography, environment, international development and related disciplines. Declan Conway is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute of the London School of Economics, UK. His problem-focused research cuts across water, climate and society, with emphasis on adaptation and the water-energy-food nexus. Katharine Vincent is a director of Kulima Integrated Development Solutions and holds visiting researcher positions at the Universities of the Witwatersrand, KwaZulu Natal and Leeds. She is interested in adaptation to climate change in the global South, and much of her work spans the science-policy/practice divide.

Key issues and progress in understanding climate risk in Africa /; Climate information – towards transparent distillation /; Co-production : learning from contexts /; Decision-making heuristics for managing climate-related risks: introducing Equity to the FREE framework /; Creating useful and usable weather and climate information: insights from Participatory Scenario Planning in Malawi /; High stakes decisions under uncertainty: dams, development and climate change in the Rufiji River basin /; Integrating climate risks into strategic urban planning in Lusaka, Zambia /; Supporting climate-resilient planning at national and district level: A pathway to multi-stakeholder decision-making in Uganda /; Conversations about climate risk, adaptation and resilience in Africa / / Declan Conway, Katharine Vincent --; Christopher Jack, John Marsham, David P. Rowell, Richard Jones --; Katharine Vincent, Anna Steynor, Alice McClure, Emma Visman, Katinka Lund Waagsaether, Suzanne Carter, Neha Mittal --; Camilla Audia, Emma Visman, Gino Fox, Emmah Mwangi, Mary Kilavi, Mark Arango, Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, Dominic Kniveton --; Dorothy Tembo-Nhlema, Katharine Vincent, Rebecka Henriksson --; Christian Siderius, Robel Geressu, Martin C. Todd, Seshagiri Rao Kolusu, Julien J. Harou, Japhet J. Kashaigili, Declan Conway --; Anna Taylor, Gilbert Siame, Brenda Mwalukanga --; Rosalind J. Cornforth, Celia Petty Grady Walker --; Declan Conway, Katharine Vincent.