Adaptation methods in African mountains need to be restructured: Report

Current adaptation policies adopted by farming communities focus on increasing yield in the face of crop loss in the short term, but are helpless in the long run

While climate change is affecting the entire globe, some regions are more vulnerable than others. Mountains are such regions, as temperature changes are more rapid, which affect glaciers, water budgets, crop yields, livestock and human diseases.

But little is known about how mountainous regions are adapting to the impacts of climate change, especially in Africa. A new report titled ‘Perceived climate change impacts and adaptation responses in ten African mountain regions’ published in Nature Climate Change aims to plug the information gap. 

Through the method of using household questionnaires, the team behind the report interviewed 1,500 farmers across ten central and east African mountain regions to “investigate perceived climate change impacts and adaptation responses”.

The report’s findings reveal that people in all the ten targeted sites were experiencing numerous climatic impacts, and their usual response was incremental adaptation – which tends to keep the integrity of the existing system intact. For example, farmers aimed to increase their yields by intensifying farming to offset the negative impact of climate change, through utilising off-farm labour. 

Increase in extreme weather events

The IPCC Assessment Report 6 chapter on mountains highlights how the increase in climate change impacts over recent decades has serious consequences for people and ecosystems across the mountains of the world, particularly in Africa. Home to 228  million people, Africa has the second highest population density in mountain regions of the world following Asia, and the need for mitigation increases as the world breaches the 1.5 °C threshold, as change in rainfall patterns severely affect these regions. 

Nine out of the ten surveyed regions showed seven common climate change-related impacts: reduced stream flow, reduced crop yields and cow milk production, increased soil erosion, increased crop and livestock diseases and reduced human health. 

Comparatively less frequent were an increase in landslides and lower coffee yields, reported from five sites each, according to the report.

Other climate change impacts which the report found were increased temperatures, reduced fog, changes in rainfall amount and distribution, an increase in extreme droughts, fewer hailstorms and increased wind strength during the rainy season, an increase in extreme floods and less frost.

More documentation necessary for adaptation

One of the report’s major findings is that in African mountainous regions with complex topography, there is limited knowledge about the local consequences of climate change impacts, as there is a dearth of spatial resolution of global or regional climate models. 

Instead, the report suggests using field observations collected directly from such farming communities in these regions, and gaining insights on local and effective adaptation responses.

In nine out of the ten surveyed sites, the adaptation measures employed were changing planting dates, sowing seeds twice if they die, changing to improved crop varieties, increasing use of soil conservation techniques, irrigation, fertiliser, pesticide and veterinary care; and diversifying into off-farm labour. 

In the case of the coffee, farmers adopted it by changing to improved varieties, increasing use of pesticides or increasing the shade of coffee plants, found the report.

Other measures included increasing farm size in Udzungwa in Tanzania, diversifying into timber trade in Mt. Kenya, or diversifying into mining in Itombwe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

According to the report, most adaptation responses in the African mountain regions were driven by behaviour, and not technological, infrastructural or ecosystem-based changes. Wealth is another important factor, with poorer households performing fewer adaptation actions than wealthier ones.

Farmers adopted multiple adaptation responses, most common being the use of new crop varieties and increasing use of fertiliser and pesticides, combined with soil conservation techniques, found the report.

In conclusion, it found that most of the adaptation measures to climate change are incremental and not transformational, wherein the existing socio-ecological system is changed to fit the new order of things. The report suggests that transformational adaptation measures might become a necessity in the future.

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