The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5°C was approved on 6 October. The report shows that by current estimates, the Earth has already warmed by 1°C (by 2017) above pre-industrial levels and that we are on track to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 at the present rate of emissions. But given that 1.5°C average warming equates to some locations being hotter than the average, I wanted to highlight the urgent need to pay more attention to extreme heat in the African urban context.

In Africa, heat is commonly seen as ‘normal’ and the general perception is that people are well adapted to cope with it.  A global temperature rise of 1.5°C could take us into territory where we see dangerous warming in Africa, and in African cities in particular. The report says that there is high confidence that ‘risks with increasing warming are particularly higher in urban areas due to the heat island effect’. This effect makes cities hotter than the surrounding area predominantly due to dark surfaces like roads retaining heat and reduced greenery.

CDKN’s experience in the Raising Risk Awareness project, which looked at extreme event attribution in Kenya and Ethiopia, found that policy makers were less interested in understanding extreme heat. The focus instead was on drought and floods which are both more closely associated with human fatalities and food security. Heat, in contrast, which is generally easier to attribute to climate change, was not seen as relevant… but is that going to change? The IPCC special report suggests it will as ‘the number of highly unusual hot days is projected to increase the most in the tropics’ where a large number of African countries lie.

A C40 study called “The future we don’t want” published earlier this year found that 354 major cities across the globe already experience average summer temperatures over 35°C, with this number climbing to 970 by 2050. On days when temperatures reach 35°C, a marked increase in hospital admissions and deaths occur in most countries. The research shows that only a few cities in Africa are dealing with extreme heat currently but this is set to increase dramatically, particularly for southern, western and northern Africa. By 2050, many of the most at risk cities with large urban populations in poverty will be in West Africa, as well as Sudan and Egypt.

From CDKN’s past experience in India, the combination of high heat and poverty can be deadly. CDKN supported the city of Ahmedabad, in Gujarat State, India, to adopt a Heat Action Plan which has significantly lowered the number of fatalities after extreme heat events, from over 1000 in 2010 to only seven in 2016. The plan has since been replicated across the Gujarat state.

At Adaptation Futures in June 2018, a video of the Heat Action Plan project was screened at a session on urban heat health, hosted by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.  This was followed by a lively discussion on why heat is still not seen as an issue in many cities. Heatwaves are one of the more easily predicted weather phenomena and can cause mass fatalities in vulnerable groups such as the elderly, young children and outdoor workers (e.g. construction). But heat as the ‘silent killer’ is still often dismissed. One of the reasons the group discussion unpicked was that elderly people didn’t see themselves as ‘old’ and therefore didn’t recognise their increased risk and take the necessary steps to mitigate it.

There are a lot of ways to reduce heat risk, some are structural like making green roofs out of reflective surfaces, and others behavioural like reminding people to drink more water on hot days and staying out of the sun during the hottest times of the day.  African cities have large numbers of informal or slum areas, where there will be specific challenges for dealing with heat. For example, informal houses with corrugated iron roofs get extremely hot during heat waves. A framework of working with informality to build climate resilience in African cities, developed by the African Centre for cities and commissioned CDKN, provides strategies to better address these challenges.

A key aspect of reducing risk is to build public awareness of what to do during heat extremes, supported by good coordination between meteorologists, government officials and the media. The second aspect is to have trained medical staff and community workers ready to prevent and respond to heatwaves, backed by interagency emergency response.

More people need to recognise the dangers of heat on human health and act to set up the systems to prevent heat related deaths. Heatwaves are predictable so there is time to react and save lives, but good planning and coordination amongst actors is vital to ensure this happens. Look out for a heat wave guide for Africa and Asia that the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre are publishing in 2019 to help decision makers plan for increased heat extremes.

Image: Kampala, Uganda, courtesy Weesam, Flickr.

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Dairy and livestock are two important value chains in Uganda, both from an economic and socio-cultural viewpoint. The ownership of cattle holds special significance and demonstrates a man’s wealth and importance in society. Although this is changing to some extent, we know that in Uganda cattle are here to stay. So how do we encourage more climate smart interventions to be adopted all the way along the value chain?

During the Action Lab we worked in small groups to develop models of what a climate smart value chain might look like; we mapped onto a large poster of each value chain where there are climate risks and impacts, alongside some of the adaptation and mitigation opportunities to make the value chain more climate smart.

The maps of the value chain showed that there was better understanding of the climate risks on the production end of the value chain, but less understanding of the risks and opportunities higher up the value chain (e.g. processing, distribution, retail and for consumers). They highlighted that most of the current activity is also concentrated at the production end of the value chain, suggesting that more attention needs to be given to the rest of the value chain. In discussions, it was recognised that interventions at the consumer end have the potential to create changes lower down the value chain (pull factor) and that this is a a good leverage point.

The mapping also captured a lot of projects and research that are already happening in the dairy and livestock value chains, but there was not much awareness of the various ongoing initiatives.

Overall reflections from the modelling included an emphasis on how important it is to understand the different actors along the supply chain: who is most vulnerable?; how to best engage with different actors; how to build trust to work together; and finally identifying and building partnerships that can create change. We also acknowledged that gender dynamics need to be considered in our development planning approach to ensure that projects look at impacts on both men and women when rolling out climate smart interventions.

There was a recognition of how important it is to build a common understanding of what ‘climate smart success’ looks like, how it can be measured and what it is for different players.

Building upon this idea discussions underlined the value of creating partnerships which lead to more climate smart approaches up and down the value chain. In identifying the adaptation and mitigation potential, it became clear that economic opportunities arise in the development of climate smart value chains and these create opportunities for the private sector to increase their engagement. However, we don’t yet understand enough about the trade-offs and how interventions can impact on other parts of the value chain, or about the impact of private sector engagement on the informal / formal dynamics of the current value chains. Understanding these risks is important to enable the private sector to make informed investment decisions.

There was appetite amongst participants to apply the Action Lab technique in other contexts, at project level and also at national level – for example engaging the Dairy Development Authority to convene a national process. There was also interest to use the technique in other topics beyond agriculture.

For further information about the Action Lab and its outputs, please visit CDKN’s Action Lab page. We will be making the climate smart value chain models developed during the workshop available soon, as well as other outputs.

See the risks and opportunities the two value chains by clicking on the images:

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In Uganda, the relationship between climate change and migration has not yet been explored in detail. There is no programmatic experience or evidence of how climate change is or could become a driver of migration. A key challenge we heard about is that very little is known about the links between climate and migration and there is little baseline data available.

Meteorological records are not very long in some areas (especially in the Karamoja region, due to past conflict). However, there is appetite among development practitioners and international donors to start exploring the topic in more detail.

Internationally, there is not an agreed definition of what constitutes environmental or climate migrants. The term ‘climate refugees’ is better understood, typified by the South Pacific islands that are threatened by sea level rise, such as Tuvalu. We need to be clear if we are talking about internal or cross-border migration as they have different dynamics and require different responses. Regional cooperation will be very important to deal with migration. As part of the Action Lab, we agreed to focus the conversation on internal migration as a strategy to adapt to climate change, which in the Ugandan context is still more common than cross-border migration.

We heard that in Uganda, migration is already being used as a coping strategy to deal with climate variability, especially by nomadic pastoralist communities in the Karamoja region. In fact, a number of people used to migrate across the border with Kenya – following the rains to ensure good pastures for their cattle. However, increased mining activity and fragmentation of this cattle corridor (through the increased number of farms) are both already putting strain on this coping mechanism, bringing into question whether this is a suitable coping strategy under climate change. Other areas where there could be some interesting interactions between climate and migration include Northern Uganda, the Uganda-Congo border area, and fragile ecosystem environments where cash crops are being grown.

Development practitioners are grappling with determining how migration can be attributed to climate change. While there is a need to explore causal attribution further, we have to acknowledge that migration is multi-faceted and climate is one of many drivers. Climate change will often act as a catalyst which amplifies the current drivers of migration – one more stressor in a very complex decision making process that drives people to migrate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s chapter dealing with migration can provide a starting point for finding out more. [Editor: the CDKN film ‘Living on the Go‘ about Bangladeshi climate refugees also explains the difference in migration types in detail.] In the context of Uganda’s potential future climate, we expect to see more hot and dry weather in the Karamoja region, which, among other external trends, could have an impact on people’s livelihoods, their health, food security, economic opportunities and overall stability.

But if climate change can exacerbate migration, then equally, migration can exacerbate the impacts of climate change. We heard that particularly in the Karamoja region, there has been an influx in population due to the political conflict in neighbouring countries. Often that can put additional pressures on natural resources and the resilience of receiving/host communities. The few pastures available, which are already under pressure due to climate change, will now have to service more farmers and their cattle. We therefore need to understand both dynamics of the climate and migration relationship.

From the Action Lab it was clear that this is still a new topic to many and we need to have further conversations about the relationship between migration and climate change to get a better sense of the future risks and suitable responses for the Ugandan context.

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A meeting of African Risk Capacity (ARC) – a sovereign weather insurance fund governed by African member states – heard that national, African institutions which have honed their management and fiduciary standards to obtain money from the Adaptation Fund, Green Climate Fund and similar global, publicly-funded bodies, will be ideally positioned to apply for new forms of long-term climate risk insurance.

The experts gathered to discuss plans for an Extreme Climate Facility being developed by ARC. They included finance specialists from Chad, The Gambia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Zimbabwe, as well as as well as representatives from CDKN, the Rockefeller Foundation, DFID, KfW, SIDA and Global Affairs Canada.

The Extreme Climate Facility aims to provide adaptation and disaster risk reduction funding to ARC Members States where a noticeable shift in climate has occurred, in windows of 5-year periods. The Extreme Climate Facility is novel in that it will leverage funds from both the private sector and donors. ARC hopes to launch this product in 2017.

The Facility will complement ARC’s current insurance for drought (with upcoming flood and tropical cyclone cover).

Africa’s adaptation challenge is huge: it will take an estimated USD100 billion to adapt to a 2°C temperature rise according to Thomas Yanga of the World Food Programme. It’s against this context that CDKN commissioned the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance and Kulima Integrated Development Solutions to develop the investment framework for ARC’s new Extreme Climate Facility.

The framework proposes a three-step process for countries to first confirm eligibility, then review whether they would be able to meet all criteria for a final investment case (possibly getting some assistance to meet the gaps), and finally submitting an investment case for review by the ARC Agency’s Peer Review Mechanism. The aim was to design these criteria to have a relatively “light touch” approach in the early stage as there may not be a payout in the 5-year period. This will allow for the final investment case to be flexible and only submitted when a payout is triggered.

Build on existing international standards

The criteria draw on international best practice, but the proposed framework has limited the complexity by using a subset of international climate funds’ standards. The benefits of this approach are that those accredited to other funds like the Adaptation Fund or Green Climate Fund (GCF) would not need to resubmit evidence of fiduciary compliance. For those that will need to work towards compliance, there is time to improve their systems.

Workshop participants confirmed that for many of their countries, it will be possible to use ongoing in-country work for direct access under the GCF or Adaptation Fund; some of them already have nationally accredited entities (which will reduce their compliance requirements). There could also be a role for regional entities too, where there is still a great deal of improvement needed to meet international fiduciary standards.

Build on the Paris outcomes

CDKN’s Chief Executive Sam Bickersteth flagged the synergies of this work with two major outcomes of Paris: the (Intended) Nationally Determined Contributions (which set forward what countries will be doing to address climate change on a national level) and the ramp up of private sector investment to address climate change.

Several financial mechanisms are still being considered for the Facility and all could involve private actors: as proposed by ARC Legal Counsel these could include re-insurance, derivatives, catastrophe bonds or a combination of these.

Another aspect that will be required is political leadership to take the idea forward and COP22 presents a good opportunity for showcasing ARC as an example of African leadership.

Build on existing national adaptation priorities

In terms of adaptation projects that might be funded, the National Adaptation Plans that are being prepared will highlight each country’s priorities; many are intended to be ready in late 2017. INDCs that have adaptation components could also be used as a starting point. The adaptation criteria of the investment plan will largely involve elaborating the details of a particular intervention that addresses the country’s already-stated adaptation priorities. There is a further criteria to ensure the plan is robust to future climate change projections, to avoid possible maladaptation.

Delegates recommended using existing structures and institutions as much as possible, including the considerable institutional infrastructure developed in several Member States during the roll-out of the ARC drought insurance product.

Design of the Extreme Climate Index

Aside from the financing mix, other key elements of the Extreme Climate Facility must be designed before its anticipated 2017 launch. They include an Extreme Climate Index, which would provide an objective trigger for determining if countries are to be given a payout. Amigo Climate presented preliminary research on such an Index that was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Index is underpinned by a Standardised Precipitation Index and a Standardised Heatwave Index. It allows for the comparison across countries with different climates for multiple hazards in a simple, easy to use tool. The next step will be a review of the Extreme Climate Index by African research institutions (currently out for tender), including a stress test to check how frequently it will trigger using future climate projections.

Next steps

ARC will be refining the Extreme Climate Index, legal structure and the adaptation standards over the course of 2016. In addition, a cost benefit analysis for the Extreme Climate Facility still needs to be completed to demonstrate the value proposition for members and donors. CDKN will be supporting the ARC to finalise the adaptation standards.

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Raising Risk Awareness

This initiative used state-of-the-art science to help Asian and African societies to understand the role of climate change in extreme weather events and prepare for future ones.

The ‘Raising Risk Awareness’ initiative brought together scientists from ‘World Weather Attribution’ (WWA) initiative  – an effort led by Climate Central with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, University of Oxford, University of Melbourne and Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute – with CDKN. It assessed whether climate change has contributed to extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and heatwaves in several countries across East Africa and South Asia.

The team used peer-reviewed methods to discover the links – and distributed the information widely to the press, policy-makers and the public in these countries.

“These regions are particularly vulnerable to weather disasters,“ said Paul Hanle, Climate Central President and CEO. “ We are pleased to join CDKN in this important international alliance that draws upon the cutting edge climate science to manage climate risk.”

“We are looking to kick off new conversations about how developing countries can reduce their vulnerability to climate change and construct more resilient societies after climate-related disasters,” said Sam Bickersteth, CDKN’s Chief Executive.

“Extreme weather events are not selective; they often hit countries that are least well equipped to deal with the impacts – and this can set their development back by years. CDKN is delighted to bring its experience from years of work in climate-resilient development and climate communications to this new partnership.”

Scientists now can determine if human-induced climate change contributed to an extreme event – or if the event would have happened anyway. Techniques for attributing such extreme events to climate change – almost in real time – have advanced in the last ten years and are considered the new frontier of climate science. If climate change has played a role, scientists can indicate how often such events are likely to happen in the future and work with countries to brace for similar events.

Maarten van Aalst, Director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, another WWA member, said: “It makes a real difference to policy-makers and planners if they can find out quickly after a disaster whether such extreme events are becoming more or less frequent. Some decisions about recovery and reconstruction need to be made within days or weeks.

“Take the example of heat waves, killing people and destroying harvests. In some cases, such extreme temperatures, which used to happen every 50 years, now occur every 10 to 15 years, because of climate change. Information like this has deep implications for how developing countries invest their scarce resources.”

Members of the public also have a role to play in assessing the role of climate change in extreme weather events. Friederike Otto of Oxford University, Science Lead for the new initiative, explained: “For our regional climate modelling, we are entirely dependent on the computing time donations from members of the public. Volunteers can sign up to participate in climateprediction.net, which harnesses the power of thousands of personal computers to run our models.”

The ‘Raising Risk Awareness’ project launched in May 2016 and ran until March 2017.

What CDKN’s Asian and African leaders are saying about this initiative

Hina Lotia, Director of Programmes, Lead Pakistan/CDKN Asia: “We are unfortunately living through times when human induced climate change is wreaking havoc for the world. Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency, which is causing mass destruction and casualties all over the world. The ‘Raising Risk Awareness’ project, has the potential to greatly reduce the damage that extreme weather events can cause to vast swathes of populations through a multi-pronged approach of amalgamating robust scientific research, dynamic communication techniques and policy engagement.’’

Ali Sheikh, Regional Director, CDKN Asia: “Policy-making is generally at its active best during the phase of disaster management, following an extreme weather event, in the face of overwhelming destruction and casualties. However, if there is adequate and strategic planning done for disaster prevention, the impact of such events can be greatly mitigated. The ‘Raising Risk Awareness’ project aims to overhaul conventional policy-making processes by tapping on scientific knowledge to utilise attribution analyses and predict the occurrence of extreme weather events. By building the resilience of communities who are most vulnerable to the perils of nature, using an effective communication strategy, the disastrous outcomes of climate change can be curtailed.”

Suzanne Carter, Senior Project Manager, CDKN Africa: “Through analysis of current extreme events, the project will also strengthen our understanding of climate risks to extreme events in the future and will ensure that adaptation responses are robust to future changes, avoiding maladaptation.”

Kiran Sura, Head of Negotiations Support, CDKN Global: “This project brings together the science, media and policy communities to better understand the risk of extreme weather events in a warming world. It will be critical to understand to what extent changes in the frequency and the severity of such events represents the new normal so that affected communities, policy-makers and governments can be better prepared.”

Donate computing time

To donate some of your computing time to running the climate models, visit http://www.climateprediction.net/getting-started/

About the organisations

Climate Central and World Weather Attribution (WWA)

Climate Central leads WWA, a consortium of scientific partners from the University of Oxford Environmental Change Institute, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, the University of Melbourne, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. As part of ‘Raising Risk Awareness’, WWA will seek to assess whether climate change has contributed to selected extreme weather events across countries in South Asia and East Africa. Contact: Shari Bell, sbell@climatecentral.org

Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN)

CDKN supports developing countries to plan and pursue climate-compatible development. We do this by combining research, advisory services and knowledge management in support of locally owned and managed policy processes. We work in partnership with decision-makers in the public, private and non-governmental sectors nationally, regionally and globally. As part of ‘Raising Risk Awareness’, CDKN produced informational resources and ran national events to help civil society, communities, practitioners, media and decision-makers better understand and prepare for the risks from extreme weather events.  Contact: Kiran Sura, kiran.sura@uk.pwc.com

Technical notes

The attribution of extreme weather events to human-made climate change is an emerging and rapidly advancing science. There is increasing capacity to estimate the change in magnitude and occurrence of specific types of extreme events in a warming world. Scientists can situate predictions about the increased (or decreased) likelihood of a certain type of extreme weather event in the context of long term climate change trends for a country or region. This creates a narrative for decision-makers and the public about how a certain type of extreme event – such as intense rain, drought or heatwave – will become increasingly frequent. Such systematic and rapid scientific analysis is the focus of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) Initiative. With a robust evidence base and the right protocols in place it is now possible to run near real-time extreme weather event attribution within days of an event striking.

Not all extreme events are becoming more likely. Some are becoming less likely. For others, the risk has not changed. Identifying those events where the risk has changed dramatically is crucial to societies’ efforts to adapt to climate change.

Event attribution typically addresses the ‘extreme’ in the weather event, but the impact of an extreme weather event also depends on people’s vulnerability and exposure. Indeed the vulnerability and exposure of people and locations can sometimes be more important than climate change in determining future trends in risk. The ‘Raising Risk Awareness’ project will not seek to attribute the impacts of extreme weather events, but stakeholders in the target regions of South Asia and East Africa will be able to use the scientific climate information alongside local and national analysis about vulnerability and exposure to inform decision-making and make future development investments more climate-resilient.

Download our Raising Risk Awareness technical briefing note

Take a look at the RRA Infographic

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