This document describes the averages of Minimum and Maximum Temperatures in 2009 and the rainfall amounts recorded in the same year. Characteristics range between 2007 and 2009 and reflect the monthly temperature averages in Northern Benin. The utility of this document is that it informs in a short time the different variations of the climate in this northern part of Benin.

NAPAs provide a process for the LDCs to identify priority activities that respond to their urgent and immediate needs with regard to adaptation to climate change - those needs for which further delay could increase vulnerability or lead to increased costs at a later stage. The rationale for NAPAs rests on the limited ability of the LDCs to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. In the NAPA process, prominence is given to community-level input as an important source of information, recognizing that grassroots communities are the main stakeholders. NAPAs use existing information and no new research is needed. They are action-oriented, country-driven, are flexible and based on national circumstances. In order to effectively address urgent and immediate adaptation needs, NAPA documents are presented in a simple format, easily understood both by policy-level decision-makers and the public.

This study provides an analysis of environmental observations by farmers, as well as of models of blame in Northern Ghana, an agricultural region of high vulnerability to climate change. Qualitative data were collected through a standardised questionnaire on the community’s consensus on how to explain observed changes. Responses were transcribed to allow content analysis. Natural data sets confirmed most local observations, but older age and the affectedness of the respondents were crucial in determining the views. Climate change was generally given a lower priority by the respondents compared to other manifestations of change, such as infrastructural development, human-spiritual relations and changes in social relations. Moreover, the respondents made reference to the blessing of the land and the destruction of the land. The destruction of the land was understood in a metaphorical way as the result of eroding social relationships and stagnation, as well as norm-breaking and lack of unity within the community. Thus, climate change was perceived in local social terms rather than based on global natural science knowledge. The article concludes that the anthropological analysis is meaningful and may serve as an entry point for further planning of adaptation and public education.

This anthropological study provides an analysis of environmental observations by farmers and their perceptions of change, as well as models of blame in Northern Ghana, a poor agricultural region of high vulnerability to climate change. Qualitative data were collected through a standardized questionnaire which was directed to twenty‐five individuals to collect data on community consensus on how to explain this change. Responses were transcribed to allow content analysis. Natural data sets confirmed most local observations but older age and affectedness of the respondents were crucial in determining the views of the respondents. Farmers observed more changes than younger people who were not yet decision‐makers on their family farms. Climate change was generally given a lower priority by the respondents compared with other manifestations of change that have occurred over the past decades, such as infrastructural development, human‐spiritual relations and changes in social relations within the community. When referring to these changes, the respondents often made reference to the blessing of the land and the destruction of the land. The destruction of the land was always understood in a metaphorical way as the result of eroding social relationships and stagnation, as well as norm‐breaking and lack of unity within the community.

During the 1970s, when severe droughts affected West African farmers, cereal banks became popular in the region. However, things quickly became very quiet again about this type of food security scheme, probably also because many of the cereal banks failed. Scientific surveys addressing the topic are scarce. A study in The Gambia in 2014 investigated how such cereal banks function and what the important variables for their success are.

This historical timeline summarizes the most important events of the CCA Policy Process in Burkina Faso.

This document presents agricultural data collected in northern Benin provided by CERPA (Centre Régional pour la Promotion Agricole) in 2011. They are recorded in a set of tables informing on inputs (fertilizers and insecticides) used for food production (Rice and maize) and cotton during the period 2009-2010. It also indicates about the situation of the setting up of cash credits by the World Bank in each municipality in the study area. The aim of this agricultural project, led by CERPA, is to facilitate access to inputs in order to generate food self-sufficiency and reduce poverty. Indeed, the favorable natural, human and financial conditions for good agricultural production in Benin remain a major problem. This project, which is part of a viable and reliable agricultural policy, enables local, national and development partners to guarantee food security and to satisfy the full needs the populations.

The 2000 National Greenhouse Gas Inventory of The Gambia shows national emission total of about 20.02 Million Tons CO2 Equivalent (TCO2E) and per capita emissions of 13.5 TCO2E. This is insignificant compared to other country emissions. However, as a Party to the Climate Change Convention and its Kyoto Protocol, Gambia is willing to participate in mitigating global emissions and their concentrations in the atmosphere with the first step of conducting a mitigation assessment and developing this NAMA document. Trend analysis of climate data from 1951 to date shows a progressively warming and drier Gambia. Using General Circulation Model outputs, national temperatures are projected to increase by about 0.3OC in 2010 to about 3.9OC in 2100. Rainfall is also projected to decrease by about 1% in 2010 to about 54% in 2100. This confirms previous results of in the First National Communication that with increase in temperatures under a warming climate, rainfall in The Gambia would correspondingly decrease. The development challenges of The Gambia will be significant as the country faces complex economic, social and technological choices based on the climate change impacts already enumerated in the preceding paragraph. This is compounded by the inadequate capacities, inadequacies in the existing technologies and the non availability of domestic funding from both the public and private sectors for climate change.

Ghana has managed to become one of the fastest growing economies in the world with a vibrant agricultural market. The country could be a prime example of successful, pro-poor development following economic liberalisation. Though first change is visible even in traditionally impoverished areas of the north, namely the Upper East Region, hunger and chronic poverty are still prevalent. Yet, after decades of restricted public expenditure, ‘pro-poor’ agricultural policies could now be put in place, to actively improve smallholder lives in the area by various forms of government support. Similarly, foreign development agencies have recently become more engaged in supporting the local agricultural sector. All actors of current relevance have thereby pursued a value chain approach to developing the markets and livelihoods of northern Ghanaian agriculturalists. The contribution to pro-poor, ‘sustainable’ development, however, remains unclear as at now. This study is therefore concerned with how market dynamics and interventions have influenced ‘sustainable development’ of the vulnerable and poor in an emerging economy like Ghana. To do so, the study takes a look at smallholder livelihood systems in the Upper East Region of the country. Here, local peasant society is confronted with environmental changes, economic globalisation processes and interventions in agricultural value chains by the local Ministry of Food and Agriculture and foreign donors like USAID. To grasp the impact of market dynamics and interventions within this multidimensional context, this study argues for a combination of a holistic livelihood and a more specific value chain and production network approach as a useful conceptual background. Given this theoretic backdrop, data was collected for over 10 months in two villages of the Upper East, namely in Biu and Mirigu, with a focus on tomato, chili and rice, products of major significance to locals. The main methods applied in the field included qualitative as much as quantitative approaches. Farmer focus group discussions (n=37), in-depth farmer interviews and farm budgets (n=47) were the primary source of data gathered. Expert/key-informant interviews (n=70) and expert group discussions (n=2) were held. A household head survey (n=177) and an expert survey (n=25) were used to check hypotheses previously generated by qualitative methods. Primary and secondary data for tomato, chili, rice and partly also shea value chains was collected. Secondary data, such as confidential government and NGO documents, allow an insider view into farmers’ access to subsidies and support. An archive survey of church diaries dating back to 1905, enable a view on local developments in a long-term, historic perspective. This study thereby yields a number of insights with concern for conceptual approaches to the issue of understanding the pro-poor impact of markets, their dynamics and interventions within these. Livelihood analysis proved to be an indispensable approach to understanding important aspects of people-centred, human development potentials and constraints in a local environmental and institutional context. Value chain and production network analysis provided further fruitful insights on market dynamics, their structural outlines, their basic rationales and market terms for the successful participation of locals. It can therefore be concluded that both of these basic notions, either people- or market-centred approaches, should be conceptually merged to advance future research on the pro-poor effect of markets and interventions within them, to specifically address questions of what is here understood as ‘livelihood upgrading’. This study further contributes to an understanding of central aspects of local development and possible future avenues to achieving greater livelihood sustainability through government or donor development interventions. Most significantly, it became clear that ‘positive’, pro-poor market dynamics are also encountered at a local level, but cannot be made use of by spatially and socially marginalised, vulnerable and poor smallholders. That is mainly due to elite capture and corrupt practices, ultimately a question of mal-governance, a lack of grass-roots participation and a disregard for societal dimensions within which interventions are interwoven. Furthermore, neither environmental degradation nor present or future environmental changes, especially climatic ones and those with regard to soils, are accounted for. Interventions thereby remain far below their possible impact and even contribute to a loss of the natural resource base, aside the fact that they further increase an already high level socio-economic inequality. In the face of recent economic awakening, despite globalisation tendencies, future efforts in enabling sustainable development at local level must thus increasingly embrace environmental and, mostly, societal concerns in their concepts and daily practice.

A multi-scale participatory process was used to extend the classical approach of indicator development for risk assessment in West Africa. The approach followed a step-wise procedure to develop Indicator Reference Sheet based on conceptual risk assessment framework and combined with knowledge of local experts iteratively selected through snowball approach. Existing risk assessment frameworks being modified to account for multiple hazards were merged into a coherent framework to categorize the components of risks. Local experts including at risk populations were constituted into technical working groups to elicit important processes shaping risks at multiple spatial scales. The results showed that more than half of the designated local level indicators and over two-third of macro scale indicators are rarely used in present risk assessments in the region. Additionally, although an indicator may be common to three countries, their differential rankings will result in differences in explaining the risks faced by people in different societies. However, there were indicators that were unique to each country and this has wider implications for risk assessment that uses common indicators for different countries for comparative purposes. An important output of the study is the identification of locally and nationally evaluated indicator sets for assessing the risk to natural hazards. While it has neither been optimal to completely neglect classical approaches nor to take as an absolute fact opinions from local experts, more emphasis should be paid to the latter in risk assessment that is supposed to serve the very people on whose behalf the assessment is done.