With a GDP of approximately USD 116 billion in 2024 and a real GDP growth rate of 5%, Kenya stands as one of East Africa’s largest and most diversified economies. The country’s economic foundation is built on agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, and services, with natural resources playing a vital role in sustaining livelihoods. However, Kenya faces pressing environmental challenges, including deforestation, water scarcity, land degradation, pollution, and the growing impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and extreme weather events threaten economic stability and social well-being, particularly in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, energy, and water resources. Addressing these challenges through sustainable policies and climate adaptation strategies will be crucial for ensuring long-term resilience and economic sustainability.
Tag: Climate change adaptation
Bridging the divide in community development: The importance of process in linking community demands and responsive external support
Since smallholder farmers in the Global South are among the people most vulnerable to the impact of current and future climate change, numerous external actors focus on building their capacity in climate change adaptation and mitigation practices. Previous experience however shows that the success, efficiency and sustainability of these projects depends on appropriate models and tools being implemented in order to take relevant climate-smart practices to scale.
The Climate-Smart Agriculture Papers
This volume shares new data relating to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), with emphasis on experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa. The book is a collection of research by authors from over 30 institutions, spanning the public and private sectors, with specific knowledge on agricultural development in the region discussed. The material is assembled to answer key questions on the following five topic areas: (1) Climate impacts: What are the most significant current and near future climate risks undermining smallholder livelihoods? (2) Varieties: How can climate-smart varieties be delivered quickly and cost-effectively to smallholders? (3) Farm management: What are key lessons on the contributions from soil and water management to climate risk reduction and how should interventions be prioritized? (4) Value chains: How can climate risks to supply and value chains be reduced? and (5) Scaling up: How can most promising climate risks reduction strategies be quickly scaled up and what are critical success factors? Readers who will be interested in this book include students, policy makers, and researchers studying climate change impacts on agriculture and agricultural sustainability.
Addressing forestry and agroforestry in National Adaptation Plans – Supplementary guidelines
The ‘Addressing forestry and agroforestry in National Adaptation Plans: Supplementary guidelines’ provide specific guidance for national adaptation planning in the forestry sector. They are intended to be used by national planners and decision–makers working on climate change issues in developing countries and authorities and experts who are contributing to climate change adaptation and NAP formulation and implementation.
Prepare for the unanticipated: Portfolios of coping strategies of rural households facing diverse shocks
Rural households have established various informal strategies to cope with unanticipated shocks. These existing coping strategies are receiving renewed interest, particularly in the context of climate change and in terms of the role they do, and can play, in enhancing households’ adaptive capacity. An improved understanding of these strategies, and the factors that influence their application, may support the design of locally relevant adaptation strategies. We explored the nature and prevalence of unanticipated shocks, including natural hazards, experienced by households in two villages in Venda, South Africa, with the villages selected, in part, because of notable differences in precipitation. We considered the influence of shock type, and household- and location-specific characteristics, on the use of various household-level coping strategies. We report on semi-structured interviews, administered to 170 randomly selected households, and a participatory rural appraisal. Almost 90% of households reported the experience of at least one unanticipated shock over a prescribed 5-year period, with natural hazards reported by 42%. The type of shock experienced and various household-level characteristics, such as households’ access to human and financial capital, influences households’ coping response. Households’ access to natural and social capital allowed for the protection of ex-ante coping options. Overall, our findings indicate that when possible, households actively manage their coping strategy portfolio, both in response to the shock experienced and in anticipation of future shocks. Generally, households’ informal, ex-post coping options appear to be insufficiently robust for the covariate nature of natural hazards, suggesting the need for interventions that support households’ existing coping portfolio.
Water productivity of Paulownia tomentosa x fortunei (Shan Tong) in a plantation at Lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia
Central Asia is a region where forests are naturally scarce and additionally are under high anthropogenic pressure due to an unmet demand for timber and fuelwood. Cultivation of fast-growing trees as a means to satisfy this need may, therefore, be instrumental to forest conservation and/or restoration efforts. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Paulownia spp. as agroforestry or plantation tree. Paulownia is a deciduous tree genus of Chinese origin that is valued for its fast growth and light, yet sturdy wood, among other characteristics. This study investigated the water consumption, biomass production, and water productivity of Paulownia tomentosa x fortunei (trade name: Shan Tong) in a plantation setting on the northern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul (Kyrgyzstan) over the course of the vegetation period 2019. The method employed was Granier’s thermal dissipation probe for measuring sap flow in trees. Estimated trunk biomass production per tree and season ranged from 1.52 to 3.41 kg, and the trees were found to consume between 433 and 613 l of water in total over the growing season. Water productivity, the amount of exploitable stem biomass produced per litre of water input, consequently ranged between 4.3 and 8.0 g l−1. As numerous studies suggest that the thermal dissipation method underestimates tree water consumption to varying degrees, these values likely represent the upper range of the species’ water productivity. A literature review shows its water productivity to be higher than that of regionally employed tree species such as Populus euphratica or Elaeagnus angustifolia.