Promoting Awareness and Understanding of IPCC among Experts in Sub-Saharan Africa

1.Africa’s climate change challenges need African-generated solutions: African experts need to take centre stage in guiding policy actions through locally-led research and evidenced-based processes.

2. Contribution of Africa in IPCC reports remains low, yet key for development and implementation of in national, regional and global climate policies: Strategic actions to identify relevant knowledge gaps, promote collaborative research and mentor junior experts are needed to enhance their contributions in future IPCC processes in a manner that strongly accounts for the African interests and perspectives.

Introduction

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II (WGII) clearly highlighted that Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to the impacts of climate change, despite being among the lowest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the high vulnerability, the impacts faced are great and far-reaching especially in the absence of adequate coping mechanisms. The impacts are already evident in reduced food production, increasing water insecurities, compromised economic development, biodiversity losses and increased human morbidity and mortality (Trisos et al., 2022). An estimated 337 million people were affected by natural disasters in Africa between 2000-2019 in which floods accounted for 80% and droughts for 16%. Between the years 2018-2019, 6 million people were displaced by weather-related disasters in SSA and 46,078 deaths from natural disasters were reported between the years 2000-2019 (CRED, 2019).

Globally, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has reported the largest number of mortalities associated with floods since 1990 (Tellman et al.,2021). These adverse impacts will be more severe under various temperature rise scenarios in the region and across the globe. With temperatures expected to increase 1.5 times higher by the end of the 21st century, African countries will see more shorter wet spells hence droughts, leading to reduced food production. This may be further exacerbated by poor infrastructure and inadequate support systems. As a result, by 2030, crop yields across the continent are projected to decrease by varying amounts depending upon the sub-regions. Southern Africa, for example, is expected to experience a 20% decrease in rainfall. The region will experience upto 3% reduction in the gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 3% by 2050.[1]

The current and future impacts of climate change express the need for the African region to play a more proactive role in addressing climate change. Quite importantly, African countries as part of the global community, are increasingly taking action to not only mitigate against climate change and strengthen their resilience and adaptive capacities but also realize their sustainable development agenda. Such efforts are reflected in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and long-term low greenhouse gas emission and climate resilient development strategies (LTS), which many countries are currently developing. The importance of LTS was particularly highlighted by IPCC AR6 WGII report, which emphasized the need for collective action to tackle climate risks, inequality and climate justice, indicating that opportunities to achieve climate resilient development will significantly decline without concerted efforts to reduce global emissions.[2] It is increasingly appreciated that for development plans and policy decisions to be effective, realistic and sustainable, their formulation and implementation must be evidence-based and driven by credible, timely and relevant data. Across Africa however, serious data gaps and lack of climate information have been strongly pointed out as a major limiting factors to climate action and policy processes, compromising the abilities to make effective medium to long-term decisions towards climate resilient developments. Huge data gaps in the
region are reflected through the many long-standing questions posed by decision-makers that can still not be addressed by climate science, which compromises the confidence in long-term decisions.[3] These are clear reflections of limited research in the expanding and dynamic climate change and its impacts.

Figure 1: Representation of IPCC authors in AR6.

Source: IPCC AR6

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the main scientific body responsible for regularly assessing and disseminating the latest knowledge and available science on climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The reports are importantly used by countries, regional bodies and global communities to inform and influence climate actions and decisions. They intensively underpin global climate treaties. These reports are considered policy relevant and in many cases provide a solid basis for climate action in various countries. With the foregoing in mind, it becomes very apparent that incorporation of information representing all parts of the globe is very important in capturing local contexts of climate change and its impacts. This then calls for improved short and long term adaptation and mitigation planning taking into account local circumstances.

The IPCC reports are developed by the voluntary work of authors drawn from across the world with varied expertise. While these reports are key sources that inform global climate engagements, the African continent has been severely underrepresented in the preparation of these reports. African experts and scientists have historically accounted for only 0.5 to 2% of all contributing participating experts in various windows including through relevant literature that are quoted in the reports, as co-authors, expert reviewers, and in the networking, outreach and communications. An analysis of the latest assessment cycle of the IPCC (AR6) has shown that only 11% of authors were from Africa (Fig 1) and many of them from one country.

[1] https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/10/the-impact-of-climate-change-on-africas-economies/

[2] https://futureclimateafrica.org/news/new-ipcc-report-emphasises-the-need-to-scale-up-adaptation-in-africa-and-beyond/

[3] https://paris21.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Data-Policy%20Gap_Africa__FINAL_20210430.pdf