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AIACC Global Kick-off Meeting Regional Breakout Summary: Africa The Africa projects present a good attempt at regional coverage, representation of disciplines and sectors and critical issues for Africa as identified in recent assessments. Combined, the project teams include a wide range of expertise in almost all important disciplines of AIACC work. This presents a real opportunity for engaging African scientists in future training and support activities. Given the rather large size of Africa and wide range in issues that must be addressed, it is unlikely that these projects will result in a comprehensive and complete assessment of all relevant issues – therefore, any synthetic activities should summarize research results by sub region or sector, rather than attempt an overall assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation for Africa. There is great value in effective communication of methods and findings among the regional projects especially in the early phases of projects. It was suggested that projects share details about their methods, data, models and planned analyses to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas, mentoring etc. This can be done through an email discussion list, or via a common web site. To ensure development of capacity and collaborations at regional level, it was recommended that projects take advantage of regional expertise and data to support their work plans. For example, two projects working on regional climate modeling have offered to generate and share climate scenarios for African projects. These are the Bruce Hewitson (AF07) and Amadou Gaye (AF20) projects for Sub-Saharan Africa and West Africa respectively. Given IPCC’s coordinating role in selection and use of climate change scenarios, it will be useful for the regional scenarios to be developed to satisfy suggested IPCC minimal standards for GCM/Regional Climate Model scenarios (see the IPCC Task Group on Climate Impact Assessments – TGCIA; and the IPCC Data Distribution Center, <http://ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk/>). It would also make sense for these projects to have a major role in training activities for scenario development for the Africa region – this would be more cost effective, and would enhance regional capacity for these activities. While the issue of climate scenarios is important, given the difficulties in representing climate variability and sub-regional to local climatic conditions especially for Africa (exacerbated by very sparse weather observational networks), it is likely that meaningful scenarios can be developed using alternative approaches such as climate analogs, and such (see TGCIA Guideline Paper on Use of Climate Scenarios-a PDF file). For those sub regions that have detailed climate observations, these can be shared with the climate modeling groups to enable evaluation of the performance of the regional climate models, and so, suitability for use at the sub-regional level. It is also important for project teams to carefully plan how they will model impacts and evaluate adaptation options. The UNFCCC is currently collating information about models used in climate change assessments (see UNFCCC website: http://unfccc.int/program/meth/index.html) – it would be useful to maintain a short list of models suitable for the issues and sectors represented in the AIACC projects, including points of contact (from amongst the project teams) that can provide support in use of the models. The evaluation of adaptation options is another important aspect of AIACC projects, and there are currently two approaches being developed for assessing adaptation: the UNDP Adaptation Policy Framework (see handout), and an approach called NAPA (National Adaptation Programmes of Action) that is being developed by the Least Developed Country (LDC) parties to the UNFCCC (see the new UNFCCC LDC Expert Group, www.unfccc.int for further details and upcoming descriptions of the NAPA approach). National Communications, where they have been completed in the developing countries, may contain results and methods applying models and frameworks that may be of value for some countries and sectors. The Consultative Group of Experts (CGE) under the UNFCCC has been reviewing the guidelines for national communications, and they have synthesized existing communications (see www.unfccc.int for further details). Publications In order to address information critical data needs for the IPCC assessment process, it will be necessary to deliberately document and publish information on such topics as: coping and adaptation strategies for various adverse impacts (floods and droughts, etc) in different parts of Africa, lines of evidence observed climate changes, demonstration of practical use of climate change information in policy and planning, economic impacts and costs of intervention measures. African scientists have a special role in translating IPCC science results into information briefs for their policy makers and stakeholders. This should include preparation of briefs/position papers to support Climate Change negotiation processes. This is particularly important for ongoing negotiations on adaptation especially in relation to least developed countries, and subsequent funding for adaptation (need information about costs for adaptation, examples of local adaptation assessments, etc), as well as development of linkages to national sustainable development. Regional Workshops Topics/themes to include:
Data Policies, Transparency, Accuracy There are many important differences in the climate change convention with respect to different groups, e.g. industrialized countries versus developing countries and the least developed countries among them. It is essential that important differences such as differing obligations and entitlements are reflected in approaches, statements made and assumptions. Other Issues Knowledge about existing data and access to data is another important topic. A clearing house/meta database and collations of important data can be maintained at the AIACC web site. This should include information on models and points of contact for support in using models and other technical aspects of the projects. Project teams are encouraged to submit versions of their proposals to the AIACC office for publication on the AIACC web site – these should include a comprehensive work plan and information that is acceptable for public release on the web. While budgetary information is optional, total project costs would be useful. Success for AIACC will be measured by the number of peer-reviewed publications, capacity to conduct aspects of the projects in-region (scenario development, etc), and improved cadre of authors for future IPCC from project teams as well as contributions to the climate change negotiations especially from the LDCs. Interesting Links Mentioned in Discussions |
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