State and Trends in Adaptation Report 2021
The State and Trends in Adaptation Report 2021 combines in-depth analyses, case studies, and viewpoints from those on the front lines of climate change impacts in Africa. It presents a detailed blueprint for action by offering innovative adaptation and resilience ideas, solutions, and policy recommendations.
The 2021 report discusses how adaptation measures can be enormously cost-effective, with the potential to start a reinforcing cycle of benefits. The immediate objective of these measures is to protect people and communities from floods, droughts, and other climate-driven threats. The most effective and beneficial efforts can lift people out of poverty, reduce hunger and undernourishment, raise incomes and living standards, fight diseases, create jobs, reduce inequality, mitigate the risk of conflicts, and give voice to the most vulnerable. These realizable results, in turn, further increase resilience against a wide range of systemic risks, as well as against climate-driven threats.
- Climate Risks in Africa
- Economics and Finance
- Focus Sectors
- Cross cutting themes
- Case studies & Viewpoints
- Context
Africa is exposed to complex, interconnected climate systems, with three of the most important being El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the monsoons, and cyclones. Each is already affecting the lives and livelihoods of people across the continent. As anthropogenic climate change causes the planet to warm, each of these climate systems is likely to increase their influence on extreme weather outcomes and to become more erratic.
The recently released first volume of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report suggests that it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid reaching a rise in average global temperature of 1.5oC within the next decade or so and 2oC or more by mid-century. Even if lower emissions pathways are to be achieved, African climates are likely to be more erratic, with most of Africa becoming more arid and much of it so hot that outdoor work and tourism will be life-threatening for much of the year.
- Key Findings