Monitoring for enhanced climate change adaptation in the Sahel

Introduction

This poster (see right – click to enlarge) describes an approach to climate change adaptation and outlines how ongoing community measurement of threats to water resources is used to enhance adaptation effectiveness in three Sahelian countries.

Approach

Wateraid’s Securing Water Resources Approach (SWRA) uses participatory risk assessment and consists of 5 steps:

1. Understanding the threats
2. Identifying flash points
3. Ongoing monitoring of risk
4. Sharing risk information
5. Enhancing adaptation

Through a mapping exercise, people identify different water uses and when different water sources are likely to dry up or be contaminated throughout the year. They also identify threats likely to affect water availability.

Monitoring information is shared among the wider community and district government and is used to inform allocation of water between different water users. This process acts as an early warning system, alerting communities to the possibility of certain wells drying up. It also helps to indicate when water rationing might be necessary, when certain water uses may need to be banned and when assistance is required from the district local government. This information is used to make the case for investment in better water supply services for all users.

Key message

These adjustments to services and water allocations represent a progressively evolving approach to adaptation. For this to be successful, it is crucial that information about risks is fed upwards through government, enabling the right assistance to be given. It also needs to be implemented at catchment level.

Poster Contact

This poster was presented by Lucien Damiba (luciendamiba@wateraid.org) with support from tidianediallo@wateraid.org and vincentcasey@wateraid.org.

This poster is one of the posters featured at the 9th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation (CBA9) which took place in Nairobi, Kenya, from April 24-30 2015. The CBA series of conferences focus on the latest developments in community-based adaptation to climate change. The theme of this year’s event was “Measuring and enhancing effective adaptation”, and all the posters presented at the conference were summaries of projects related to the conference theme. For more information about CBA9, visit: www.cba9.org. If you want to learn more about community based adaptation, please visit the GICBA platform on weADAPT.