A new paper “How is climate science used to inform national-level adaptation planning in southern Africa?” has just been published in the journal Climate Policy. The paper was authored by Ailish Craig, Rachel A. James, Emma Archer, Joseph Daron, Christopher D. Jack, Richard G. Jones, Alan T. Kennedy-Asser, Jessica Lee, Alice McClure, Christopher Shaw, Anna Steynor, Andrea Taylor and Katharine Vincent and produced as part of the SALIENT project.
The paper analyses the extent to which climate model projections are integrated into adaptation planning through the examples of the National Communications (NCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 16 southern African countries. It finds variability in the models, scenarios and time periods used to project future climate across the countries, although all tend to focus on average changes in temperature and precipitation. The climate projections sections are typically detached from the adaptation sections of the NCs, where the focus is on key risks such as drought and flooding, and there is limited recognition of uncertainties.
The role of climate science in the adaptation planning process varies, with some evidence of highly collaborative processes, resulting in evidence-based adaptation options across sectors and scales. The paper proposes that, rather than additional climate projections, attempts to improve national adaptation planning focus on developing approaches and collaborative processes. These processes can be used to distil and interpret climate information in different contexts, and to enable decision-makers to understand the range of plausible futures, including changes in climate alongside growing populations, urbanization and changing economies.