Climate Resilience in Diverse African Contexts: Co-creating Knowledge∞Action Chains (Climares)

Africa is experiencing the impacts of climate change, with negative effects on ecosystems, food security, health, economic growth, and poverty reduction, and further severe impacts are projected with high confidence. Most African livelihoods are strongly linked to natural resources that are exposed to climate change. Additionally, other types of risk compound the impact of climate change on people’s lives. Early warning/early action (EWEA) programmes are essential for managing the impact of these risks on people’s lives and long-term adaptation. While data availability and quality remains a challenge for EWEA, Climares follows the expert view that the problem of lack of data in Africa is now outweighed by the challenge of limited institutional responses. The project aims to assist specific populations in Africa facing extreme weather events and other threats and uncertainties amplified by climate change by providing support to increase their agency and resilience. Climares builds Knowledge∞Action (K∞A) chains that bring together at-risk population groups, weather, climate and disaster management actors, other stakeholders and global platforms to form an inclusive knowledge infrastructure to enhance the resilience of vulnerable populations.

The project asks: “How can K∞A chains strengthen the resilience strategies to address climate-related and intersecting threats and uncertainties among African smallholders, fisherfolk, urban precarious outdoor workers, pastoralists, and displaced women and men?” It focuses on five countries with different climate and governance profiles: Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda.

The consortium is based on co-creation, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, equal partnerships and citizen science. It engages population groups through digital and face to face participatory research and the co-creation of climate storylines and impact-based forecasting to ensure that weather and climate information becomes both accurate and actionable. Advocacy methods will be used to mobilize support through global adaptation programmes, private sector initiatives and climate-sensitive development interventions.