Climate Change Impacts on Water and Agriculture Sectors in Southern Africa: Threats and Opportunities for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Agriculture remains important in driving economic transformation, sustainable livelihoods, and development in developing countries. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis and discussion of climate change impacts on water and agriculture sectors and implications for the attainment of developmental outcomes such as food security, poverty reduction, and sustainable development in Southern Africa. The review gives policy messages for coping, adapting, and building resilience of water and agricultural production systems in the face of projected changes in climate and variability. The aim is to guide the region towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Future projections for Southern Africa indicate reduced rainfall, increased temperatures, and high variability for the greater part of the region with severe reductions on the drier and marginal western parts. These impacts have profound implications for agriculture performance and contribution to national and regional developmental goals. The region is projected to experience reductions of between 15% and 50% in agricultural productivity, a scenario that would exacerbate food insecurity in the region. The challenge is to increase productivity on current arable land through efficient and sustainable management of available water and energy, and at the same time reducing pressure on the environment. Affordability and accessibility of innovative adaptation measures on water resources remain critical and these strategies should be part of broader sustainable development efforts. Overall, efforts to enhance agricultural productivity need to emphasise investments in sustainable management and use of water and energy resources in agriculture to achieve sustainable economic growth and livelihoods.

Climate Change, Land, Water, and Food Security: Perspectives From Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Such a situation is evident in Southern Africa where during 2015, 9 million ha which represents only 9% of the total cultivated land of 107 million ha was irrigated. However, the volume of water extracted for these irrigation activities represents over 70% of the available freshwater resources, of which countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Tanzania are major contributors (Nhemachena et al, 2020). This issue is even more pronounced when the people have to depend on the limited water resources for other key uses such as drinking, cooking, or additional domestic activities.…”

“…Countries in the north and east of the Southern Africa region is projected to experience a reduced potential output of cereal production by 50% or more by 2080 in response to the future events of increased water scarcity caused by climate change. Moreover, while countries in the west of the Southern Africa region are expected to experience a decrease of 15-50% in agricultural productivity, countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), parts of Zambia and Mozambique, positioned in the further north will experience an increase of 25% or more (Nhemachena et al, 2020). Between the period of 2011 to 2020, countries like Mauritania, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Madagascar, and Lesotho have experienced poor rains and droughts leading to poor agricultural harvests, loss of livestock, an increase in food prices, starvation, food shortage, famine, drying up of reservoirs, and dams, affecting a great number of people.…”

Environmental Services: A New Approach Toward Addressing Sustainable Development Goals in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Several studies have also considered the relationship of water management to sustainable development (Jonker, 2007;Mabhaudhi et al, 2018Mabhaudhi et al, , 2019Nhemachena et al, 2020) but this is viewed mainly as a water budget (supply/demand) issue rather than as a system that links synergistically to other systems (soil, ecosystems, agriculture, health, pollution). Despite the fact that most nexus studies have a clearalbeit unstated-application to SDGs (marked in Table 1), and can be applied to a range of cross-cutting physical-human environmental issues, these studies are rarely framed in a context of either sustainable development (e.g., Walmsley, 2002;Hoffman et al, 2007;Nhemachena et al, 2020) or Earth System Science that informs on co-relationships to physical processes in the landscape (Knight, 2015;Verburg et al, 2015). This is a key limitation of nexus studies because it means they are not informed by the physical and human environmental processes that impact on issues in sustainability and the SDGs.…”

“…This omission is surprising given the wide literature on the relationship of ecosystem service provision to land degradation (e.g., Smiraglia et al, 2016;Sutton et al, 2016;Tarrasón et al, 2016;Turner et al, 2016;Cerretelli et al, 2018). In addition, environmental services, provided by or contingent upon the physical landscape, have not been explicitly considered as part of sustainable development strategies in developing world contexts, or as key elements of SDGs, despite the plethora of "nexus" approaches that are linked to examination of the SDGs (Cumming et al, 2017;Nhamo, 2017;Omisore, 2018;Dawson et al, 2019;Jiménez-Aceituno et al, 2020;Nhemachena et al, 2020).…”

Wetlands Management in Northern Greece: An Empirical Survey

“…In practice, however, effective water resources management lies beyond water-based conceptualization. In fact, there are pressures that are significantly enhanced by human activity and end up as major environmental threats, including sedimentation, pollution, climate change, deforestation, landscape changes, and urban growth [6][7][8][9]. Changes in landscape, attributed to deforestation or land use changes and urbanization, do entail direct or indirect impacts on water resources.…”