Description du projet
Des services climatologiques pour les terres sèches de la Corne de l’Afrique
La Corne de l’Afrique est une région confrontée à des sécheresses récurrentes, ce qui rend les communautés rurales extrêmement vulnérables aux pénuries d’eau, à l’insécurité alimentaire et aux pertes économiques durant les périodes de sécheresse. Les sécheresses sévères et prolongées se traduisent par une réduction de l’humidité des sols et des réserves d’eau potable, ce qui crée une insécurité alimentaire, des pertes de bétail et d’importants manques d’eau touchant des millions de personnes dans les terres sèches de la Corne de l’Afrique. Le projet DOWN2EARTH, financé par l’UE, va améliorer la capacité communautaire d’adaptation et de résilience aux sécheresses en Éthiopie, au Kenya et en Somalie. Il développera des services climatologiques pertinents pour les communautés. L’accent sera mis sur la fourniture d’outils capables de prévoir et de projeter les pénuries d’eau et leurs conséquences, au niveau ou près de la surface terrestre, aux populations agropastorales. DOWN2EARTH élaborera des outils d’aide à la décision à plusieurs niveaux et des cadres réglementaires pour l’adaptation au climat. Le projet développera également la capacité régionale et diffusera les informations aux parties prenantes concernées.
Objectif
Prolonged periods of extreme water scarcity induced by drought are detrimental to regional economies through crop and livestock loss, threatening food security in rural communities, and making politically unstable regions more vulnerable to conflict, terrorism, and mass migration. The rural communities of the Horn of Africa Drylands (HAD) are extremely vulnerable to food insecurity and associated economic losses during drought conditions due to low socio-economic levels and low adaptive capacity to climatic shocks, such that frequent and more severe droughts in HAD have dramatically reduced soil moisture and affecting drinking water reserves, leading to increased food insecurity, livestock loss, and major water shortages. DOWN2EARTH is composed of a multidisciplinary project team that will deliver state-of-the-art and community relevant climate services that focus on water scarcity and its consequences at or near the Earth’s surface (hence DOWN2EARTH) to increasingly vulnerable agro-pastoral populations in HAD. The project is designed to bolster existing climate services frameworks, improve decision support to governments and NGOs in the most vulnerable HAD countries (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia), and to improve community-centric adaptation and resilience to climate change. The project will: assess the socio-economic dimensions and human dynamics of climate change including feedbacks between climatic shocks, human behavior, and policy implementation; characterize historical trends and future projections of water scarcity, food insecurity, population, and land use; develop and enhance multi-level decision-support tools that emphasize the translation of climate information into critical land and water information required for adaptation and resilience by end users and state/regional governments; and strengthen regional climate services through capacity building, citizen science, information dissemination, expansion of data networks, and policy implementation.
Champ scientifique
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical policiescivil societynongovernmental organizations
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionsterrorism
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationstelecommunications networksdata networks
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedomestic animalsanimal husbandry
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinateur
CF24 0DE Cardiff
Royaume-Uni