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Confronting Drought in Africa's Drylands

2016-05-10 Business & Economics
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Release : 2016-05-10
Genre : Business & Economics
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Book Rating : 18X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Confronting Drought in Africa's Drylands by : Raffaello Cervigni

Download or read book Confronting Drought in Africa's Drylands written by Raffaello Cervigni. This book was released on 2016-05-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drylands are at the core of Africa’s development challenge. Drylands make up about 43 percent of the region’s land surface, account for about 75 percent of the area used for agriculture, and are home to about 50 percent of the population, including a disproportionate share of the poor. Due to complex interactions among many factors, vulnerability in drylands is high and rising, jeopardizing the long-term livelihood prospects for hundreds of millions of people. Climate change, which is expected to increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, will exacerbate this challenge. African governments and their partners in the international development community stand ready to tackle the challenges confronting drylands, but important questions remain unanswered about how the task should be undertaken. Do dryland environments contain enough resources to generate the food, jobs, and income needed to support sustainable livelihoods for a fast growing population? If not, can injections of external resources make up the deficit? Or is the carrying capacity of drylands so limited that outmigration should be encouraged? Based on analysis of current and projected future drivers of vulnerability and resilience, the report uses an original modeling framework to identify promising interventions, quantify their likely costs and benefits, and describe the policy trade-offs that will need to be addressed. By 2030, economic growth leading to structural change will allow some of the people living in drylands to transition to non-agriculture based livelihood strategies, reducing their vulnerability. Many others will continue to rely on livestock keeping and crop farming. For the latter group, a number of “best bet†? interventions have the potential to make a significant difference in reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience. This report evaluates the opportunities and challenges associated with these interventions, and it draws a number of conclusions that have important implications for policy making.

Improved Agricultural Water Management for Africa’s Drylands

2016-08-23 Business & Economics
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Release : 2016-08-23
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 333/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Improved Agricultural Water Management for Africa’s Drylands by : Christopher Ward

Download or read book Improved Agricultural Water Management for Africa’s Drylands written by Christopher Ward. This book was released on 2016-08-23. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: D ryland regions in Sub-Saharan Africa are home to one-half of the region’s population and three-quarters of its poor. Poor both in natural resources and in assets and income, the inhabitants of drylands are highly vulnerable to droughts and other shocks. Despite a long history of interventions by governments, development agencies, and civil society organizations, there have been no sustained large-scale successes toward improving the resilience of drylands dwellers. Improved Agricultural Water Management for Africa’s Drylands describes the extent to which agricultural water management interventions in dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa can enhance the resilience and improve the well-being of the people living in those regions, proposes what can realistically be done to promote improved agricultural water management, and sets out how stakeholders can make those improvements. After reviewing the current status of irrigation and agricultural water management in the drylands, the authors discuss technical, economic, and institutional challenges to expanding irrigation. A model developed at the International Food Policy Research Institute is used to project the potential for irrigation development in the Sahel Region and the Horn of Africa. The modeling results show that irrigation development in the drylands can reduce vulnerability and improve the resilience of hundreds of thousands of farming households, but rainfed agriculture will continue to dominate for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, many soil and water conservation practices that can improve the productivity and ensure the sustainability of rainfed cropping systems are available. The purpose of this book is to demonstrate the potentially highly benefi cial role of water and water management in drylands agriculture in association with agronomic improvements, market growth, and infrastructure development, and to assess the technological and socioeconomic conditions and institutional policy frameworks that can remove barriers to adoption and allow wide-scale take-up of improved agricultural water management in the dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Impact of Climate Change on Drylands

2006-04-11 Science
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Release : 2006-04-11
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 585/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Impact of Climate Change on Drylands by : A.J. Dietz

Download or read book The Impact of Climate Change on Drylands written by A.J. Dietz. This book was released on 2006-04-11. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sahelian West Africa has recovered from the disastrous droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. People have learned to adapt to risk and uncertainty in fragile dryland environments. They, as well as global change scientists, are worried about the impact of climate change on these West African drylands. What do the experiences of the last thirty years say about the preparedness for higher temperatures, lower rainfall, and even more variability? Detailed studies on Dryland West Africa as a whole, and on Burkina Faso, Mali and Northern Ghana in particular show an advanced coping behaviour and increased adaptation, but also major differences in vulnerability and coping potential. Climate change preparedness programmes have only just started and require more robust support, and more specific social targeting, for a population which is rapidly growing, even more rapidly urbanising, and further integrating in a globalised economy. This book is the first of its kind with a comprehensive analysis of climate change experiences in West African drylands, with attention for pathways of change and the diversity of adaptation options available. This book is of interest to scientists studying global and climate change, especially dealing with issues of adaptation. Social scientists, economists, geographers and policy makers concerned with West Africa should also read this book.

Improved Crop Productivity for Africa's Drylands

2016 Business & Economics
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Release : 2016
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 968/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Improved Crop Productivity for Africa's Drylands by : T. S. Walker

Download or read book Improved Crop Productivity for Africa's Drylands written by T. S. Walker. This book was released on 2016. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 200 million people living in dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa make their living from agriculture. Most are exposed to weather shocks, especially drought, that can decimate their incomes, destroy their assets, and plunge them into a poverty trap from which it is diffi cult to emerge. Their lack of resilience in the face of these shocks can be attributed in large part to the poor performance of agriculture on which their livelihood depends. Opportunities exist to improve the fortunes of farming households in the drylands. Improved farming technologies that can increase and stabilize the production of millet, sorghum, maize, and other leading staples are available. Irrigation is technically and economically feasible in some areas and offers additional opportunities to increase and stabilize crop production, especially small-scale irrigation, which tends to be more affordable and easier to manage. Yet many of these opportunities have not been exploited on a large scale, for reasons that include lack of farmer knowledge, nonavailability of inputs, unfavorable price incentives, high levels of production risk, and high cost. Future production growth in drylands agriculture is expected to come mainly from raising yields and increasing the number of crop rotations on land that is already being cultivated (intensifi cation), rather than from bringing new land into cultivation (extensifi cation). Controlling for rainfall, average yields in rainfed cropping systems in Sub-Saharan Africa are still much lower than yields in rainfed cropping systems in other regions, suggesting that there is considerable scope to intensify production in these systems. Furthermore, unlike in other regions, production of low-value cereals under irrigation is generally not economic in Sub-Saharan Africa unless the cereals can be grown in rotation with one or more high-value cash crops. The long-run strategy for drylands agriculture, therefore, must be to promote production of staples in rainfed systems and production of high-value cereals (for example, rice), horticultural cops, and industrial crops in irrigated systems. Based on a detailed review of currently available technologies, Improved Crop Productivity for Africa's Drylands argues that improving the productivity and stability of agriculture in the drylands has the potential to make a signifi cant contribution to reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that in an environment characterized by limited agro-climatic potential and subject to repeated shocks, farming on small land holdings may not generate suffi cient income to bring people out of poverty.

Roots in the African Dust

1998-09-17 Business & Economics
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Release : 1998-09-17
Genre : Business & Economics
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Book Rating : 859/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Roots in the African Dust by : Michael Mortimore

Download or read book Roots in the African Dust written by Michael Mortimore. This book was released on 1998-09-17. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The image of Africa in the modern world has come to be shaped by perceptions of the drylands and their problems of poverty, drought, degradation, and famine. Michael Mortimore offers an alternative and revisionist thesis, dismissing on theoretical and empirical grounds the conventional view of runaway desertification, driven by population growth and inappropriate land use. In its place he suggests a more optimistic model of sustainable land use, based on researched case studies from East and West Africa where indigenous technological adaptation has put population growth and market opportunities to advantage. He also proposes a more appropriate set of policy priorities to support dryland peoples in their efforts to sustain land and livelihoods. The result is a remarkably clear synthesis of much of the best work that has emerged over past years.

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