An Introduction to the ARCC Adaptation in the Sahel Series

The series focuses on evaluating how climate change may impact the performance of crops and agricultural practices in the Sahel region. Instead of conducting detailed assessments, ARCC developed unique approaches and tools for evaluating climate change impacts on crops and agricultural practices. A key approach in the series is the phenological screening method, which evaluates how changes in climate may alter the frequency with which temperature and moisture thresholds are breached, affecting crop production. This method, described in "An Approach to Conducting Phenological Screening of the Impact of Climate Change in the West African Sahel," pays particular attention to changes in intra-seasonal rainfall, a key element in understanding how new climates may impact agriculture. The phenological screening approach involves defining the parameters of the analysis, selecting and analyzing spatially and temporally resolved weather data, and developing phenotypic profiles for each crop under consideration. The screening process itself consists of an analysis of the climate data to identify trends in the frequency at which predetermined thresholds are breached. The results of such an analysis would describe the dominant threats facing the crops studied, such as temperature spikes, dry spells, or intense rainfall events. The ARCC agronomic profiles, detailed in "Agronomic Profiles of Fifteen Crops Important in the Sahel," provide a useful reference tool to assess climate-based threats to crops. Each profile describes the geographic distribution and importance of the crop, the life cycle of the crop, and known rainfall and temperature requirements at different stages of development. The profiles also identify growth thresholds related to soil conditions, water availability, and temperature, and discuss the crop's potential adaptability to changes in climate. Changing field-level farm management practices constitutes one approach available to farmers to reduce the negative impacts of changes in climate on the productivity of their crops. Governments, donors, research institutions, and other organizations that seek to help farmers in the Sahel develop and adopt such practices will need an approach to evaluate how future climate change will affect the performance of these practices. "Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change in the Sahel: An Approach to Evaluating the Performance of Agricultural Practices" provides a review of existing approaches to evaluating farm-level management practices and describes a three-stage process to selecting among these approaches and applying them to conduct evaluations in the context of climate change. The approach to evaluating adaptive agricultural practices involves defining the future climate conditions to which agricultural practices will need to adapt, developing an "adaptation profile" for each practice to be assessed, and evaluating the changes in the effectiveness of the selected practices under the defined future climate conditions. The evaluation should consider not only technical adaptation outcomes but also financial effects, desirability, and the farmer's capacity to manage the practice. In addition to affecting the growing cycles of crops and the effectiveness of field management practices, climate change will also impact the prevalence of some pests and diseases that afflict crops and livestock. Two ARCC reports draw on the research literature to document the likely impacts on endemic pests and diseases in the Sahel under two broadly defined climate scenarios. The reports project the possible effects of changes in climate on the risk factors for those pests and diseases, highlighting the need for farmers to adapt new technologies and practices to mitigate these impacts.