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Symposium on Climate Change and Droughts Resilience

7 November 2017 - 9 November 2017
Nairobi, Kenya

The “Symposium on Climate Change and Droughts Resilience in Africa” will focus on “building resilience to climate change and droughts in Africa,” meaning that it will serve the purpose of showcasing experiences from research, field projects and best practice to foster climate change adaptation among countries in the region, with a focus on droughts, which may be useful or implemented elsewhere.

Drought ranks quite highly in terms of weather-related economic impacts, with annual losses nearing US$ 90 billion per year.  Apart from their direct economic impacts, droughts can threaten drinking water supplies and ecosystems, damage agriculture in a significant way, and contribute to increased food prices. In addition, crop failures, which are occurring more frequently as a result of extended droughts, pose a direct threat to the livelihood of millions of people across Africa. With the intensification of climate change, dry periods in most of Africa are expected to become longer and more frequent, bringing alone much damage to agriculture systems, and negatively influencing the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people.

The above state of affairs illustrates the need for a better understanding of how climate change influences droughts in Africa, and for the identification of processes, methods and tools which may help the countries and the communities in the region to adapt.  There is also a perceived need to showcase successful examples of how to cope with the social, economic and political problems posed by droughts in Africa, especially the ways of increasing the resilience of agriculture systems and of communities and traditional populations. 

It is against this background that the “Symposium on Climate Change and Droughts Resilience in Africa” is being organized by Strathmore University in Kenya, the Research and Transfer Centre “Applications of Life Sciences” of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Manchester Metropolitan University (UK) and the International Climate Change Information Programme (ICCIP). The Symposium will be a truly interdisciplinary event, mobilizing aid workers, donors, scholars, social movements, practitioners and members of governmental and non-governmental agencies, undertaking research and/or executing projects focusing on drought prevention, management and resilience in Africa.

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