This economic analysis report is structured around two arguments. Firstly, natural resources and ecosystem services in particular have significant contribution to economic growth and poverty reduction. Secondly, failure to manage natural resources, conserve and protect the ecosystem will result in costs of degradation that will compromise medium and long term sustainable development. An ecosystem services approach has been used which is capable of capturing aspects of the environment and natural resources that are usually neglected either because they do not have market values or they cannot readily be quantified. The approach is supported by Case Studies of Rugezi Wetlands and Gishwati Forest.
Roads are a key asset for Africa - they connect villages to economic centers, people to hospitals, children to schools and goods to markets facilitating trade. This study considered 2.8 million km of roads in Sub-Saharan Africa, including new road construction outlined in the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) and assessed the impact of climate change on roads and bridges. Climate change is expected to substantially increase disruption time of the network, shorten their rehabilitation life-cycle, and increase repair and rehabilitation costs. The study evaluates the economics of engineering solutions to build resilience to climate change impacts due to flooding, precipitation, and temperature and develops a methodology to assist decision makers in identifying the most cost-effective adaptation approach, comparing the cost of inaction (reactive response) to the net cost of investments in adaptation (proactive adaptation).
Key Messages:
Governments in sub-Saharan Africa face a dilemma: how to reconcile pledges to feed fast-growing populations with forest conservation?
The purpose of this guidance manual is to support African government officials and development partners to integrate pro-poor environment, natural resource, and climate sustainability into national and sub-national public sector budgeting and public finance management systems.
The publication Climate Smart Agriculture: Successes from Africa
This publication Building Africa’s Great Green Wall: Restoring Degraded Drylands for Stronger and More Resilient Communities presents efforts by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and its partners on mapping the intervention area of the Great Green Wall initiative.