Is adaptation our future?

Facts talk clearly: we cannot continue behaving and operating in the same way as we used to. These behaviors have led to a progressive transgression of the Earth’s planetary boundaries. This means that humankind has managed to leave its indelible mark in just a few centuries. Unfortunately, we are not talking about a positive mark. Humans have been depleting natural resources and biodiversity; polluting ecosystems; emitting elevated amounts of greenhouse gases; deforesting significant portions of forests. The list could go on for pages. However, the purpose of this text is not to list the catastrophic effects resulting from human actions. It is actually the exact opposite. 

Research has been significantly advancing over the past decades. It has managed to detect what is going wrong, and what we can possibly expect if we do not start acting now. There are still many uncertainties, but we can at least change what we know is not sustainable anymore. Among its manifold discoveries, research has found ways to adapt to changes induced by climate change through the so-called adaptation strategies.

Key concepts within adaptation strategies

An important figure in this frame is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for providing reliable and scientific information related to climate change. The IPCC defines adaptation as:

“The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In some natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its effects.”

Despite its apparent simplicity, adaptation involves a multi-dimensional, integrated approach composed by several components. Let’s proceed in order. 

It is first necessary to consider three elements: hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Those are widespread concepts that characterize our everyday lives. One can feel exposed to a hazard, or vulnerable to something. The same dynamic can be applied to climate change. Hazard is defined as “the potential occurrence of a natural or human-induced physical event or trend that may cause” different types of damages and impacts (see full definition). By exposure it is meant the subjects “that could be adversely affected” (see full definition), with vulnerability being “the propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected” (see full definition). The interaction of these three elements results in the concept of risk, namely:

“The potential for adverse consequences for human or ecological systems, recognizing the diversity of values and objectives associated with such systems.”

Why going through these definitions? Because adaptation essentially aims at reducing risk and vulnerability, by looking at the most adequate ways for a country or region to cope with climate change and its impacts. Therefore, it follows that “effective risk reduction and adaptation strategies consider the dynamics of vulnerability and exposure and their linkages with socioeconomic processes, sustainable development, and climate change”. Something important to keep in mind is that adaption is place- and context-specific.

This means that an adaptation strategy targeting agricultural lands in Uganda cannot be used for agricultural lands in southern Italy. They indeed depend on many factors, ranging from geographical to social, political, economic and cultural contexts. How is an adaptation strategy built? First, the problem(s) and objectives are identified, and a decision-making criteria gets established. Successively, the risk(s) are assed, and options get identified and evaluated. Only then, a decision will be made, implemented and monitored.

Adaptation has gained larger attention only in recent times. As a matter of fact, almost all climate policies were initially focused on mitigation, defined by the IPCC as “a human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases (GHGs)”. Nevertheless, there are strong interdependencies between adaptation and mitigation. For instance, in relation to the agricultural sector, the IPCC agrees that policies governing agricultural practices need to implement both adaptation and mitigation measurements. 

Agriculture and climate change 

How does this theorical framework translate into real life? To better understand the concept of adaptation strategy, the following premises will introduce the case study of maize agriculture in Kenya. 

Because of its high climate dependency, agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change, although its impacts vary in different parts of the world. In fact, according to FAO, “countries in the temperate zones of North America, Northern Europe and Asia are expected to benefit from increased agricultural productivity. In contrast, regions around the Mediterranean and especially in tropical zones are expected to be net losers from declining productivity”. Nevertheless, the overall impacts of climate change affecting agricultural crop yields involve: changes in temperature and precipitation rates, in occurrence and frequency of climate extreme events such as droughts and floods, increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and sea level rise.

Since agriculture is one of our main sources of nutrition, food security is put at stake when crop yields decrease. At this point, two important aspects should be considered. Firstly, the global population is expected to increase, reaching 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11 billion in 2100. Secondly, middle- and low-income countries highly rely on agriculture, where many of these countries are predicted to experience the largest negative effects of climate change on agriculture. Lower crop yields are also associated with increased poverty and human migrations towards locations that offer higher food availability and job opportunities beyond the agricultural sector. 

Maize cultivation in the sub-Saharan Africa

The sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a wide area consisting of all the states below the Sahara desert, is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to the following factors: overall low development, strong deficits in infrastructures, weak political settings, extreme poverty, fast population growth and elevated economical dependency on agriculture. For more information and data regarding climate change in the African continent, check the IPCC regional report. It is worth to mention that the SSA agriculture is mainly rain-fed, a feature that makes it extremely vulnerable to changes in precipitations and increased temperatures. Maize is the most produced staple crop in the entire SSA, representing 30% of the total area assigned to cereal production. Different studies, such as Schlenker and Lobell (2010), Blanc (2012), Akpalu et al. (2008), show how changes in precipitation and temperature can negatively affect maize yields. 

Kenya, a SSA state located in the central part of East Africa, is characterized by different climates and landscapes, ranging from mountainous regions to deserts and savannas. As other SSA countries, Kenya highly depends on agriculture, with maize being the most important staple crop. A study from Omoyo, Wakhungu and Oteng’I (2015) found that variations in climate negatively affect maize yields in the arid and semi-arid lands of lower eastern Kenya. This concerning result therefore calls for an adaptation strategy. As aforementioned, the most optimal adaptation strategy should carefully be developed considering the geographical context, as well as the area’s political, economic and social features. Thus, knowing the local dynamics, comprising both its limitations and positive sides, is essential.

Adaptation strategies for maize

When facing water limitations induced by lower precipitation rates and higher temperatures with “huge implications in soil moisture, potential evapotranspiration, and heat stress on crops”, drought-tolerant maize varieties can be chosen. Much of the literature has been supporting this, e.g. Cairns et al. (2013) and Fisher et al. (2015). Another practice can involve the establishment of new maize planting dates, which are adapted to the “new” climate conditions, therefore preferring early or late planting, depending on the area – see Bello et al. (2012) and MacCarthy et al. (2017). Implementing more efficient farming practices can also be a solution. An example is the use of residue retention and mulching, combined with adequate artificial irrigation practices, to reduce water run-off and evapotranspiration. Other types of management practices are weed management and the use of manure to increase soil fertility.

An important factor in agriculture is irrigation, which becomes particularly relevant in semi-arid and arid areas. Flood irrigation is the most common method deployed in the SSA as it does not require much economic investment or specific knowledge. However, it comes with high amounts of wasted water. Thus, the usage of more modern methods such as the sprinkler and drip methods are suggested, as they can improve irrigation efficiency, reducing water waste, even though they present higher costs and maintenance, that smallholder farmers cannot always afford – see Kori et al. (2017).

Unaffordability can therefore be a very limiting factor which is important to consider. For this reason, Fisher et al. (2015), Zougmoré et al. (2018), Rahut, Aryal and Marenya (2021), as well as other studies, point out the necessity to lower adaptation costs, by addressing all actors involved in the process, from policy-makers to governments and private companies providing instruments for adaptation strategies. Finally, it is worth mentioning that low education levels of smallholder farmers can represent a constraint when applying new practices. Hence, providing adequate support, training and building awareness can result beneficial during the implementation of an adaptation strategy.

So, does our future rely on adaptation?

The answer is yes, but adaptation alone is not enough. The first step is to build awareness and spread knowledge. Secondly, it is necessary to act on multiple levels and sectors. When thinking about it, we adapt and expose ourselves every day. For as much as the concepts of adaptation, resilience and mitigation can seem far away, in reality they are not. Thinking that climate change will not affect us is not realistic: its impacts are already visible, and they will keep on increasing. But, this does not have to scare us off. We simply need to adapt and change the way of our actions. 

By Alessia Signorelli

June 2021

Alessia Signorelli

Alessia Signorelli is a geographer passionate about popular science, publishing and editing. Originally from Italy, she has had different academic and working international experiences. Alessia pursued her BSc in Human Sciences of the Environment, Territory and Landscape at the University of Milan (Italy) and her MSc in Physical Geography and Ecosystem Analysis at Lund University (Sweden). She is interested in investigating the interlinkages between climate change and social systems, and ways to communicate them.