Climate change is one of the major challenges societies round the world face at present. Apart from efforts to achieve a reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases so as to mitigate the problem, there is a perceived need for adaptation initiatives urgently. Ecosystems are known to play an important role in climate change adaptation processes, since some of the services they provide, may reduce the impacts of extreme events and disturbance, such as wildfires, floods, and droughts. This role is especially important in regions vulnerable to climate change such as the African continent, whose adaptation capacity is limited by many geographic and socio-economic constraints. In Africa, interventions aimed at enhancing ecosystem services may play a key role in supporting climate change adaptation efforts. In order to shed some light on this aspect, this paper reviews the role of ecosystems services and investigates how they are being influenced by climate change in Africa. It contains a set of case studies from a sample of African countries, which serve the purpose to demonstrate the damages incurred, and how such damages disrupt ecosystem services. Based on the data gathered, some measures which may assist in fostering the cause of ecosystems services are listed, so as to cater for a better protection of some of the endangered Africa ecosystems, and the services they provide.
Climate change is a severe global threat. Research on climate change and vulnerability to natural hazards has made significant progress over the last decades. Most of the research has been devoted to improving the quality of climate information and hazard data, including exposure to specific phenomena, such as flooding or sea-level rise. Less attention has been given to the assessment of vulnerability and embedded social, economic and historical conditions that foster vulnerability of societies. A number of global vulnerability assessments based on indicators have been developed over the past years. Yet an essential question remains how to validate those assessments at the global scale. This paper examines different options to validate global vulnerability assessments in terms of their internal and external validity, focusing on two global vulnerability indicator systems used in the WorldRiskIndex and the INFORM index. The paper reviews these global index systems as best practices and at the same time presents new analysis and global results that show linkages between the level of vulnerability and disaster outcomes. Both the review and new analysis support each other and help to communicate the validity and the uncertainty of vulnerability assessments. Next to statistical validation methods, we discuss the importance of the appropriate link between indicators, data and the indicandum. We found that mortality per hazard event from floods, drought and storms is 15 times higher for countries ranked as highly vulnerable compared to those classified as low vulnerable. These findings highlight the different starting points of countries in their move towards climate resilient development. Priority should be given not just to those regions that are likely to face more severe climate hazards in the future but also to those confronted with high vulnerability already.
The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) provide valuable insights to understand how future socioeconomic changes could alter the magnitude and pattern of climate-related risks across sectors, which might facilitate or hinder adaptation and mitigation responses. Many sectors have created SSP narrative extensions to specify insights for their domains. In this Viewpoint, we created health narrative extensions for the SSPs, considering socioeconomic and demographic drivers and population health and health-system drivers. The projected health-relevant trajectories diverge substantially over the course of the 21st century. The SSP3 and SSP4 narratives detail changes that could contribute considerable risks to health, whereas the SSP1 and SSP5 narratives highlight the role of effective governance and adequate resourcing in reducing climate-sensitive population health outcomes and health-system drivers. Given that climate forcing is considered exogenous to these narrative extensions, SSP5's favourable health driver paths do not account for the potential adverse impacts of this high-emissions pathway. The narratives elaborate population health drivers that can improve the policy relevance of population health and health-system risk projections associated with climate change across a range of possible pathways, and link these drivers with relevant cross-sectoral issues (eg, water and energy). Further research is required to quantify key drivers of population health and health-system risks at global to local scales.