The future of food security, environments and livelihoods in Western Africa: Four socio-economic scenarios. CCAFS Working Paper No. 130

Abstract

This working paper examines the development of regional socioeconomic scenarios for West Africa’s development, agriculture, food security and climate impacts. We present four globally consistent regional scenarios framed and outlined by regional experts who crafted narratives and determined key drivers of change. Stakeholders identified the type of actors driving change and the timeline of strategic planning as the most uncertain and most relevant factors of change affecting food security, livelihoods and environments in the region. The scenarios were linked to the IPCC community’s global Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and quantified using two agricultural economic models, GLOBIOM and IMPACT, in interaction with drivers outlined by the SSPs and guided by semi-quantitative information from the stakeholders. The quantification of the scenarios has provided additional insights into the possible development of Western Africa in the context of a global economy as well as how the agricultural sector may be affected by climate change.

The objective of this working paper is to provide scenarios for future regional development for West Africa on the future of food security, environment, and rural livelihoods as well as offer details of the multi-stakeholder scenarios development process. Using both qualitative and quantitative scenarios we provide insights into the possible development of West Africa as well as a scalable framework for regional decision makers and the scientific community to use scenarios to build and test policies to make them more robust in the face of future uncertainty.

Citation

Palazzo, A.; Rutting, L.; Zougmoré, R.; Vervoort, J.M.; Havlik, P.; Jalloh, A.; Aubee, E.; Helfgott, A.E.S.; Mason-D’Croz, D.; Islam, S.; Ericksen, P.J.; Segda, Z.; Moussa, A.S.; Bayala, J.; Kadi Kadi, H.A.; Sibiry Traoré, P.C.; Thornton, P.K. The future of food security, environments and livelihoods in Western Africa: Four socio-economic scenarios. CCAFS Working Paper No. 130. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), Copenhagen, Denmark (2016) 125 pp.

The future of food security, environments and livelihoods in Western Africa: Four socio-economic scenarios. CCAFS Working Paper No. 130

Published 1 January 2016