Unintended consequences of climate change mitigation for African river basins

The eiLab led a study in collaboration with colleagues from Tufts University, Cornell University, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which shows how the adoption of coordinated global policies to mitigate climate change could reduce any harmful and unwanted impacts on the Water-Energy-Food nexus on a local scale.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, explores more than 7,000 future scenarios that combine different climate and socio-economic projections with alternative mitigation policies. Results show that policy fragmentation between developed and developing countries in their approach to addressing carbon emissions from land-use changes can increase vulnerabilities in African basins. Specifically, the research shows how such fragmented policies could encourage proliferation of large-scale agricultural projects in Africa if land-use emissions are priced lower there.

This rapid increase in agricultural land use could generate irrigation demands two times higher than under globally coordinated approaches to emissions reduction, which can both address climate change and reduce local vulnerabilities. Higher irrigation demands constrain the availability of water resources for hydropower production or the provision of ecosystem services, particularly in river deltas, which could add stress to African economies and natural ecosystems. These findings shed light on the importance of connecting global climate change mitigation policies to their potential impacts on local multisector dynamics.

Read more here: Giuliani, M., J.R. Lamontagne, M.I. Hejazi, P.M. Reed, and A. Castelletti (2022), Unintended consequences of climate change mitigation for African river basins, Nature Climate Change, 12, 187–192, doi:10.1038/s41558-021-01262-9