African Climate Risks Conference

Africa is vulnerable to natural variations in climate and human-induced climate change. Climate projections for Africa show that the continent may be the second hardest hit by climate change impacts, immediately following polar zones.

Climate change impacts are already constraining economic development. About 90% of all disasters caused by natural phenomena in sub-Saharan Africa are weather and climate-related and their extremes can negatively impact a country’s GDP by 10-20% in the year of a disaster. This leads to reverse economic gains and a slow down of socio-economic growth and development.

Adapting to climate variability and change is, therefore, key to achieving Africa’s development targets, and requires a coordinated and synergistic approach from a diverse range of actors across sectors, as well as a better understanding of the drivers of risk and vulnerability.

The African Climate Risks Conference (ACRC) is an open platform for sharing the latest African climate research among researchers, policy makers, practitioners and development partners. The ACRC will offer a prime opportunity to promote the uptake of new data, tools, and knowledge; brokering new research collaborations and more targeted donor support. It will also stimulate the increased contribution of African experts to, and improve coverage of Africa, in the IPCC assessment reports; and bring together development partners to deliberate on how to improve programming to support African-led climate research and service priorities. The overarching theme of the ACRC is:

Dismantling barriers to urgent climate change adaptation actions.

The conference aims to:

• Disseminate results and share insights from new and on-going climate science and adaptation research in Africa;
• Provide a forum to co-identify common priorities in the African climate research for development through African-led collective discussions;
• Contribute to efforts to address barriers to more effective use of climate information to ensure greater impact and legacy of on-going research programmes by promoting the uptake of new data, tools, and knowledge within planning and decision-making processes; and
• Link researchers and the diversity of other actors important for moving research into policy and practice: decision-makers, national meteorological agencies, knowledge brokers, donors, NGOs, etc.

The central focus of the agenda will be presentations on the latest research on African climate and thematic sessions aimed at facilitating critical engagements between climate researchers, CIS providers, and users. The conference will include keynote addresses, panel discussions, oral and poster presentations and exhibition of innovative climate services.

For more information on the conference, and key updates on the conference and the registration process, please consult the event website.