Building Africa’s resilience to Climate Change and related disasters
The UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA) will be facilitating a Be Resilient session during the 8th Africa Water Week on 25 November 2021 under the sub-theme 3 – “Building Africa’s resilience to Climate Change and related disasters”.. The session will focus on demonstrating practical examples on how to build resilience in Southern Africa using innovative climate services, applied research and open source technologies.
Climate change impacts are being observed across the Southern African region, with water-related hazards causing massive flooding, landslides and severe droughts, significantly affecting natural resources and posing a direct threat to human security. While climate change is driven by global processes, the solutions to offset the negative effects of climate risks are particularly dependent on local conditions. In this respect, UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BRs) have the potential to become global observatories for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Be-Resilient Initiative focuses on strengthening BRs and their communities to address climate change challenges and associated water-related hazards. It engages a set of established and proposed BRs in the region to pilot effective pathways towards climate change adaptation, using a multidisciplinary approach.
The session aims at presenting innovative tools and climate services for disaster risk reduction and their successful implementation in Southern Africa, as well as discussing their potential for further replication and upscaling. In particular, solutions will be presented that look at monitoring and early warning of floods and droughts, assessing flood and drought hazards and using Internet-of-Things approaches for improved water monitoring. The session will also introduce a novel approach to climate change adaptation, piloted in 5 Biosphere Reserves in Southern Africa.
Register for the Virtual Africa Water and Sanitation Week 2021 here.
For more information about the Be Resilient session, please click here.