Raffaello Cervigni

Enhancing the climate resilience of Africa's infrastructure : the power and water sectors

Africa has experienced economic growth of more than 5 percent per annum during the past decade, but to sustain this growth, investment in infrastructure is fundamental. Much of these investments will support the construction of long-lived infrastructure (for example, dams, power stations, and irrigation canals), which will be vulnerable to the potentially harsher climate of the future. This book is the first to use a consistent approach across river basins and power systems in Africa, including a comprehensive, broad set of state-of-the-art climate projections to evaluate the risks posed by climate change to planned investments in Africa’s water, and power sectors. It further analyzes how investment plans can be modified to mitigate those risks, and it quantifies the corresponding benefits and costs, within the limits of a largely desk-based assessment. The scope of the study includes seven major river basins (Congo, Niger, Nile, Senegal, Upper Orange, Volta, and Zambezi) and four power pools (Central, Eastern, Southern, and West African). The study addresses the entire program for infrastructure development in Africa (PIDA) hydropower capacity enhancements in the subject basins, as part of the region’s overall power generation plans, as well as additional investments in irrigation that are included in regional and national master plans.

Toward climate-resilient development in Nigeria

This book analyzes the risks to Nigerias development prospects that climate change poses to agriculture, livestock, and water management. These sectors were chosen because they are central to achieving the growth, livelihood, and environmental objectives of Vision 20: 2020; and because they are already vulnerable to current climate variability. Since other sectors might also be affected, the findings of this research provide lower-bound estimates of overall climate change impacts. Agriculture accounts for about 40 percent of Nigerias Gross Domestic product (GDP) and employs 70 percent of its people. Because virtually all production is rain-fed, agriculture is highly vulnerable to weather swings. It alerts us that increases in temperature, coupled with changes in precipitation patterns and hydrological regimes, can only exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. The book proposes 10 practical short-term priority actions, as well as complementary longer-term initiatives, that could help to mitigate the threat to vision 20: 2020 that climate change poses. Nigerias vision can become a reality if the country moves promptly to become more climate-resilient. Climate variability is also undermining Nigerias efforts to achieve energy security. Though dominated by thermal power, the countrys energy mix is complemented by hydropower, which accounts for one-third of grid supply. Because dams are poorly maintained, current variability in rainfall results in power outages that affect both Nigerias energy security and its growth potential. In particular, climate models converge in projecting that by mid-century water flows will increase for almost half the country, decrease in 10 percent of the country, and be uncertain over one-third of Nigerias surface. The overall feasibility of Nigerias hydropower potential is not in question. On grounds of energy diversification and low carbon co-benefits, exploiting the entire 12 gigawatts (GW) of hydropower potential should be considered. Nigeria has a number of actions and policy choices it might consider for building up its ability to achieve climate-resilient development.

Assessing low-carbon development in Nigeria : an analysis of four sectors

The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) and the World Bank have agreed to carry out a Climate Change Assessment (CCA) within the framework of the Banks Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for Nigeria (2010-13). The CCA includes an analysis of options for low-carbon development in selected sectors, including power, oil and gas, transport, and agriculture. The goal of the low-carbon analysis is to define likely trends in carbon emissions up to 2035, based on government sector development plans, and to identify opportunities for achieving equivalent development objectives with a reduced carbon footprint. This study comprises the following components: (i) development of a reference scenario of greenhouse gas (GHG) net emissions for the agriculture sector, consistent with vision 20: 2020 and other government plans; (ii) identification of opportunities for reduced net emissions- reduced emissions and or enhanced carbon sequestration- while achieving the same development objectives as in the reference scenario; and (iii) economic assessment of low-carbon options in order to help the Nigerian government to prioritize policy options. The study evaluates costs and benefits in a partial equilibrium setting, with no attempt to capture the indirect, general equilibrium effects of adopting low-carbon technologies or management practices. The results of this analysis (the first of its kind in Nigeria) should be considered as a first approximation of the potential for low-carbon development in the Nigerian agriculture sector. The study aims at providing policy makers with an order-of-magnitude estimate of mitigation potential, and an understanding of the value of dedicating further efforts (including through specific projects) at pursuing low-carbon development in agriculture, but is not meant to inform the design of specific, project-level interventions.

Confronting Drought in Africa’s Drylands

In response to a series of humanitarian crises, especially the drought-induced emergencies that occurred in the Horn of Africa in 2011 and the Sahel in 2012, national governments and the international development community have scaled up efforts to tackle the challenge of vulnerability in drylands through initiatives such as the global alliance for resilience (AGIR) - Sahel and West Africa and the global alliance for action for drought resilience and growth. This book focuses on what should be the focus of the next generation of interventions aimed at enhancing the resilience of dryland populations in the face of demographic, economic, environmental, and climatic change. As competition for resources intensifies, conflicts over land, water, and feed are likely to multiply, reducing the ability of governments, development agencies, and local communities to manage the impacts of droughts and other shocks. In this context, building resilience to droughts and other shocks is of paramount importance. This book focuses on the medium-term prospects for increasing the resilience to drought and other shocks of people living in dryland areas of East and West Africa. Over the longer run, structural transformation of the economy may generate opportunities for new livelihood activities that are less vulnerable to the impacts of droughts and other shocks. In the short to medium term, however, the key policy question concerns the extent to which current livelihoods can be made more resilient. In that context, this book examines two main areas of intervention, which are considered complementary: improving current livelihood activities; and strengthening social protection programs including safety nets.

Impact of climate change on staple food crop production in Nigeria

Climate change impact on the agricultural sector is expected to be significant and extensive in Sub-Saharan Africa, where projected increase in temperature and changes in precipitation patterns could determine sensible reductions in crop yields and concerns for food security achievement. This study presents a multi-model approach to analysing climate change impacts and associated risks for staple food crops in Nigeria. Previous attempts to evaluate climate change impacts in Nigeria had mainly focused on a reduced number of crops, with analysis limited to single experimental fields or specific areas, and in many cases considering only a limited number of climate models. In this work, crop simulation models implemented in the DSSAT-CSM software were used to evaluate climate change impacts on crop production in different Agro-Ecological Zones, considering multiple combinations of soils and climate conditions, varieties and crop management. The climate impact assessment was made using an ensemble of future climate projections, to include uncertainty related to climate projections. Even if precipitations could increase in most parts of Nigeria, this is not likely to offset the crop yield reduction due to the increase in temperatures, particularly over the medium-term period (2050), with yield decreases projected especially for cereals. The short-term effects are more uncertain and yields for cassava and millet might actually increase by 2020. Moreover, yield reductions are only partially mitigated by the direct effect of increased CO2 atmospheric concentration enhancing crop yield. In both periods and for all crops, there is a higher risk that crop yields may fall below the actual risk threshold.

Mitigating Drought Impacts in Drylands

Drylands account for three-quarters of Sub-Saharan Africas cropland, two-thirds of cereal production, and four-fifths of livestock holdings. Today frequent and severe shocks, especially droughts, limit the livelihood opportunities available to millions of households and undermine efforts to eradicate poverty in the drylands. Prospects for sustainable development of drylands are assessed in this book through the lens of resilience, understood here to mean the ability of people to withstand and respond to droughts and other shocks. An original model was developed expressly to consistently and coherently evaluate different type of interventions on the ground, which provided a common framework to anticipate the scale of the challenges likely to arise in drylands, as well as to generate insights into opportunities for addressing those challenges. Such modeling framework consisted in a) estimating the baseline vulnerability profiles of people living in drylands (2010), b) estimate the evolution of vulnerability by 2030 under a range of assumptions, c) calculated the number of people affectedby drought in the different administrative units of each country, and d) evaluate different types of interventions in agriculture and livestock for mitigating drought impact by calculating the potential for reducing the number of people affected for each scenario and conducting a simplified · benefit/cost (B/C) analysis for each type of intervention. For livestock, simulation models were used to estimate the impacts of feed balances, livestock production, and household income resilience interventions under different climate scenarios). For agriculture, the DSSAT (Decision Support System for·Agrotechnology Transfer) framework was used to assess the potential impact on yields likely to result from adoption of five crop farming technologies: (1) drought-tolerant varieties, (2) heat-tolerant varieties, (3) additional fertilizer, (4) agroforestry practices, (S) irrigation (6) water-harvesting techniques and selected combinations thereof.

A CGE Model for Mauritius Ocean Economy

The study presented in this chapter applies a dynamic CGE model to the analysis of the “ocean economy”, a somewhat new economic construct that reflects both a renewed attention to the potential contribution of ocean resources to economic growth as well as the perception of the ocean as an endangered ecosystem. The empirical application of the study concernes the economy of Mauritius, a dynamic country that has a recently chosen to base its strategy for long term growth on the valorization of its ample and promising ocean resources. A dynamic CGE model especially designed to address some of the key issues of an ocean economy investment strategy was developed as part of a World Bank project, and is based on a large data base and a joint effort with the Statistics Mauritius and a local technical team.

Robust Decision Making for a Climate-Resilient Development of the Agricultural Sector in Nigeria

Adaptation options that work reasonably well across an entire range of potential outcomes are shown to be preferable in a context of deep uncertainty. This is because robust practices that are expected to perform satisfactorily across the full range of possible future conditions, are preferable to those that are the best ones, but just in one specific scenario. Thus, using a Robust Decision Making Approach in Nigerian agriculture may increase resilience to climate change. To illustrate, the expansion of irrigation might be considered as a complementary strategy to conservation techniques and a shift in sowing/planting dates to enhance resilience of agriculture. However, given large capital expenditures, irrigation must consider climate trends and variability. Using historical climate records is insufficient to size capacity and can result in “regrets” when the investment is undersized/oversized, if the climate turns out to be drier/wetter than expected. Rather utilizing multiple climate outcomes to make decisions will decrease “regrets.” This chapter summarizes the main results from a study titled “Toward climate-resilient development in Nigeria” funded by the Word Bank (See Cervigni et al. 2013).

SIZE, COMPETITION AND QUALITY IN THE ITALIAN MARKET FOR CONSULTING SERVICES

The quality of consulting services informing project decisions is crucial for the effectiveness of public investments. We analyze the ability of the consulting industry to provide adequate services to government agencies in Italy. At the aggregate level we observe that the value of the public demand for consulting services is a small and highly variable share of revenues of the consulting firms. At the micro level, we analyze the procurement data for some 300 feasibility studies. Although the market for those studies has been reasonably competitive, it has attracted a small fraction of the all consulting sector, and the quality of the studies has been unsatisfactory. We claim that an increasing public demand would provide more incentives for firms to focus their business on the provision of quality consulting services to the public sector.

Climate Change Impact Analysis

Observational records and climate projections provide abundant evidence that human societies and ecosystems are vulnerable and have the potential to be strongly impacted by climate change, with wide-ranging consequences. Experts and decision makers should be aware of the projections on climate change and be prepared to deal with the effects. Climate change impact investigations are, however, far from trivial. They require knowledge on climate physics as well as techniques to bridge the important gap between what publicly available climate models offer and what is required on the basis of local impact studies.