Leveraging Best Practices for Climate Adaptation in the West African Sahel: The Emergence of Global Alliance for Resilience

Abstract

The West African Sahel traverses several countries: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as Northern Nigeria and Chad. Recently, the region’s fragile environment has been undermined further by the emergence of global climate change, which has unleashed a vicious circle of droughts since the 1960s, turning arable soils into marginal lands. The threats posed by climate change on food security in the Sahel prompted the Sahelian and West African governments, in 2012, together with the international development agencies to seal the Global Alliance for Resilience (AGIR) for the region. The framework advocated concerted efforts aimed at increasing humanitarian and development efforts and fostering resilience of vulnerable households, families, and communities, as well as breaking the vicious cycle of recurrent food and nutritional crises, with “zero hunger” by 2032. The major objective of this chapter is to shed light on AGIR, as a model of climate adaptation best practices in the West African Sahel. This chapter employs empirical data to assess the study, which reveals 29% reduction in regional food insecurity in 2016, from levels in the 1990s, in a development largely attributable to the success of AGIR and good prospects for increasing climate-resilient food security framework in the Sahel.