Abstract
Climate models project vulnerability to global warming in low-income regions, with important implications for sustainable development. While food crops are the priority, smallholder cash crops support food security, education, and other priorities. Despite its importance as a populous region subject to substantial climate change, West Africa has received relatively slight attention in spatial assessments of climate impacts. In this region, rainfed cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) provides essential smallholder income. We used a spatially explicit species distribution model to project likely changes in the spatial distribution of suitable climates for rainfed cotton in West Africa. We modeled suitable climate conditions from the recent past (1970–2000) and projected the range of those conditions in 2050 (Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5). The suitable area declined by 60 percent under RCP4.5 and by 80 percent under RCP8.5. Of 15 countries in the study area, all but two declined to less than ten percent suitable under RCP8.5. The annual precipitation was the most influential factor in explaining baseline cotton distribution, but 2050 temperatures appear to become the limiting factor, rising beyond the range in which rainfed cotton has historically been grown. Adaptation to these changes and progress on sustainable development goals will depend on responses at multiple scales of governance, including global support and cooperation.
Highlights
IntroductionClimate Change and Sustainable Development in West Africa
We proceeded with maximum entropy (Maxent) for subsequent steps of analysis
Climate warming is well established in West Africa, the spatial of crop impacts across the region have received limited attention
Summary
Climate Change and Sustainable Development in West Africa. Climate change poses clear risks for agrarian communities in West Africa, steepening the already urgent challenges of sustainable development [1,2,3]. Climate adaptation in agriculture is urgent for multiple SDGs that involve nutrition and economic stability in rural communities [7]. In a context of SDG planning, West Africa is simultaneously the world’s fastest growing region and a region where humanitarian development conditions will be strongly impacted by climate change [3]. The region has a large agrarian population, predominantly small-holders with modest access to capital, and the average temperatures are higher than in many agricultural regions [8]. R.; Stewart, A.M. Morphological alterations in response to management and environment. In Physiology of Cotton; Stewart, J.M., Oosterhuis, D.M., Heitholt, J.J., Mauney, J.R., Eds.; Springer: New York, NY, USA, 2010; pp. 24–32
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