In Niger, climate vulnerability is compounded by the Sahel region’s high dependence on rain-fed agriculture and its natural resources to support food security and livelihoods, rapid population growth, and chronic humanitarian crises due to recurrent drought, flooding, food insecurity, epidemics, and violent conflict. The region is still recovering from the food crisis brought about by the severe droughts experienced in 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2012. Data from 2015 suggest that over 20 million food insecure people and nearly 6 million malnourished children live in the Sahel. With substantial population growth (average 3 percent per year) and recurring challenges linked to environmental degradation, pervasive poverty and political instability, climate change in the Sahel will compound existing vulnerabilities. Water scarcity, longer dry seasons and impacts of higher temperatures may trigger new conflict and forced migration, issues that already impact the region. (USAID Climate Risk Profile, 2017).
This section provides a summary of key natural hazards and their associated socioeconomic impacts in a given country. And it allows quick evaluation of most vulnerable areas through the spatial comparison of natural hazard data with development data, thereby identifying exposed livelihoods and natural systems.
The charts provide overview of the most frequent natural disaster in a given country and understand the impacts of those disasters on human populations.
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Climate change is now recognized to have a significant impact on disaster management efforts and pose a significant threat to the efforts to meet the growing needs of the most vulnerable populations. The demands of disaster risk management are such that concise, clear, and reliable information is crucial. The information presented here offers insight into the frequency, impact and occurrence of natural hazards. Source (PDF)
Understanding natural hazard occurrence as well as historical climate conditions, in relation to development contexts, is critical to understanding a country’s historical vulnerability. This tool allows the visualization of different natural hazards or historical climate conditions with socio-economic and development datasets. Select the Development Context and either a Natural Hazard or Climate Condition and overlay horizontally by sliding the toggle left or right to gain a broader sense of historically vulnerable areas.
Data presented under Historical Climate Conditions are reanalysis products derived from ERA5-Land data. ERA5-Land is a global land-surface dataset at 9 km resolution, consistent with atmospheric data from the ERA5 reanalysis from 1950 onward. Climate reanalyses combine past observations with models to generate consistent time series of multiple climate variables. They provide a comprehensive description of the observed climate as it has evolved during recent decades, on 3D grids at sub-daily intervals.
This data has been collected, aggregated and processed by the Climate Resilience Cluster of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD) initiative.
- Floods are a recurrent natural hazard in Niger and are projected to increase in frequency in the future, especially in the southern part of the country. Floods have negative impacts on agriculture, food security, GDP, endemic diseases (malaria), and contribute to rural poverty.
- Diseases such as malaria, meningitis, and measles are subject to change and cause adverse impacts on Niger’s population in association with climate change. Increased temperatures, variability in rainfall patterns, floods, and more frequent droughts, are all factors that affect these main diseases and could increase their prevalence.
- Sandstorms are a frequent extreme event that hits Niger and adversely affects agriculture, livestock, water resources public health, and human life.
- Multi-year droughts have characterized Niger’s climate since 1968, and have affected over 3 million people in 2000 and 2001, and over 7 million in 2002.
- Droughts have caused numerous adverse impacts on water resources, agriculture, human livelihoods, food security, GDP, and livestock.
- Agricultural production has been in a deficit since the late 1970s/1980s, with particularly poor crop production from 1989-1996.
- Droughts are projected to increase in frequency in the coming century, which will have negative consequences on public health - intensifying certain diseases, food security, agricultural and pastoral activities, nutrition, and natural resources.
- The development of an early warning system is needed to increase resiliency in the agricultural sector.
- Improved water management, and meteorological data and information dissemination into rural areas will help decrease the population’s vulnerability to droughts.
- Increase capacity to deal with climate related diseases, including the development and expansion of health facilities.
- Increase institutional and financial capacity, and develop surveillance systems to monitor them.
- Restore and rehabilitate degraded land to decrease vulnerability to sandstorms.