Review of Current and Planned Adaptation Action in Senegal

This report provides a snapshot of current and planned adaptation action in Mali, where the impacts of climate change and variability present a challenge to the country’s efforts to stabilize, recover from crisis and prosper.

While Mali might not experience dramatic changes to its climate in the coming decades, the country’s fragility, its dependence on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, its history of tensions and conflicts between resource-user groups and between pastoralists and the government, along with its low levels of development, make it highly vulnerable to climate change. The Government of Mali has made considerable progress in drafting climate change policies and strategies, identifying adaptation priorities and starting a process for greening its national development plans. However, integration of climate risks across sectors, including agriculture, livestock, water, health and energy remains weak. Many current initiatives and proposed measures under the National Climate Action Plan focus on strengthening institutional capacities to implement adaptation strategies at the national, regional and local levels, recognizing the need to build the capacity of local governing entities and speed up the decentralization process initiated many years ago. Among the ongoing adaptation projects identified, most focus on rendering the agricultural sector more resilient, while other vulnerable sectors, groups, and regions, including pastoralists living in the north and the fisheries sector, have received much less attention. This profile of adaptation action in Mali is one in a series of country reviews prepared by IISD to support the work of the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) in its countries of engagement.