WASCAL

The West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) project is a large-scale research-focused programme initiated to develop effective adaptation and mitigation measures to climate change. The geographical focus of WASCAL is on West Africa with in-depth research in case study watersheds in Benin, Burkina Faso and Ghana.

WASCAL is based on three principle components: a Competence Center, a core Research Programme and a Graduate Research Programme. The Competence Center will contribute to the development of local research capacity, and serve as a service center for the partner countries, building on the national research communities of the West African countries participating in WASCAL.

The Core Research Programme relates to the scientific activities of the Competence Center, and is implemented by a network of German and West African research institutes. Within the Core Research Programme, UNU-EHS will investigate the linkages between climate change and the state and security of rural livelihoods in West Africa.

The Graduate Research Programme involves the creation of seven graduate schools in West Africa, which contribute to the education of the next generation of African scientists and policymakers in the field of climate change and land management.

For detailed information please visit: www.wascal.org

Time span

Planning phase: August 2011 - July 2012

Research phase: August 2012 - December 2015

Key goals

The main objective of WASCAL is to enhance the resilience of social-ecological systems to the impacts of climate change and increased climate variability. Specific objectives of the work undertaken at UNU-EHS are:

• to identify, characterize and quantify major climate change-related hazards to rural households/communities at different spatial and temporal scales

• to determine the probability of occurrence and potential intensity of those hazards

• to analyse rural households’ exposure, vulnerabilities and risks to rapid onset and creeping hazards in the context of climate change

• to explore potential coping and adaptation strategies in order to reduce the overall vulnerability and risk and increase the resilience to the identified hazards.

Working methods

• Risk and Hazard assessment following the approach proposed by the Resilience Alliance (2007) will be conducted

• Vulnerability assessment will be used to explore the various social, economic and environmental dimensions of vulnerability

• To integrate the aspects of risk assessment into a coherent conceptual model, a quantitative logic tree model will be applied

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