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Populism and the Environmental Crisis: Why Europe Needs a Stronger Democracy
Comment by Sarah Velten
News publ. 12. Nov 2013
Approximately 90 per cent of the population in Burundi depends on subsistence farming. Soil and water resources are thus crucial for their social and economic development. adelphi's vulnerability assessment will highlight regions where these resources are particularly at risk from climate change.
The two-tiered vulnerability assessment is part of a GIZ project that aims at reducing the impacts of climate change on the availability of soil and water resources. In a first step, adelphi in cooperation with the European Academy (EURAC) in Bolzano, Italy and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) conducts a national vulnerability assessment. This will be used to identify regions that are especially prone to the impacts of climate change – so-called “hotspots”. In a second step, an in-depth vulnerability assessment will be carried out on the local level for two to three hotspot regions. The results of these in-depth vulnerability assessments will be used to identify and develop specific adaptation measures for the hotspots.
Already today, availability and quality of water and soils in Burundi are increasingly under pressure and degraded due to a rapidly growing population and unsustainable resource management practices. This development is further aggravated by higher climate variability and an increased frequency of extreme weather events that have severe social and economic consequences: floods and droughts are amongst the main reasons for a decline in agricultural production in recent years.