Combating Drought in the Volta Basin: Working Together to Transform Water Management

Background?

?The Volta Basin, covering over 400,000 square kilometers across Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, C?te d'Ivoire, and Mali, is critical to West Africa's hydrology and agriculture. With rainfall patterns intensifying and becoming more erratic, the region faces increasing drought risks exacerbated by climate change projections. Approximately 4.5 million people in the basin are exposed to drought annually, impacting agriculture, food security, and economic stability; most of them are a rural population heavily reliant on rain-fed agriculture.?

The socio-economic effects of drought are profound, contributing to migration, water conflicts, and health issues. With the basin’s population expected to exceed 40 million by 2030, these pressures are set to increase.

The Volta Flood and Drought Management project

Addressing drought in the Volta Basin requires integrated approaches combining hydrological data, socio-economic strategies, and climate adaptation measures to ensure sustainable water management and resilience for the future.?

Efforts to mitigate drought impacts include the Volta Flood and Drought Management project, through which the World Meteorological Organization , the Volta Basin Authority (VBA) and the Global Water Partnership-West Africa , with CIMA Research Foundation as technical partner, aim at enhancing drought risk knowledge, governance, and resilience through the implementation of a transboundary end-to-end Early Warning System.?

The project focuses on integrated risk management and disaster preparedness, promoting collaboration among national and regional agencies and providing support to the agricultural sector.

Facing Droughts

In this context, CIMA Research Foundation collaborates with local stakeholders to monitor emerging drought riskin near real-time.?

In this context, drought hazard is quantified using a Combined Drought Indicator (CDI), which integrates information about recent meteorological and soil moisture anomalies and vegetation stress. Data sources used to compute these indicators include remotely-sensed Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) data from VIIRS imaging, reanalysis temperature and soil moisture from ERA5 and precipitation from the CHIRPRS dataset integrating satellite observations with rain gauge measurements. Individual indices as well as the CDI are shared the Volta Basin Authority and regional partners every 10 days.?

Hazard estimates are then combined with exposure and vulnerability maps in order to offer partners a comprehensive assessment of drought risk in the basin. For exposure and vulnerability maps, CIMA relied on phenology and agricultural cover data of the main crops in the area. Similarly, it used data on population density and socioeconomic conditions to instead commensurate exposure and vulnerability of the general population. In order to facilitate usage and communication of our drought risk product, a final categorization step defines four levels of risk which are aggregated at district level.

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