Report 11

Climate Change Scenarios for the Congo Basin - Final Report

The Congo forests are extremely important for storing carbon and their impact on the global water cycle through local water recycling. Nevertheless, there are only a limited number of studies focusing on climate change and the resulting impacts for the Congo basin. One of the major reasons for this is the lack of observational climate and hydrological data, which makes it difficult to evaluate the performance of modelling studies. The elevated vulnerability
of the sectors agriculture / food security, water supply and ecosystems implicates that the concepts of sustainable management and the development strategies take climate change aspects into account and be adjusted if needed. In order to achieve that, the so far existing data from the sub-region are insufficient. It is thus of major importance to generate specific and solid sub-regional data on climate change, its impacts on key sectors of the Central African economy and ecology and on potential adaptation options to combat the effects of climate change.

The main aim of the project was to provide national and regional decision makers with relevant climate change scenarios for the countries in the greater river Congo basin region in order to allow these decision makers i) to adapt their management strategies related to natural resources (such as forests, water, agriculture) to climate change and ii) to strengthen the science base for their interest in the post-Kyoto negotiations context.


Report 11 - CSC (2013): Climate Change Scenarios for the Congo Basin. [Haensler A., Jacob D., Kabat P., Ludwig F. (eds.)]