Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy, Research, Capacity and Influence

In a show of their resolve to act on global climate change and in response to the 2015 Paris Agreement, 52 African countries had submitted their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by 2021. These countries, except one, included National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) in their NDCs, although six of these NAPs were developed separately. The NDCs reflect efforts by individual countries to reduce national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change, while the NAPs are strategic planning documents which detail each country’s medium- and long-term priorities and interventions for adapting to climate change.

The Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), led by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and the
African Development Bank (AfDB), aims to mobilize US$ 25 billion to scale up and accelerate climate change
adaptation initiatives across Africa. The AAAP will support countries in making transformational shifts in their
development pathways by centering adaptation and resilience to climate change in their critical growth-
oriented and inclusive policies.

AKADEMIYA2063 is supporting GCA and AfDB with the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation into
agricultural policies and expenditures, by providing technical assistance to inform and facilitate the effective
implementation of NAPs, as well as to identify adaptation pathways and related policy options. This work is
currently being undertaken in two African countries, Kenya, and Mali. This report presents the case of Mali.

Extreme weather is not a new phenomenon in Mali. However, the country’s vulnerability to climate change
is exacerbated by factors that limit the society’s and government’s ability to mitigate and adapt. These
factors include the high reliance on natural resource-based livelihoods and a protracted political crisis. Mali’s
vulnerability score in the ND-GAIN Index, which measures the country’s exposure, sensitivity, and capacity to
adapt to climate change is 0.60 (rank 176/182), while the ND-GAIN Index score for adaptation readiness is 0.30.

The country’s current and future climate change challenges, combined with the difficult political and socio-
economic conditions make Mali highly vulnerable to climate change.
At the 2015 Paris Agreement, Mali committed at an international level in its NDC, to fight climate change through mitigation and adaptation actions that would strengthen the capacities and resilience of its population involved in the energy, agriculture and forestry sectors. At the strategic level, the country has integrated climate change into its planning processes, particularly in the implementation of the Framework for Economic

Recovery and Sustainable Development (CREDD), the National Environmental Protection Policy and, since 2011, in the National Climate Change Policy.

This report defines Mali’s climate change and adaptation pathway scenarios, and then assesses their prospects
and projected impacts.