**1. Introduction**

Climate change has emerged as one of the most prominent environmental, economic and social threats facing humanity today. Climate and environmental risks are associated with extreme weather events like drought, flooding, windstorm, rise in sea levels, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that may result in ecosystem degradation, loss of natural assets, potential trade and supply chain disruptions, reduced productivity, declining welfare and loss of lives and properties. Consequently, across the globe the probable impacts of extreme weather events and other environmental

hazards and the problem of capacity to adapt and build resilience against the impacts, have become a source of great concern. While international organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations are responding by building environmental factors into economic, social and political structures to strengthen resilience and adapt to changing conditions, these challenges are proving difficult to manage. It has thus been argued that addressing these challenges require introduction of appropriate incentives, taking efficient economic decisions and promoting changes in households and public institutions in order to change habits and behave in an environmentally friendly way [1, 2].

The global socio-economic impacts of climate change are expected to become more substantial as affected regions continue to grow in number and size, and more people and more natural capital would be negatively affected in the near future. Although, all countries of the world are affected by climate change, poorer regions and countries are generally more at risk as their populations often rely more on natural capital and have less financial resources to adapt quickly [3]. Africa is highly exposed to climate and other environmental risks because it has experienced warming trends of between 0.26°C and 0.5°C per decade in the last one century [4]. It is believed that this trend will continue and may significantly increase with much negative implications in the form of considerable increase in temperature, decreasing rainfall and increasing frequency and intensity of tropical storms. The continent is known to contain about half of the world's most risk prone countries and it is experiencing increasing number of disasters. The number of reported disasters resulting from natural hazards has particularly increased on the continent over the last three decades, with floods, epidemics and drought being most prominent [5]. Climate change, poor urban planning, environmental degradation and fragility, poverty, inequality and conflicts have been found to be the main disaster drivers on the continent. The impact on the human population are in form of increase in exposure to water stress, decline in production of staple food crops and increase in poverty and conflicts due to loss of livelihoods [1, 5, 6].

As a result of increasing climatic variability and human activities, West Africa and particularly the Sahel region, has experienced major environmental changes within the last half century. The Sahel is regarded as the region that experienced the greatest rainfall anomalies in the world during the last century [7]. Observations have shown general warming across West Africa since the 1960s, increase in incidence of warm spells and decrease in incidence of cold days. Overall decrease in annual rainfall has also been observed since the 1960s, while the arid zones have experienced more prolonged droughts since the 1970s [7, 8] Although, projected climatic models for West Africa differ based on the assumptions, most agree on overall warming trend across the region, with average temperature rise of 0.5% per decade. There is also general consensus on an overall decline in precipitation across the region of 0.5–40% by 2025, and average sea level rise of 0.5–1.0 m by 2100 [8].

Devastating droughts, changes in seasons, reduced and unpredictable rainfall and flash floods have negatively affected local community livelihoods and resulted in population displacements. As a result of these climatic and humanitarian crises, West Africa is now viewed as a region of poverty, conflict and human insecurity [9]. Many parts of West Africa face chronic variability of rainfall and strong pressure on arable land. The situation is made more critical by the fact that agriculture and livestock which depend heavily on the ecosystem creates about 60% of household incomes. Furthermore, due to increasing population the people are forced to adopt

#### *Climate and Environmental Risk Action: A Call for Fresh Commitments to Adaptation… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106428*

unsustainable practices in order to survive. This makes the environment more vulnerable to degradation and increase in fragility of marginal areas [9]. This paper was conceived to explore climate and environmental risks and the potential for raising adaptive capacity and resilience in West Africa. Against this backdrop the specific objectives are to: investigate the climate and environmental risks; examine the dimensions of vulnerabilities and impacts; determine the adaptation and resilience opportunities; and propose policy options to be adopted to raise adaptive capacity and resilience in the sub-region.

The remaining part of this paper is subdivided into five sections. The section succeeding this introduction focuses on definition and clarification of major concepts relevant to this paper. The next section highlights the main climate and environmental risks in West Africa, while also emphasising the vulnerability of the human population. Using evidences from literature, the succeeding section presents climate and environmental risk impacts and potential for action in major sectors. The next section outlines strategies that can be targeted towards raising adaptive capacity and resilience in West Africa. The concluding section summarizes the key findings and suggests areas for future research.
