**3. Climate and environmental risks in West Africa**

Climate change has become a major global challenge, but some geographical regions of the world are more affected than others. Due to socio-economic circumstances and meteorological conditions, African countries are particularly vulnerable to climate and environmental risks. In West Africa, increasing climate variability and human activities has resulted in major environmental changes. Rising temperatures, increasing erratic rainfall pattern and more frequent droughts, degradation and desertification of productive lands, flooding and inundation of coastal areas due to increasing sea level are some of the major environmental problems in the sub-region. These have created challenges to food security and management of land, water and other resources. Most significant is that the last five decades have witnessed recurrent drought episodes that have resulted in serious degradation of natural capital and ecosystems and recurrent food crises within the sub-region [10, 26, 27]. These problems are exacerbated by the rapidly increasing human population. For instance, the human population of West Africa was estimated to be 397 million in 2018 with an annual growth rate of 2.4% since 1980 [10].

These challenges are particularly dire for rural communities in the sub-region, where crop cultivation, livestock rearing and fishery which are highly dependent on climate, are the main sources of livelihood. Rural environmental degradation and increasing population and poverty are escalating the stress on environmental resources and has become a major driver of rural-urban population drift. The rate of urbanization in West Africa is over 4% per year, with 43% of the population living in cities, and this is projected to increase to 63% by the year 2050 [10, 26]. The combined effects of high level of poverty and high reliance on rain-fed agriculture and poor access to resources and services have resulted in high vulnerability to climate and environmental risks in the sub-region. Various studies [26, 28–30] have found that poverty, low level of technology, poor access to health care services and general infrastructural deficiencies among other factors are closely linked to disaster vulnerability in West African countries, and that repeated exposure to stress further exacerbates poverty in the region. Environmental degradation is a major contributing factor for conflict and food insecurity. Degradation or depletion of natural resources and population pressure are known to trigger competition for scarce resources such as arable land and water, which often results in tension and conflict [28].
