Drought recurrence in Africa’s Sahel region: nature-based adaptive solutions and implications for smallholders’ livelihoods

The Sahel is a region of extreme climatic conditions and recurrent droughts which act as a stumbling block to socio-economic development, poverty reduction and food security in the region. It is a region prone to environ-mental crises, driven by a multitude of factors including the absence of coherent environmental policies, scanty and erratic rainfall, high population growth rates, poor landscape management practices which induce land deg-radation (overgrazing, deforestation and forest degradation, continuous cropping), misplaced development prior-ities and political instability (frequent coup d’états). Understanding the Sahel’s environmental crises in general and drought recurrence in particular, is key to finding sustainable solutions to these hazards. It is against this background that this paper examines drought recurrence in the Sahel, laying emphasis on nature-based adaptive solutions and their influence on smallholders’ livelihoods. Findings reveal that, droughts have become more recurrent in the Sahel in the past 50 years attributable largely to global warming and climate change as well as other factors such as land degradation. The most adopted nature-based adaptive solutions by smallholders in the Sahel are agroforestry, afforestation/reforestation, conservation agriculture, water harnessing, soil conservation, biodiversity management, pasture management, fallowing, watershed management, changes in tillage, mixed cropping, and farming. These nature-based adaptive solutions contribute positively towards the improvement of smallholders’ livelihoods in the face of droughts through the provision of food, fuelwood, milk, meat, income and other products and services. Thus, policies that favour the adoption of nature-based adaptive solutions should be crafted and implemented by policy makers as this will go a long way to foster adaptation and improve smallholders’ livelihoods in the face of drought recurrence in the Sahel. Key words: Drought; livelihoods; nature-based adaptation; Sahel; smallholders