Climate risk in Africa: Adaptation and resilience

Editors: Conway, Declan, Vincent, Katharine (Eds.)  

Assessing the ecological impacts of transportation infrastructure development: A reconnaissance study of the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya

Tobias Ochieng Nyumba , Catherine Chebet Sang, Daniel Ochieng Olago, Robert Marchant, Lucy Waruingi, Yvonne Githiora, Francis Kago, Mary Mwangi, George Owira, Rosemary Barasa, Sherlyne Omangi

DCP scientists use the case of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) to illustrate the environmental ramifications that need to be considered and addressed in the construction and operation of linear infrastructure projects, citing tangible increases in soil erosion, land degradation, flooding, sedimentation of water bodies, habitat destruction, and other environmental impacts of the SGR construction.

Assessing River Basin Development Given Water‐Energy‐Food‐Environment Interdependencies
Robel Geressu, Christian Siderius, Julien J. Harou, Japhet Kashaigili, Laetitia Pettinotti, Declan Conway

Infrastructure in water‐energy‐food‐environment systems such as dams can play a beneficial role in supporting hydropower production and regulating the variability of river flow. However, these benefits often come with negative environmental impacts on wildlife, affect income from other economic sectors, and can damage river‐linked ecosystems (e.g., wetlands, floodplains, riverine forests, and mangroves). One way to help design future systems is to compare the energy, agricultural, and environmental conservation trade‐offs implied by different extents of development (i.e., realization of various reservoirs and irrigation schemes). We apply such a multisector spatial computer‐aided design approach to the Rufiji river basin in Tanzania and consider linkages across the water‐energy‐food‐environment sectors.

How to understand a development corridor? The case of Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport corridor in Kenya
Dr Gediminas Lesutis 

Using the example of LAPSSET, it analyses how development corridors (as well as large-scale infrastructures more broadly) can be theorised in the fields of geography and critical social sciences. Doing this, the article shows the importance of critically interrogating the “win-win” mainstream development discourse on development corridors, and how development corridors could be understood as playing a specific function in advancing certain political ideologies.