Institutional and policy gap analysis of climate services in West Africa: a stakeholders´ perspective

Abstract

Climate services are crucial to support sustainable development and adaptation to climate change, although their use is still considered limited. The main aim of this research is to identify regulatory and institutional barriers affecting climate services provision and use in support policy-making for tourism in West African countries. To this aim, 48 high level representatives and experts, most of them working on the areas related to environment protection and Climate Change, in Mauritania, Senegal, Togo, Còte d´Ivoire and Benin were interviewed. As a result, it was found significant differences between national authorities and research organizations regarding i) their perception of the legislation for climate services ii) their level of knowledge of the mechanisms already in place to provide feedback to the specialized agencies about the type of climate data and information needed locally, iii) their level of information about the national Early Warning System, and iv) their capacity to identify providers and potential users of climate services at national/local level. The study identifies a set of potential measures of high priority with great usefulness to develop multi-country projects and programmes.