ABSTRACT

Climate change could threaten sub-Saharan Africa's progress on human development, but impact studies often focus on intermediate effects instead. We conduct a systematic literature review of projected climate impacts on three important dimensions of human development: food insecurity, water stress, and disease. Despite a large impact literature, only 28 studies project quantitative outcomes for these dimensions of development, and even these studies sometimes focus on proxies for outcomes of interest. Studies forecast that climate change could reduce hunger by <1 million or increase it by up to 55 million people in 2050. In 2030, climate change could increase diarrheal disease cases by 88.4–134.2 million and malaria cases by 30.1–58.5 million, but decrease malaria cases in West Africa. Findings on water stress are less consistent. In the 2050s, climate change could expose up to 921 million additional people to water stress while at the same time reducing exposure by up to 459 million. Several factors, including projection and comparison years, make it difficult to compare findings. Greater focus on projecting climate change implications for well-being and a common approach to reporting results could refine ranges and improve comparability across the literature.

摘要

气候变化可能会威胁到撒哈拉以南非洲在人类发展方面的进步，但影响研究往往侧重于中间效应。我们对预计气候对人类发展的三个重要方面的影响进行系统的文献回顾：粮食不安全、水资源压力和疾病。尽管有大量有影响力的文献，但只有 28 项研究预测了这些发展维度的定量结果，甚至这些研究有时也关注感兴趣的结果的代理。研究预测，到 2050 年，气候变化可能会使饥饿人数减少不到 100 万或增加多达 5500 万人。到 2030 年，气候变化可能会使腹泻病病例增加 88.4-1.342 亿，疟疾病例增加 30.1-5850 万，但减少西非的疟疾病例。关于水资源压力的研究结果不太一致。在 2050 年代，气候变化可能使多达 9.21 亿人面临水资源压力，同时减少多达 4.59 亿人的水压力。包括预测和比较年份在内的几个因素使得比较结果变得困难。更加关注预测气候变化对福祉的影响以及报告结果的通用方法可以细化范围并提高文献之间的可比性。