Targeting Actions to Improve People's Lives, Protect Nature, and Mitigate Climate Change
Project Drawdown & University of Minnesota
Overview
Sixty percent of the country's workforce is engaged in food production. Yet food insecurity is throughout the country, particularly in rural areas where most people are farmers. Why does this paradox exist? Crop yields are under-performing because of the limited availability of fertilizer and improved seed varieties. But that's only part of the story. Seventy percent of the food consumed in Senegal is imported, making off-farm income essential. Access to electricity opens up economic opportunities, yet most rural communities don't have access. Electricity is also tied to improved education, food storage, health, and clean water and sanitation. Further, replacing current cooking fuels (charcoal and wood) will reduce household air pollution, a leading cause of premature deaths. Many of these challenges can be addressed through solutions that also help to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Mitigating climate change and improving people’s lives is not an either-or choice.
Here, we take a broader view of the food system to achieve these aims by analyzing where climate solutions can improve food security, health, and income.
Boys plowing millet field in Senegal.
Improving food security requires a systems approach that includes food production, income, electricity, health, education, equality, nature and climate impacts.
Farming in Senegal
Women farmers in Senegal
Farming is the dominant land use in Senegal. About 30% of the landscape is cropland, 30% rangeland, and 25% natural shrubland and forest.
Senegal's climate makes farming challenging
Image source: NASA Blue Marble Next Generation.
Farming in Senegal is very challenging. The image above shows the contrast of landcover at the end of the dry season and the end of the rainy season. Many households and communities rely on seasonal rains to grow food and earn an income. Annual rainfall totals vary from 300 to 1,200mm across Senegal. Most of this is concentrated within a few months from June through September. The variability of the rainy season has implications for agricultural production in Senegal. Abnormal seasonal rains can disrupt how people earn incomes and can impact livelihoods and health.
Other indicators of human health and well-being show opportunities for interventions, particularly in rural areas. Here, we focus on hunger, electricity access, wealth, and access to clean cooking fuels.
Chronic under-nutrition can be as high as 28% in some areas
Prevalence of childhood stunting in Senegal
Stunting among children, an indicator of food security, increases with greater distance to Dakar and other large cities. It is concentrated in the southern and eastern regions of the country.
Electricity access is concentrated in urban and semi-urban areas
Nighttime lights are an indicator of access to electricity. In Senegal, electrification decreases with distance from major cities, like Dakar and Touba, and larger towns.
About 57% of people in rural areas lack access to electricity
Demographic survey data show that access to electricity decreases as distance from Dakar increases.
Rural households experience more poverty than urban households
Percentage of households in the lowest wealth quintile in Senegal
Households in the lowest 20th percentile of wealth are concentrated in rural areas of Senegal.
About 90% of rural households use unclean cooking fuels
Percentage of rural households using unclean cooking fuels in Senegal
Unclean fuels are more common in rural households than urban ones. Some household surveys are inconsistent about how coal and charcoal are distinguished. Here, we group coal and charcoal in the unclean category.
Solutions
Sustainable Intensification
Low crop yields contribute to food insecurity and poverty. Through USAID's Sustainable Intensification and Innovation Laboratory, researchers and farmers are testing new management practices of crop varieties of millet and groundnut. These practices all improve food production, nutrition, and farmer revenue. They also help adapt to – and mitigate – climate change by
improving soil health that holds more water, nutrients, and carbon.
Village-scale Solar
Access to electricity is crucial for improving food security and health. It is linked to clean water access, improved income, education, and gender equity. Many rural communities lack access to electricity. Mini-grid photovoltaic solar and battery systems can be built faster than grid expansion and avoid future greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generated from fossil fuels.
Clean Cooking
Unclean cooking fuels – coal, charcoal, and biomasses –
reduce air quality, a leading cause of premature deaths. Clean cooking fuels –
electricity, natural gas, biogas, and solar – are a powerful climate solution, reducing household and climate pollutants, and are better for health. However, many communities throughout Senegal lack access to these fuels.
Agroforestry
Food and nutrition security and income is lower in rural areas of Senegal than in urban areas. Agroforestry diversifies income sources and nutrition, reduces heat stress for livestock, provides firewood, and mitigates climate change by storing carbon. Agroforestry is already being implemented in some regions of Senegal where farmers integrate trees alongside crops like millet, sorghum, and maize.
Analysis
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Sustainable Intensification
The average current yield for millet in is 0.9 metric tons per hectare.
1.7 metric tons per hectare is attainable using best management practices and seed varieties.
Since 2000, yields have increased, but so has the gap between realized and attainable yields.
Through USAID's Sustainable Intensification and Innovations Lab (SIIL), local researchers have shown:
Using new seed varieties, millet yields can increase 1.5x, closing the yield gap and providing more food and income for the farmer.
New millet varieties also mature faster, providing more resilience if the rain season is shorter.
Dual purpose cowpea can provide legumes for people and the rest of the plant provides fodder for cattle.
New cowpea varieties are more nutrient-dense, with higher amounts of protein, iron, and zinc.
New groundnut variety increases grain and fodder by 30 – 50%, leading to higher farmer profit, and is more drought-tolerant.
Adding organic matter improves soil health by reducing erosion and storing more nutrients, water, and carbon.
Demonstrating effective farming practices in Senegal.
Village-scale solar
Food security is not only dependent on food production. It's also tightly linked to off-farm income, increasing a household's ability to purchase food.
Expanding access to electricity can not only provide income directly through employment in the electricity sector. It also provides economic growth to a community and enables other income-generating opportunities for populations.
Food security is also dependent upon a safe and stable food supply. Access to electricity can improve refrigeration, food storage, preparation, and freezing.
Solar water pumps can improve health by advancing safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) access for households and communities.
Electrification decreases with distance from major cities, like Dakar and Touba, and larger towns.
Installing solar and battery systems would have the greatest impact if targeted in rural and peri-urban areas.
In most rural areas, PV solar is cheaper to install and maintain than diesel generators.
For an average rural settlement (120 people), we estimate that it would cost ~US$139,000 to install a solar-powered and battery mini-grid system with a reliability target of 95% of hours annually that would provide enough power for refrigerators and other medium-power appliances.
Map of the percentage of households with access to electricity in Senegal
Clean cooking
In addition to growing more food on existing farmlands, how food is cooked as a large impact on health.
Poor household air pollution is a leading cause of premature deaths in Senegal (and most places of the world where charcoal and biomass are the main sources of cooking fuel.)
Strategically targeting where certain fuels are implemented can maximize health benefits, lead to greater time saved, and improve gender equity.
Optimal fuels
In urban areas like Dakar, Touba, and Thies, electricity as a cooking fuel would provide the most benefit as electrification levels are higher in these areas.
In rural areas without access to electricity, biogas and liquid propane gas (LPG) provide the greatest cost, health, and time savings benefits. In remote areas, LPG is the only viable clean cooking option.
Electric stoves become the optimal choice when there is access to electricity.
Benefits of clean cooking fuels
Clean cooking fuels reduce the number of premature deaths caused by soot and other air pollutants from unclean fuels by 7,000 people each year.
The highest potential for the number of avoided premature deaths is Touba, Dakar, and Saint Louis, where charcoal and other unclean fuels are still widely used and where most people live.
Switching to clean cooking fuels provides benefit of US$1.08 billion mostly due to the health benefits.
Cleaner cooking fuels also benefit the climate. Switching to these fuels is equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by five metric tons per year.
Further, using electricity for cooking would likely provide greater benefits through a reduction in indoor and outdoor air pollution.
In rural areas where wood, biomass, coal, and charcoal fuels are prevalent, households could save time from sourcing these fuels by switching to LPG or biogas cooking fuels, or electricity-powered stoves.
This is especially important for gender equity as women are often responsible for sourcing fuels for a household and responsible for cooking.
Clean cooking fuels reduce the health burden on women as they are disproportionately exposed to indoor pollutants from these fuels.
Time saved by switching to clean cooking can allow women to participate in economic activities and their community, pursue education, or rest.
Time saved from switching to clean cooking fuels is greatest in rural areas in the north and southeastern regions of Senegal, where trees are less abundant. Here, households could save between an average of 0.75 – 1.75 hours a day by switching cooking fuels from wood or charcoal to biogas or LPG.
Time saved provides households with the opportunities to engage in other economic activities and can increase school enrollments in households where children are responsible for collecting cooking fuels.
Agroforestry
Agroforestry is a farming system where trees, crops, and sometimes livestock and integrated on the same plot of land.
Agroforestry benefits farmers and the surrounding ecosystems.
Diversifies farmer income and nutrition.
Mitigates climate change by storing more carbon that than croplands. contributing to climate change mitigation.
Crop and livestock diversity provides a buffer against economic and climate shocks.
Provides habitat for a greater diversity of species, including pollinators.
However, converting cropland to agroforestry can decrease food production and food security. The outcome depends on the tree density, which affects the opportunity cost of the income and calories from millet or other crops that are displaced.
Benefits of Agroforestry & Natural Habitat
In addition to food production, agroforestry provides many benefits to people similar to those that natural ecosystems offer. These benefits, or ecosystem services, provide food and clean water, pollinate crops, store carbon to mitigate climate change, and maintain cultural and natural features that characterize the landscape and our relationship with it.
Clearing natural ecosystems for cashew plantations is becoming more widespread in southern Senegal. This land use change can increase income, but often at the expense of many of nature's benefits, such as reduced carbon stored and water available, decimated biodiversity, and degraded soil health.
Resource planning using data like those presented in this story map can help maximize the benefits and minimize the trade-offs for people and nature.
The darker blue areas on the map highlight places where integrating agroforestry or natural habitat into the current agricultural landscape will provide more habitat for insects, birds, and bats needed to pollinate wild and cultivated fruits and vegetables. The lighter-colored areas are where most of the crop pollinator needs are currently met.
While not unique to Senegal, these solutions can be implemented strategically to benefit health and well-being and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This approach is transferable to other countries and regions
The challenges addressed here not unique to Senegal. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa experience high levels of food security, low income, sparse availability of electricity in rural areas, and low usage of clean cooking fuels. The methodology and underlying data sets can be easily adapted to identify and target high-impact solutions in specific areas within other countries or regions to benefit people's well-being and nature while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding future ones. Through targeted action and project design, bundles of solutions can more effectively improve many aspects of people's lives, fostering systemic change.
Farming is the dominant land use in Senegal. About 30% of the landscape is cropland, 30% rangeland, and 25% natural shrubland and forest.
Image source: NASA Blue Marble Next Generation.
Stunting among children, an indicator of food security, increases with greater distance to Dakar and other large cities. It is concentrated in the southern and eastern regions of the country.
Demographic survey data show that access to electricity decreases as distance from Dakar increases.
Households in the lowest 20th percentile of wealth are concentrated in rural areas of Senegal.
Unclean fuels are more common in rural households than urban ones. Some household surveys are inconsistent about how coal and charcoal are distinguished. Here, we group coal and charcoal in the unclean category.
