Abstract:
Global Climate Change is one of the dire challenges facing the international community
today. Coastal zones are vulnerable to its impacts. An effective approach with long-term prospects
in addressing climate change impacts is it’s mainstreaming into development agenda of sectoral
policies. A comprehensive risk and vulnerability assessment is a pre-requisite to ensure that the
right adaptive response is taken for effective integration into developmental plans. The objective
of this study is to evaluate and prioritize risks, vulnerability and adaptation issues of current and
anticipated impacts of climate change on the coastal zone of The Gambia. The study will also give
a methodological contribution for assessing risks, vulnerability and adaptation from the sub-national
to local levels. The relevance of this study will be to create a link between the sub-national and local
levels in order to facilitate the integration and mainstreaming of climate change into sectoral and local
policies for more climate-resilient communities. This will aid in the promotion of strategic investment
of constrained developmental resources to actualize successfully dynamic coping strategies, elude
‘maladaptation’ and less compelling responsive measures. A purposive expert sampling technique
was used in selecting respondents for the study. The findings of the study reveal that by the
end of the 21st century, the climatic variables likely to have the highest impact on the coastal
zone of The Gambia are ‘increased flood severity’ and ‘increased temperature’. The coastal zone
of The Gambia showed a high vulnerability to these climate change variables. The suggested
adaptive response in addressing the impacts of increased flood intensity in the study area includes;
improving regulations for restricting agriculture and livestock grazing activities to improve land
cover; strengthening of early-warning systems, among others. The suggested adaptive response in
addressing the increase in temperature includes: increase crop diversification and rotation to reduce
total crop failure; switching to drought-tolerant crop and animal species, among others.
