WACA-A Partnership for Saving West Africa’s Coastal Assets

Climate change will exacerbate the environmental stresses along the coast, increasing the socioeconomic vulnerability of coastal populations, especially the poor, whose well-being and livelihoods depend on the quality and quantity of natural resources. Interventions are needed at all levels of government and society to decrease the vulnerability of the poor in coastal West Africa. Spurred by erosion and flooding disasters, West African countries have started to take action. Acting alone at the national level is insufficient to tackle the challenges, however. A regional approach is needed, because preventing erosion in one country can cause erosion in its neighbors and because the financing needed to contain erosion and flooding is too great for individual countries to raise or manage. Countries need to work together in a coordinated manner, at both the policy and the technical levels, and strategically use available funding provided to manage priority erosion and flooding hotspots.