Increasing frequency, intensity and duration of severe weather events are posing major challenges to global food security and livelihoods of rural people. Agriculture has evolved through adaptation to local circumstances for thousands of years. Local experience in responding to severe weather conditions, accumulated over generations and centuries, is valuable for developing adaptation options to current climate change.

Energy is vital to the global food system and food security, but countries will need to explore greener energy paths to address climate change. Opportunities for achieving both green energy and food security goals include solar and hydropower in Africa, biofuels in poor countries, and energy-saving cookstoves.

The dramatic potential impacts of climate change on hydropower potential in the Zambezi River Basin point to the need to explicitly consider climate change in both project planning and overall system expansion planning.

This is even truer for future plants, where financial viability and loan repayments will depend on the stability of generation and sales revenue. A key next step in this analysis should be to look at not just how climate and development affect individual plants, but how they affect entire national and regional energy systems.

This policy brief is among the output from a research initiative designed to address the major uncertainties facing hydropower development in the Zambezi region, and to deepen understanding among stakeholders of the risks to hydropower from changes in climate and increased upstream water demand.

For 18 months, researchers developed and applied a water supply and demand modelling tool for the Zambezi River Basin.