Robust Project Design amidst Climate Change Concerns in Africa

Climate change is one of the major uncertainties facing project design in developing African countries. In particular, water resources projects are susceptible to varying climate conditions. The challenges of climate change assessment in Africa are further aggravated by poor data repositories, faulty apparatus like rain and temperature gauges and political instability amongst other factors. In order achieve robustness of project design, there is need to assess and attempt to reduce uncertainty surrounding projects. While some uncertainties cannot be totally eliminated, guarding against project failure in the presence of such uncertainties would ensure that societal benefits are preserved. The Little Caledon River within the Masianokeng Catchment in Lesotho is used as an illustration in this study. The Metolong Dam, inaugurated in 2015, was constructed across this river to supplement water supply to Maseru and neighboring towns of Mazenod, Roma, Morija and Teyateyaneng. However, changes in climate can potentially influence the availability of water and subsequently reduce the projected benefits of the Dam. The approach of this study is founded on work done by Ray and Brown (2015) on the Decision Tree Framework and Poff et al. (2016) on the Eco-Engineering Decision Scaling (EEDS) Framework. The four major stages include stakeholder engagement and assessment of likely impact of climate change (project screening), development of systems model, vulnerability analysis / stress test and visualization of results from the study. While this on-going phase of the work focuses on risk assessment, there are opportunities for future work in assessing tradeoffs of investment alternatives, as well as ensuring sustainability and adaptability of alternative project options.