Sustainable management and planning of hydropower generation in West Africa under climate change and land use/land cover dynamics – SUSTAINDAM

Hydropower generation (HPG) represents the largest renewable electricity source with multiple purpose functions worldwide especially in West
Africa (WA) where it contributes significantly to the energy security. However, this source is sensitive to climate change and projected HPG are
associated with uncertainties. The magnitude and the sign of projected change of HPG vary according to the river basin and country. Part of
uncertainties in the future of HPG in WA is associated with the lack of observations data which limit the calibration of models and the simulation of
hydrological dynamics and also, with uncertainties associated with climate projections used to force hydrological and water resources models. Land
use changes associated with socioeconomic development are rarely taken into account while they are crucial, especially over multi-purpose dams. It
becomes then difficult for dam managers and local authorities to make decisions or to plan under these uncertainties in the aim to engage in a climate
resilient pathway. This project aims to build communities of practice with HPG stakeholders (dam managers, local policy makers, representative of
civil society) to address the challenges, synergies and trade-off in the climate land energy water nexus in WA for a sustainable management and
planning of HPG under a context of climate and land use changes. This will be achieved through two elicitation and participatory workshops with
stakeholders, two training sessions to Early Career Researchers of the project on "Random Forest, use of downscaled climate data" (top-down
methods) and "Decision Scaling" (bottom-up method) which will be implemented with local stakeholders in each of the 4 major dams in Ghana,
Senegal, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. During the implementation, the project will foster sharing and common learning between the 4 case studies
from results of comparative study of these 3 practices. The project targets the nexus between SDG 13 (climate), 6 (water) and 7 (energy) with
positive effects on SDG 15 (land) and 17 (partnership)for sustainable HPG