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

• Applicant: Dr. Michael Thiel
• Subject Area: Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management
• Term: from 2021 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462264708

Hydropower generation (HPG) represents the largest renewable electricity source with multiple purpose functions worldwide especially in WestAfrica (WA) where it contributes significantly to the energy security. However, this source is sensitive to climate change and projected HPG areassociated with uncertainties. The magnitude and the sign of projected change of HPG vary according to the river basin and country. Part ofuncertainties in the future of HPG in WA is associated with the lack of observations data which limit the calibration of models and the simulation ofhydrological dynamics and also, with uncertainties associated with climate projections used to force hydrological and water resources models. Landuse changes associated with socioeconomic development are rarely taken into account while they are crucial, especially over multi-purpose dams. Itbecomes then difficult for dam managers and local authorities to make decisions or to plan under these uncertainties in the aim to engage in a climateresilient pathway. This project aims to build communities of practice with HPG stakeholders (dam managers, local policy makers, representative ofcivil society) to address the challenges, synergies and trade-off in the climate land energy water nexus in WA for a sustainable management andplanning 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

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks