Drought is expected to have significant impacts in most of the climate sensitive sectors in Kenya.
With the goal to better link climate experts and stakeholders, capacity-building workshops were held as parallel events to the COFs during the program; representatives of climate sensitive sectors (users) were invited to attend.
In coastal areas people at risk greatly depend on climate sensitive sectors, such as fishery, forestry, and tourism, for their livelihoods and very often need to adopt a number of strategies to cope with shocks inflicted by different climate hazards (Parvin et al. 2009).
This poses a serious challenge to social and economic development particularly because the economies of most African countries depend on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water fisheries, energy, tourism etc.
Pilot projects were implemented at a local scale in different climate-sensitive sectors by ICPAC in partnership with representatives from those sectors.
The interview also indicates that after each climate forecast COF ministries from climate-sensitive sectors in Kenya meet separately from ICPAC at the national level in order to discuss their understanding of the implications of the seasonal predictions on each climate-sensitive sector.
Through this program, COFs were also used as vehicles to inform users outside of the climate field, for example, stakeholders in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water management, and health, about the potential implications of seasonal forecasts for their area of activity.
Southern countries lack the means to deal with with climate hazards and their economies also lean to have greater reliance on climate-sensitive sectors, such as agriculture, water, and coastal belts.
According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2012), there is likely to be a marked increase in drought risk over much of Eastern Africa by the 2050s, which ultimately will threaten climate sensitive economic sectors.
A great deal of leisure tourism, which relies on natural features like snow-covered mountains or sunny beaches, is dependent on the weather, making it one of the one of the most climate-sensitive economic sectors.
Overall, climate change has become a source of uncertainty for climate-sensitive economic sectors like agriculture and energy.
