Résumé
Climate change is amongst the greatest future challenges and threats to food security for millions of people across the African continent. Tackling climate change effects and designing transformative pathways for adaptation requires accounting for climatic and non-climatic conditions and their interactions with the human communities; these interactions are particularly acute in mountain areas due to steep environmental gradients, dense populations and often isolated geography. As a result, the capacity of local stakeholders to anticipate future changes and assess their potential impacts is key for enhancing adaptation and resilience in mountain ecosystems. We applied a participatory scenario development framework to explore adaptation strategies to modelled climate changes by mid-21stcentury in the Taita Hills, Kenya, and a mountain site northwest of Jimma in Ethiopia. Potential socio-economic and consequent land use and cover changes scenarios were developed for three alternative pathways: opportunistic coping strategy (business as usual); and two alternative integrated adaptation scenarios. In the Taita Hills, communities rely mainly on farming and non-timber forest products. Under a business-as-usual scenario, human population and activities were projected to concentrate at high elevation, triggering cascade effects on remnant forest cover, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Alternative adaptation scenarios envisaged reforestation combined with either improved agricultural practices or with a strong focus on ecosystem restoration and relocation of human activities. In the Jimma area, coffee production is an important income source. However, rising temperatures are expected to disrupt traditional coffee production under a business-as-usual scenario, resulting in the loss of coffee-forest canopies and a reduction in forest-dependent biodiversity. To address this, the envisioned alternative adaptation scenarios included the expansion of either commercial coffee plantations or agroforestry, including traditional coffee farming. In both Taita and Jimma, adaptation pathways trade-offs between provisioning, supporting, and regulating services are expected, as well as between livelihoods and biodiversity conservation.