Climate change profile: Burundi

The Netherlands designed climate change profiles to help integrate climate actions into development cooperation policies and activities. The profiles aim to give insight in climate change effects and impacts; the policies, priorities and commitments of the countries concerned; and key climate-relevant activities that are financed with international assistance.

This profile indicates that the projected impact of climate change will further threaten food security and water availability in Burundi. The risks are highest in the north and northeast of the country which are already vulnerable to rainfall shortages and in some zones soil erosion, and in the western Imbo plains which experience both rainfall shortages and floods. Food security risks are highest during the ‘long dry season’, which has increasingly extended during past decades and will be getting drier and hotter due to climate change. Extreme floods and droughts are estimated to result in a yield decline of 5-25% in coming decades and reduce long-term growth by 2.4% of GDP per year. To realise its food security objectives, it must boost its agricultural productivity, which is the lowest in the region.