Climate Services: Empowering Farmers to Confront Climate Risks
Lessons from Africa & South Asia
Dr. Arame Tall Climate Services- Scientist, Champion
2 • 3/21/11
• +2° future • 9 billion people
by 2050 ⇒ The Imperative
of Adaptation
The Big Picture
What do we Adapt to?
3 • 3/21/11
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_figures_and_tables.shtml
Projections of precipitation change at the end of the 21st century
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A global perspective on African climate 37
1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075−30
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30West Africa
Year
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all C
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1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075−30
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30East Africa
Year
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1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 2075−30
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Figure 6. Regional averages of precipitation in the IPCC 4ARmodel simulations; 20th century simulations from 1950 to 2000,
and A1B scenario simulations from 2000 to 2100. Regions are defined as in figure 2. Each grey line represents one model, and
the thicker black line is the multi-model mean.
rev-africa_Oct2007_final.tex; 31/10/2007; 11:57; p.37
“A global perspective on African climate” in Climatic Change [Giannini, Biasutti, Held and Sobel]
Uncertainty Remains Large
CC > More erraticity, exacerbation of current climate variability
5 • 3/21/11 How do we support Adaptation under
Uncertainty?
• One solution: Prepare for the Unknown • Improve Decision-Making under
Uncertainty • Equip farmers and policy makers with climate information, early
warnings and forecast to guide, inform and support their decision-making under uncertainty
• Strengthen preparedness at timescales of the week, season to year
6 • 3/21/11 What do we mean by Climate Services for Farmers?
Climate information services build resilience by empowering farmers to anticipate and manage climate-related hazards
7 • 3/21/11 Why Farmers are Not Getting Salient Climate Services
We need to work together to overcome these
tenacious challenges to Climate Service delivery Limited Dialogue
with End Users to identify Needs,
build Trust
Poor Observation network /
Limited capacity of NHMS to
address needs
Inappropriate
Communication channels to Get the Message out
to farmers
Limited capacity of end-users to act of received forecasts– Integration of CS into development support programs
Credit: Arame Tall, CCAFS
8 • 3/21/11
• Salience: tailoring content, scale, format, lead-time to farm decision-making
• Legitimacy: giving farmers an effective voice in design and delivery
• Access: providing timely access to remote rural communities with marginal infrastructure
• Equity: ensuring that women, poor, socially marginalized benefit
• Integration: climate services as part of a larger package of support
Challenges to Scaling up Climate Service for Farmers
Successful CCAFS Experiences demonstrate that Delivering Climate Information
Services for Farmers is Mission Possible
Lessons from Good Practice in Africa and South Asia 2009-2012
10 • 3/21/11
• Spaces for iterative dialogue, interaction and Co-production of climate service
• PAR > key to involve communities, capture innovation
⇒ Co-production of Climate services
• Preliminary Results of Kaffrine end project assessment – Increase in access, from handful in
2011 to 100% by 2012 – Demonstrated Usefulness of
received information, for all products across timescales
– Added value to traditional forecasts
1) Giving Famers a Voice In design of Climate Services
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• Place specificity of farmers’ climate information needs
• Salient communication channels identified to reach the most vulnerable: ü SMS in local language ü Forecast bulletin boards in
strategic outposts across village ü Community relays/boundary
organizations (red cross volunteers, World vision staff)
ü At village mosque ü At water boreholes (women)
2) Leveraging ICTs to ‘reach the last mile’
• Focus on Equity: reaching women and other underserved groups
12 • 3/21/11
The shorter the time range, the more
precise the forecast
Credit: Red Cross/PetLab
⇒ Bringing forecasters and end-‐users to work together to put climate knowledge in the hands of communities at risk from HMDs
3) Innovative tools to Communicate forecasting uncertainty
- Didactic Games
13 • 3/21/11 Communicating Downscaled Seasonal forecasts to farmers
> The PDF
Farmers discussing what 1mm of rain means…
Credit: Dr. Ousmane Ndiaye, ANACIM Credit: J. Hansen, CCAFS Ousmane Ndiaye, ANACIM
14 • 3/21/11
Credit: J. Hansen, IRI/CCAFS KPC Rao, ICRISAT
….To Wote, Eastern Kenya: Research into Use
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• Suite of Seemless forecasting products – Seasonal – Dekadal – 72h – 48h – 3h- nowcasting
4) Seemless forecasting
HOURS DAYS WEEKS MONTHS YEARS DECADES …
WEATHER CLIMATE
• Tailored to User needs ü Content: hazards, scales ü Timing: Alarm threshold ü Message format & language
⇒ Key to support farmers in managing uncertainties inherent in climate forecasting ⇒ Confirmation of risk as season unfolds
16 • 3/21/11
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5) Promoting a coordinated Framework for Climate
Services Global
Regional
National
Identify users • Each user has specific needs • Map out sector-specific
climate service needs
Elaborate climate service • Pluri-disciplinary production
of agro-met advisory service, in collaboration with other technical services
Diffuse largely
User Feedback • For Constant improvement
and tailoring of services to farmer needs
Fig. 2: Outcome of pilot GFCS national Workshops in Burkina, Niger and Mali (July-Sep. 2012) A Best practice model of the Cycle of Climate Service Production
17 • 3/21/11 Everyone has a role to Play in Linking Information to Action
National Hydro-Meteorological Services
(NHMS) Production of hydro-‐met forecasts
NARS (Partners) Tailoring of received climate info > Production of Agro-‐Met Advisory
Communicators & Boundary Organizations: - Media – Extension Services - Other community
relays (NGOs, CBOs, etc.) Widespread communication of climate information and advisory services
National level end-users (rural development policy makers, seed and
fertilizer industry, private sector)
Final End-users (farmers, pastoralists, at risk communities)
Credit: Arame Tall, CCAFS
Fig. 3: Different Roles in the Chain of Climate Information Production and Communication
18 • 3/21/11
1. Identifying Good practice 2. Upscaling Climate Services to millions of farmers
– Incentivizing Legal and Institutional Frameworks for Climate Services at National level
– Leveraging strong partnerships between NHMS, Agricultural research and extension services to produce integrated agro-climate advisories – Role of boundary organizations and media for wide
communication
3. Minimum Standards for Assessing Livelihood Impact - making the case for Climate Services
CCAFS intent to Scale up Climate Services for Farmers
19 • 3/21/11
• Examples surveyed by CCAFS prove that it is today Mission Possible to reach millions of farmers with salient and downscaled climate information and advisory services relevant to support their decision-making under an uncertain climate.
• It is time to Scale Up this approach for many other farmers to have access and benefit from available climate information and advisory services.
• The time is Right for Climate Services.
Photo: Farmer in Ouelessebougou village, happy beneficiary of Mali’s 30year old Agromet advisory program. Credit: A. Tall
For more information, contact: Arame Tall, [email protected]
Reaching Farmers with Climate Services at Scale > Mission Possible