James Hansen and Arame Tall of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security research theme on Climate Risk Management, presented at the World Bank on the challenges and opportunities for supporting smallholder farmers with climate services on a large scale. Learn more about our work on climate services for farmers: http://bit.ly/KUV7Fa

1. Challenges and Opportunities for
Supporting Smallholder Farmers
through Climate Services – At Scale
James Hansen, Arame Tall
World Bank, 23 January 2014
1

2. What is CCAFS?
• Strategic partnership of international agriculture (CGIAR)
and global change (Future Earth) research communities
2

3. What is CCAFS?
• Strategic partnership of international agriculture (CGIAR)
and global change (Future Earth) research communities
• World’s largest research program addressing the
challenge of climate change and food security
Ø Mechanism for organizing, funding
climate-related work across CGIAR
Ø Involves all 15 CGIAR Centers
Ø Outcome-focused
3

4. What is CCAFS?
• Strategic partnership of international agriculture (CGIAR)
and global change (Future Earth) research communities
• World’s largest research program addressing the
challenge of climate change and food security
• 5 target regions across the developing world
• Organized around 4 Themes:
• Adaptation to progressive change
• Adaptation through managing climate risk
• Pro-poor climate change mitigation
• Integration for decision-making
4

5. What is CCAFS?
• Strategic partnership of international agriculture (CGIAR)
and global change (Future Earth) research communities
• World’s largest research program addressing the
challenge of climate change and food security
• 5 target regions across the developing world
• Organized around 4 Themes:
• Adaptation to progressive change
• Adaptation through managing climate risk
• Pro-poor climate change mitigation
• Integration for decision-making
5

6. The What and Why of Climate
Services
Message 1: Climate services can make
a contribution to climate-resilient
development investment.
6

7. The cost of climate variability
• Climate risk contributes to chronic
poverty, vulnerability, food insecurity
• Downside risk: shocks
• Opportunity cost: uncertainty
• Affects farmers, markets, the food system,
FORFEITED
OPPORTUNITY
HARDSHIP
CRISIS
Probability density
the “relief trap”
Climatic outcome (e.g. production, income)
7

8. The cost of climate variability
• Climate risk contributes to chronic
poverty, vulnerability, food insecurity
• Downside risk: shocks
• Opportunity cost: uncertainty
• Affects farmers, markets, the food system,
the “relief trap”
• Climate variability is increasing
• Several opportunities to help agriculture
adapt are…
• Dependent on information
• Constrained by information gaps
8

9. Examples
• Adjusting farm management
• Community-level DRR (flood, storms)
• Characterize risks for agricultural technology
• Index-based insurance to protect assets, increase
access to credit and inputs
• Government agricultural planning and budgeting
• Improve safety nets and food security interventions
• Understand climate change vs. natural variability vs.
non-climatic changes to inform long-term planning
9

10. From to Weather to Climate:
Seamless Early Warning > Early Action
• Depends on time horizon of decision
• Tillage
• Land
alloca.on
• Sowing
• Crop
selec.on
• Irriga.on
• Crop
protec.on
• Household
labor
alloca.on,
seasonal
migra.on
• Harvest
• Changing
farming
or
livelihood
system
• Technology
selec.on
• Major
capital
investment
• Migra.on
• Family
succession
• Financing
for
inputs
• Contract
farming
WEATHER
HOURS
DAYS
WEEKS
CLIMATE
MONTHS
YEARS
DECADES
…
10

11. From to Weather to Climate:
Seamless Early Warning > Early Action
• Depends on time horizon of decision
• Generalizations about increasing lead time:
• Decisions more context- and farmer-specific
• Information becomes more uncertain, more complex
• Therefore the scope of services needed increases
• Climate services more than an extension of weather services
WEATHER
HOURS
DAYS
WEEKS
CLIMATE
MONTHS
YEARS
DECADES
…
11

12. Investing in Climate Services
Message 2: The right investment, leveraging
other efforts, can bring relevant climate
services to smallholder farmers – at scale
12

13. What other “soft investments”
will be needed?
•
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
13

14. What else is needed?
Institutional arrangements
• Limitations of supply-driven climate services
NMS
(climate)
INFORMATION
User
(farmer)
CLIMATE SERVICE
14

15. What else is needed?
Institutional arrangements
• Limitations of supply-driven climate services
• Expand the boundary to agricultural research and
development organizations
NMS
(climate)
PARTNERSHIP
NARES
(agriculture)
VALUE-ADDED
INFORMATION
User
(farmer)
CLIMATE SERVICE
15

16. What else is needed?
Institutional arrangements
• Limitations of supply-driven climate services
• Expand the boundary to agricultural research and
development organizations
• Expand the boundaries to give farmers effective voice
Co-­‐owner
(farmer)
NMS
(climate)
PARTNERSHIP
NARES
(agriculture)
CLIMATE SERVICE
16

17. CCAFS climate services experience
Message 3: CCAFS work to bring
climate services to smallholder
agriculture is an available resource.
17

18. Piloting at Climate
Smart Villages
• Learning laboratory
• Improved information design
• Workshop process
• Evidence of what works
• Demand for scaling up
18

19. Learning from national
agrometeorology programs
19

20. Tackling gender and social equity
• Women disadvantaged
when scaling up climate
services. Answering:
• Why?
• How to overcome?
• Gender challenges
incorporated into training
for intermediaries
• Climate services a proxy
for “climate-smart”
services for farmers
20

21. Training for agricultural
extension, intermediaries
21

22. Evaluating impact
• M&E protocol to measure added-value of
climate services projects to farmer communities
• Good practice guidance:
• Baseline collection
• Ongoing assessment for learning
• End of project impact assessment
• Locally-relevant tool
• Gender responsive
Objectives
of
Assessment:
1. Inform design of new climate services."
2. Identify current gaps in effective climate
service delivery for farmers."
3. Quantify farmer benefit from investment
22

23. Climate information that
is useful to farmers
• Historic + monitoring +
prediction
• Scale problems
• Challenges that developing
country NMS face:
• Sparse historic observations
• Data policy, incentives
• Human capacity
?
• Bringing climate science to
farmer needs
23

24. Climate information that
is useful to farmers
STATION
• ENACTS (Enhancing National
Climate Services):
• Started in Ethiopia (IRI, U.
BLENDED
Reading, NMA, CCAFS)
• Satellite + station, 10 km grid,
31 year complete record
• Data Library platform to build
“maproom” products from data
• Owned, implemented by NMS
SATELLITE
• Generating information
products useful for farmers
24

25. 25

26. 26

27. 27

28. 28

29. 29

30. 30

31. Enables NMS to customize, generate and
disseminate locally relevant climate information
without over-taxing limited human resources.
Transforming how African NMS do business.
31

32. How to reach millions of farmers?
• Address climate information supply, communication, use
•
bottlenecks in parallel
Improving information supply
• Low-hanging fruit for farmer-relevant climate information (e.g.,
•
ENACTS)
Caution about investing in observing infrastructure alone
• Two-fold path to communication capacity:
• Equip organizations that already reach farmers with other
services (e.g., agricultural extension, development NGOs, …)
• ICT and media – particularly for simpler, shorter-lead information
• Institutional coordination mechanisms
• Leverage broader climate services community
32

33. How to reach millions of farmers?
World Vision-Tanzania
•
Serves ~1 M farmers +
pastoralists in Tanzania
•
Addressing key bottlenecks:
• Capacity of TMA to provide
farmer-relevant information
• World Vision human and ICT
infrastructure
• Climate communication
training for WV and extension
33

34. How to reach millions of farmers?
World Vision-Tanzania
•
Serves ~1 M farmers +
pastoralists in Tanzania
•
Addressing key bottlenecks:
• Capacity of TMA to provide
farmer-relevant information
• WV human and ICT
infrastructure
• Climate communication
training for WV and extension
GFCS in Tanzania, Malawi
•
•
UN global process
National Framework process
to engage across government
34

35. What CCAFS can bring you?
• “Go-to place” for good practices, tools, methods,
lessons to inform investments and guide design
• Connecting climate services to agricultural development
• Reaching “the last mile”
• Partner agricultural research with centers of
excellence on climate science and services
• UN Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS)
• Climate Services Partnership (CSP)
• Regional climate centers
• CCAFS Theme 2 hosted by IRI
• …
35

36. Reaching Millions of Farmers with
Climate Services: Mission Possible
• The time is right for climate services.
• CCAFS aims to support partners to scale up relevant
climate services for millions of farmers
• New CCAFS Flagship 2: Climate Services and Climate-
Informed Safety Nets expands collaboration opportunity
http://ccafs.cgiar.org/call-concept-notes-ccafs-flagships#.UqsFVvZByKc
For
more
informa+on,
contact:
Jim
Hansen,
CCAFS
Flagship
2
Leader
jhansen@iri.columbia.edu
Arame
Tall,
Climate
Services
Coordinator
a.tall@cgiar.org
Women
Farmers
in
Amtrar,
Himachal
Pradesh
(India),
36
benefi.ng
from
agromet
advisories.
A.
Tall,
CCAFS