February 2013

By Peter Newton

We are standing in knee-deep, tea-colored water. “Pekerjaan kami di sini”, smiles Pak Tukul, “our work is here”. He and his colleague Pak Maryanto have led my colleague Lini and me to this spot in the flooded peat-swamp forest, wading through pools and clambering across roots and over fallen trunks. We are here to see a research plot where they have been working.

They explain that the two of them have helped to painstakingly identify and measure every tree, sapling and seedling in this 25m x 25m plot, and to measure the depth of the peat, in order to estimate the carbon contained in this patch of forest. It took us an hour by canoe, and a 15-minute wade to get to this site: they tell us that this is the most accessible of the 200-plus plots that they have surveyed.

Why all the hard work? The site is part of an innovative REDD-like project, covering a vast 204,000 hectare (Mauritius-sized) tract of forest in Central Kalimantan, just east of the regional capital of Sampit. Read more »

by Kristi Foster & Daisy Ouya (ICRAF)

As of January 2013, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya is officially carbon neutral. The Nairobi base was certified by The CarbonNeutral Company as a CarbonNeutral® office, setting an example that it hopes other offices and institutions will follow in addressing the challenge of our time – climate change. Prior to offsetting its emissions, ICRAF Headquarters published a detailed account of its 2011 carbon footprint. The findings of this assessment, the first in the Centre's history, are already informing actions to reduce carbon emissions at the headquarters, with the ultimate goal of achieving carbon-neutrality for its operations around the globe. Read more »

by Meryl Richards

Even though rice farmers in Bulacan province in the Philippines are quite concerned about the changing climate, they are even more concerned about water.

Surplus in the irrigation reservoir that provides water for the area has been steadily decreasing over the past 30 years, due to droughts and increasing water demand from the nearby capital of Manila. Since Filipino law prioritizes domestic use over agricultural irrigation use, when allocating water, this sometimes leaves farmers without enough water to irrigate their rice paddies during the dry season.

CCAFS researchers at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), have been working together with the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), the National Irrigation Administration, and local irrigator’s associations to test a solution that reduces, not only water demand, but also greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in rice paddies. This can be done through so called alternate wetting and drying (AWD). Read more »

By Christine C. Jost

In the CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) program, we do research to enhance food security and agricultural development in the face of climate change. But the pathway from research to impact is complex.

Impact pathways encourage scientists to join a network of partners to ensure that their work contributes to a larger vision. The partners work together to design the pathway. Usually scientists focus on the activities we’d like to do, and the outputs that will result.

By designing an impact pathway we focus on achieving outcomes – changes in behaviors, practice, beliefs, understanding, capacity, networks, policies and institutions that are needed in order to achieve lasting impact. Then we work backwards to outputs and activities. An impact pathway approach ensures that all the necessary steps are taken to achieve the desired outcomes. 

Why focus on outcomes rather than outputs? Targeting outputs emphasizes processes, which makes it difficult to link changes, like increased maize production by smallholder farmers, to specific interventions that might have occurred during the process. Read more »