Adaptation to future climate

Blind vegetable farming: One calabash at a time

Submitted by Cecilia on 11th March 2013
Tags:

by Yemi Ademiluyi

I tagged along with Jessica Thorn when she went out into the field in search of dry season farms. Jessica, a researcher from Oxford University, is working on mapping project sites in Lawra-Jirapa in Northern Ghana as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

In the field Jess is using a combination of quantitative ecological field-testing techniques with qualitative sociological methods. These surveys are used to assess the relationship between ecosystem processes, goods, services and human well being in a changing climate. Read more »

Farmers become citizen scientists: Testing wheat crops for climate change adaptation

Submitted by Cecilia on 11th March 2013
Tags:
A series of Bioversity International projects looks at people's need for seeds

by Jacob van Etten

“So we pulled out the radishes!” We are standing next to a plot with three different wheat varieties in a CCAFS-led Climate-Smart Village in Vaishali district, India. Farmers here are testing out wheat varieties we supplied to them through a climate change adaptation project. “The wheat seeds arrived late, but we still wanted to test them. So we made the space.”

During our visit to Vaishali, it was clear that farmers liked the new wheat varieties. Read more »

High-resolution satellites could improve crop yield forecasts

Submitted by Cecilia on 4th March 2013
Tags:
armer can obtain more accurate yield forecastings if using satellite imagery.

by Wilco Terink, Futurewater

Crop growth models play a major role in sustaining the world-wide food security. These models are used to simulate crop growth during the growing season, and the final crop yield at the end of the growing season, given the farmers’ management practices. At a more strategic level, these crop growth models play an important role to decision makers to take timely decisions regarding food import and export strategies.

The simulation accuracy of crop growth models relies on the quality of the input data. Since crop yield forecasting applications are often applied over large areas that rely on a spatially distributed crop growth model, the uncertainty in the spatial variation of the input data increases. Read more »

How will your forest grow? Climate Analogues provides clues for pine plantation adaptation

Submitted by Cecilia on 1st March 2013
Tags:
Climate Analogues can be used to visualize the future of a pine plantation

By Caity Peterson

Forestry isn’t generally thought of as a game of chance. That designation is usually reserved for cards, horse races, and Parcheesi tournaments. But, when one throws in the volatile variable of a changing climate, the process of tree caretaking becomes an intimidating gamble.

Christoph Leibing, a PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg Centre for Wood Science and Technology, Hamburg, Germany, presented his work last week, February 5, 2013 at the IUFRO Breeding for Value in a Changing World Conference in Jacksonville, Florida. The paper, “Selection of provenances to adapt tropical pine forestry to climate change on the basis of climate analogues,” represents the first published example of the CCAFS Climate Analogues tool in use — a landmark achievement. Read more »

In Sri Lanka, research translates into action on climate adaptation

Submitted by Vanessa on 28th February 2013
Tags:
In Sri Lanka, research is turning into climate action. Photo: Lakshman Nadaraja/

by Vanessa Meadu

In Sri Lanka, where climate change is expected to contribute to rising temperatures and changes in the quantity and distribution of rainfall, there are serious concerns about the impacts on farming. This extends to the livelihoods of smallholder farmers who rely on the land for income, and also the food security of Sri Lankans who rely on key crops for food.

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), which has been working in partnership with Sri Lankan government agencies in 2009, has made a significant contribution to the development of Sri Lanka’s climate change adaptation policies. Read more »

Adapting on the ground: Are farmers' needs being met?

Submitted by Cecilia on 22nd February 2013
Tags:
Village baseline surveys have been crucial for CCAFS work on adaptation

by Laura Cramer

When people think of baseline surveys, they most likely think of quantitative, structured interview processes - like the ones carried out for the CCAFS household baseline survey. In that exercise, we randomly selected 140 households in each site to answer questions about their agricultural practices, months of food shortage, sources of weather information and other topics that can serve as a basis for comparison when we revisit them in 5-10 years.

Household village survey example: Bit by bit, East African smallholder farmers adapting to climate change

But we are attempting to influence more than just individual households. We also hope to see changes in community action and local institutions as a result of our work and the work of others. Read more »

Live video seminar: who has the right to climate change adaptation, 18 February

Submitted by Lucy on 7th February 2013
Tags:
Climate change brings unprecedented challenges for livelihoods in developing cou

Save the date! On Monday February 18, 10:00AM Central European Time (Convert Time Zone), we will broadcast our first online science seminar for 2013.

VIEW THE LIVE STREAMED BROADCAST ON THE DAY HERE.

The seminar will explore the social dimensions of climate change: how development programming needs to embrace resilience, the transformative cornerstones of social science research for climate change, and gender and social differentiation in building agricultural climate resilience.

The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is very proud to be organising this seminar in partnership with both the Danish Institute of International Studies and Copenhagen University. With three short presentations, a panel discussion, and an open discussion during which the online audience can ask questions over chat, the seminar promises to be a dynamic start to your working week. Join in the discussion on twitter using #climaterights

Click here to read the full programme and

Sign up here to be notified when the videostreamning begins!

Cell phones connect farmers to a food secure future

Submitted by Lucy on 21st January 2013
Tags:
Cell phones are a vital link for farmers working in the field but more needs to

By Bruce Campbell

Farmers have been at the forefront of changes and “shocks” since time immemorial, so are well placed to counter climate change. However, “coping” is insufficient if food security is to be achieved. Farmers need to know what kind of season is coming, and thus what and when to plant. They need to know about the outbreak of new pests and diseases. On the longer term, they need to know whether a shift in crop species or different farming strategies are needed. A cornerstone of active adaptation is information availability: varieties to grow, diversification options, seasonal climate forecasts, flood and cyclone warnings, pest and disease outbreaks, market options. 

Read more »

Synergies and trade-offs between agriculture adaptation and mitigation identified

Submitted by Lucy on 18th December 2012
Tags:
New Working Paper outlines how to achieve adaptation & mitigation in agriculture

by Lucy Holt

As the recent negotiations in Doha showed, the adaptation of our food systems to a changing climate and growing population, and the mitigation of emissions created by those systems, are too often viewed as mutually exclusive goals. But it is becoming increasingly clear that this need not be so. As many of the success stories from Agriculture, Landscapes and Livelihoods Day (ALL5) give testament to, adaptation and mitigation often come hand-in-hand. What's more, with proper planning and implementation, switching to climate-smart agricultural practices can increase agricultural outputs, not decrease them. 

While not all adaptive practices will help mitigate the impacts of climate change, and not all mitigative practices will help to increase food production, the question remains, how can we find synergies between adaptation and mitigation and scale-up these specific success-stories to help plan for a sustinable food secure future? Read more »

Can we afford to adapt? The case of aquaculture in Vietnam.

Submitted by Caity on 6th November 2012
Tags:

By Caity Peterson

Catfish farmers in Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta are barely scraping by. They operate on the tightest of profit margins – 3% to 5% in a good year – and deal with a highly volatile, boom-and-bust export market.  For an industry that’s already on the brink, could the addition of negative climate change impacts push it over the edge?

Researchers at WorldFish, as part of the project “Investigating the vulnerability of and economics of adapting aquaculture in Vietnam to climate change”, partly funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), have attempted to calculate the costs of adaptation to these impacts, a first for fisheries and aquaculture at the national level.

Fish on the fryer

Aquaculture in the Mekong River Delta accounts for 80% of Vietnam’s total shrimp production and 76% of its cultured fish production (2008 statistics). In addition to our beleaguered catfish, the most important product here is brackish-water shrimp, cultivated both extensively and intensively over large areas of the delta. Being largely coastal endeavors, catfish and shrimp farming will undoubtedly be affected by the changing climate.

Read more »

Syndicate content