Where We Work

Where we work

CCAFS is initially focusing on  three  regions – East Africa (EA), West Africa (WA) and the South Asia- to carry out its research, with work expanding into Latin America and Southeast Asia later in 2013. The 15 initial benchmark sites in these regions represent areas that are becoming both drier and wetter, and are focal locations that will generate results that can be applied and adapted to other regions worldwide.

These three regions were also chosen because together they match the following criteria:

• Poverty and high degree of vulnerability to climate.
• Complementary set of social, cultural and institutional contexts.
• Complementary climatic contexts, with different temporal and spatial scales of climate variability and degrees of predictability.
• Significant but contrasting climate‐related problems and opportunities for intervention.
• Security, governance, institutional capacity that favour likelihood of generating transferable results.

While drought is clearly a major threat for many parts of Africa and South Asia,in areas of increasing rainfall, there is a need to maximise the opportunities that climate change will bring. The three initial CCAFS focus regions offer the full range of anticipated conditions that will allow CCAFS to consider this holistic view.

CCAFS Benchmark sites

Within the three initial focus Regions, a preliminary set of 15 benchmark sites and blocks were selected. Sites are flexibly defined as broad areas that typically include several adjacent districts. You can explore these sites from the left sidebar of this page.

Benchmark sites activities

Baseline surveys

Through CCAFS’s partner organizations, implementation of household baseline surveys in these initial blocks has been underway in late 2010 and early 2011. This survey effort aims to gather baseline information at the household‐level about some basic indicators of welfare, information sources, livelihood/agriculture/natural resource management strategies, needs and uses of climate and agricultural‐related information and current risk management, mitigation and adaptation practices. The household baseline survey will be supplemented by village baseline surveys in mid‐2011. The plan is to revisit these households and villages after roughly 5 years, and again in 10 years, to monitor what changes have occurred since the baseline survey was carried out.

click to access baseline survey data and reports

Sampling Blocks

Within these larger sites, CCAFS, together with its local partners, has identified 10 x 10 km blocks where the site selection criteria were met. This will allow CCAFS/partner research teams to link socio‐economic research with land‐use analyses and carbon measurements partially based on satellite images, for example.

In some countries (e.g., WA and Ethiopia), 30 x 30 km blocks were chosen because of lower population densities and larger distances between villages, thus ensuring the criteria for household survey sampling were met in all regions.

The blocks were selected to include as much variation as possible between blocks within each of the target regions. It is recognized that different research activities will be conducted at different scales, and thus it is understood that the “block” is the lowest level in the hierarchy, some research activities will be conducted at the broader “site” level (in which a “block” is located) and other activities will be conducted at the national level.