Priority setting, data, models and scenarios

The goal with this research is to enhance the capacity of stakeholders to make informed decisions and set national priorities around climate-smart food systems interventions and policies. This is done through providing access to and training on relevant decision-support tools, models and information on trade-offs and foresight, and facilitating socio-economic scenario-building exercises in relation to climate change.

Through the use and provision of CCAFS and CGIAR climate science and decision-support tools and strategic engagement it is envisioned that national and sub-national institutions will enact equitable food system policies, plans and strategies. In turn, this will increase institutional investment by international actors such as the World Bank, UNFCCC and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) into climate-smart practices and strategies.

Selected Projects

The scenario-guided policy planning project engages policy-makers, researchers and other stakeholders for better development planning and investments through the use of future climate and socio-economic scenarios. Participants explore alternative plausible futures and are equipped to re-think and re-organise current plans and structures to create more robust climate and food-related policies and strategies.

The Flagship has a number of climate change tools and platforms publicly available. Through this work the team will ensure the upgraded online weather simulator MarkSimGCM is completed, together with associated Google-Earth-based tools. Work on spatial generation of simulated weather data for assessing impacts of climate change on crops, livestock and farming systems will also be completed. All the tools are available on the online CCAFS-Climate portal.

A project led by the University of Reading supports the development and use of participatory climate service tools and methods by smallholder farmers while investigating the potential for phone apps in this field. The ambition is to get international development institutions and organisations to use the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach, and climate information together with app tools as part of their normal advisory services to farmers.

Participatory trainings for smallscale farmers on climate services and information. Photo: C. Schubert (CCAFS).

Together with the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) of the Philippines, a project led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is establishing a decision-support mechanism on agriculture, climate change and food security policies that uses newly generated data, modelling outputs and innovative scenario assessment. 

A modeling project led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is currently creating an extensive monograph that models climate change impacts on the agriculture sector for a number of countries in Latin America.

In a project under International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a team will conduct household modelling for improved targeting of climate-smart agriculture technologies in all of CCAFS 9 sub-Saharan Africa research sites.

Project Table