Advancing science
Efforts to design services that meet the needs of farmers and the institutions that support them can build on a rich body of knowledge and experience. Yet critical gaps in knowledge, information, methodology, and evidence must be addressed if these services are to contribute to scaling up climate-smart agriculture.
Our vision
Farmers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are supported by effective climate services and protected by well-targeted safety nets, enabling transition toward climate-smart agricultural systems, and resilient livelihoods.
The CCAFS Climate Services and Safety Nets Flagship addresses key gaps in the information, knowledge, methodology, and capacity needed to develop effective, equitable climate services, and climate-informed safety nets (including index insurance) at scale. Moreover, CCAFS research on climate services advances innovations that address major bottlenecks to the delivery of effective services at scale, within the comparative advantage of CCAFS and its partners. And finally, it strengthens and synthesizes evidence on the role that these interventions can play in building resilience and enabling climate-smart agriculture.
Impact pathways
Effective climate information and advisory services for farmers, and climate-informed safety net interventions, will enable farmers in environments prone to climate risk to transition towards more climate-smart agricultural systems and climate-resilient livelihood strategies, while protecting their livelihoods from climatic extremes.
Improvements to the information that is available to farmers and the institutions that serve them, research that addresses gaps in knowledge and methodology to design effective services, enhanced capacity to bring new innovations into implementation, and evidence that supports well-targeted investment will enable the relevant institutions to provide more effective services at scale.
Gender and youth
Research strengthens the understanding of how climate services and agricultural insurance can meet the differing needs of women farmers, youth, and disadvantaged groups. These activities also incorporate those insights into efforts to scale up climate services and agricultural insurance and test the degree to which these services can be gender transformative by improving control of resources and participation in decision-making. Current evidence is synthesised, and new knowledge and evidence is generated to inform the design and implementation of gender-equitable services.
This CCAFS research contributes to gender-equitable and social-inclusive control of productive assets and resources through methods, insights, and evidence that will lead organizations to adapt plans and direct investment to increases women’s access to, and control over, productive assets and resources.