Events

The Communication and social learning: supporting local decision making on climate change, agriculture and food security workshop should assist the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and its partners identify potential niches where we can make specific contributions to the development of climate change communications and social learning approaches and tools, and help prioritize potential activities to contribute towards CCAFS output targets over the coming years.

Background

Climate change is an immediate and unprecedented threat to the food security of hundreds of millions of people who depend on small‐scale agriculture for their livelihoods. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) brings together the world’s best researchers in agricultural science, development research and climate science to identify and address the most important and complex interactions, synergies and tradeoffs between climate change, agriculture and food security. CCAFS also involves farmers, policy makers, donors and other stakeholders, to integrate their knowledge and needs into the tools and approaches that are developed.

One primary objective of the CCAFS ‘Integration for Decision Making’ Theme is to assemble data and tools for analysis and planning and thus provide improved frameworks, databases and methods to plan responses to climate change. An essential activity is to develop decision support and communication tools so that policymakers, development partners, researchers and farmers can make decisions with a greater understanding of the interactions between local conditions, national policies and programs, and international development, in the face of multiple drivers of change.

We see communications as a two‐way street: on the one hand, how best to convey complex information and research outputs to different stakeholders at different levels; on the other, how the information needs of different stakeholder groups, their perceptions and management of risk, experiences with and approaches to social learning, etc. can inform the development and appropriate use of decision aids.

Drawing on a review of current climate change communications and social learning approaches, tools and decision aids, we want to identify the main strengths and weaknesses in targeting specific stakeholders, as well as the gaps that could inform a CCAFS strategy to engage in this area. We are interested in different kinds of communication approaches, tools and decision aids for different levels of stakeholders (such as farmers, community groups, local governments, etc.).

Overall workshop aims

• Develop investment priorities and a strategy to guide CCAFS engagement in this area
• Identify research gaps that CCAFS and other partners could address.

Specific workshop objectives: In terms of communication and social learning approaches and tools, and framed within a wider mapping of what others are doing, by the end of the workshop we will:

1. Identify and prioritize issues where further understanding and research is needed to ensure more robust and successful social learning and communication strategies and interventions on adaptation, mitigation and risk at the local level
2. Have a clear understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and possibilities of existing approaches and tools that form part of this CCAFS strategy
3. Identify and prioritize gaps in communicating complex information and sharing knowledge on climate change issues that CCAFS is best suited to address, itself or through collaboration and synergies with others.
4. Set out the main elements of a CCAFS strategy to strengthen local decisions on climate change, agriculture and food security
5. Define priority activities for CCAFS - and others - to implement this strategy
6. Develop key pathways of engagement with partners, networks and organizations to help develop and implement the proposed strategy and to forge the optimum environment for knowledge sharing on local climate change and adaptation
7. Identify potential donors that could be approached to leverage additional funding for this multi-year activity