The 2016 Annual Report | CCAFS: CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security

Georgina Smith (CIAT)

Impact through policies and partnerships

Outcomes & Impacts
CCAFS research helps shape US$350M investment in climate-smart agriculture in Niger and Kenya
Outcomes & Impacts
Thousands of villages in South Asia partner with CCAFS to become climate-smart hotspots
Outcomes & Impacts
Countries and partners use CCAFS science and analysis to put the Paris Agreement into action
Climate-smart coffee and cocoa value chains on the rise

C. Schubert (CCAFS)

Capacity development and innovative communication

L. Sebastian

Breakthrough science and innovation

C. Schubert (CCAFS)

Integrating gender and youth

Regional Highlights

East Africa
In East Africa, CCAFS scientists worked with national and regional partners to develop climate change plans and enabled down-scaling of seasonal predictions in Maproom products. In Kenya, CIAT developed a national CSA profile and climate-risk rofiles for 24 counties, informing a US$ 250 million Kenya Climate-Smart Agriculture Project funded by the World Bank.

ICRAF, ILRI and UNIQUE Forestry and Land Use, in collaboration with dairy companies, producer organizations, and Kenya’s State Department of Livestock, submitted a concept note for low-emission and climate-resilient dairy.

In Uganda, IITA supported the integration of climate change in to local development plans and engaged the Ugandan Parliament on gender integration and budgeting.

In Tanzania, CCAFS, ICRAF and CIAT engagement led to a government-authored concept note for CSA investments.

CCAFS future scenarios work informed the Tanzanian National Environment Policy and the Ugandan Agriculture Sector Strategic Plan.

In Ethiopia, ICRAF and CIAT worked with government partners to develop a framework for CSA prioritization within the context of the national agricultural investment programs.

In Rwanda, training was conducted in the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) method, and Meteo Rwanda used improved data, maprooms, and downscaled seasonal forecasts to provide climate information to farmers.

The East Africa team hosted events and trainings for the Climate and Agriculture Network for Africa (CANA), youth and media.
West Africa
In 2016, CCAFS science and tools informed the development of multiple national and regional level initiatives in West Africa.

Learning from the climate-smart village and agricultural research for development site in Niger informed the design and implementation plan of a $111M World Bank-funded climate-smart agriculture project to be implemented in 60 communes with 500,000 direct beneficiaries.

A CSA investment portfolio was also developed in Ghana to guide development of CSA projects there.

Use of climate information services, supported by CCAFS since 2013, was mainstreamed into the West African Agriculture Productivity Program and will lead to a regional climate information service support project covering Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

With CCAFS support, Senegal’s national meteorological service has generated and disseminated 15 specific climate information products to benefit farmers, pastoralists and fisher folks through the USAID Feed the Future initiative.

On the policy front, CCAFS supported the revision of Ghana’s livestock policy and the rural development plan of Burkina Faso.

Outputs generated from the CSA prioritization exercise were used to develop a project proposal on the promotion of climate-smart agriculture in Mali.
Latin America
In Latin America, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is becoming the accepted approach to help farmers face climate change challenges.

In 2016, the CCAFS Latin America team supported eight national policy processes, some focusing on an agriculture sectoral approach and others focusing on specific systems such as coffee and livestock.

CCAFS and CIAT supported processes in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Honduras, and CCAFS worked with ICRAF to support processes in Peru.

Twelve initiatives involving private and public institutions are promoting CSA options in coffee, cocoa and rice in Peru, Colombia and Nicaragua with support from CIAT and in Guatemala with support from Bioversity.

Bioversity also contributed to implementation of the Collaborative Program on Participatory Plant Breeding of Mesoamerica.

Climate services are also scaling up. Producers’ associations and CIAT are enabling 330,000 farmers to make critical decisions regarding types of crops, timing for planting and harvest, etc. using agro-climatic information coming from the Local Technical Agro-climatic Committees (LTACs) in Colombia and Honduras.

CCAFS, with Bioversity, is also strengthening national and local governments’ decision making processes in support of farmers’ safety nets in Guatemala and emergency response in Costa Rica.
Southeast Asia
Climate change and its impacts are driving adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in Southeast Asia.

CCAFS, with international and national partners, conducted a joint field assessment of the effects of drought and salinity intrusion and identified options for climate change adaptation in Vietnam.

CCAFS supported initiatives for piloting and bringing CSA to scale in Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao PDR.

Cross visits for farmer leaders and key stakeholders from seven climate-smart villages (CSVs) in Southeast Asia were conducted in 2016.

CCAFS also sponsored two information campaigns in the Philippines: one where rural broadcasters aired spots, interviews and programs on climate change and CSA that were developed in collaboration with local researchers and scientists; and another that engaged high school students as youth infomediaries for CSA.

ILRI and IRRI developed risk maps for livestock production and rice production in support of CSA deployment.

Cross-sectoral involvement in seasonal planning, as promoted by ICRAF and CARE, resulted in 10 participatory advisories distributed to at least 3,500 households in northcentral Vietnam.

CSA options were integrated in the rice restructuring plan of Vietnam (approved last year), which the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development is now implementing.

In the past year, CCAFS also provided technical support in drafting the implementation plan of Nationally Determined Contributions for agriculture sector.
South Asia
In 2016, CCAFS South Asia focused on participatory evaluation of CSA technologies and CSV approaches in different agro-ecological zones of South Asia, including a study on enhancing the adaptive captivity of women and youth to climate risks in agriculture.

This led to the identification of a pool of climate-smart agricultural technologies and practices, evaluated based on economic, environmental and social indicators, and prioritized based on local context and farmers’ preferences.

The knowledge generated from our CSV AR4D approach is already being integrated into the agriculture and climate change adaptation plans/programs of national and state governments in South Asia.

CCAFS also focused on developing improved products for agricultural risk management, including insurance and ICT services and spatial monitoring of crop yields in real-time, for effective food security planning. Such inputs are vital to crop outlook assessment and overall food security situation update in Nepal.

Similarly, CCAFS South Asia is developing innovative approaches to increasing the efficacy and effectiveness of agricultural insurance schemes using a mixture of satellite rainfall, NDVI, digital photographs, UAV images and crop models.

CCAFS CSA prioritization studies, scenarios, decision-support tools, and related communications and engagement activities have helped improve the capacity of policy-makers to implement and integrate CSA in their development plans and programs.