Participatory and institutional approaches to agricultural climate services: A south and southeast asia regional technical and learning exchange

Abstract

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) define climate services as providing “… climate information in a way that assists decision making by individuals and organizations. Such services require appropriate engagement along with an effective access mechanism and must respond to user needs. Such services involve high-quality data from national and international databases on temperature, rainfall, wind, soil moisture and ocean conditions, as well as maps, risk and vulnerability analyses, assessments, and long-term projections and scenarios. Depending on the user’s needs, these data and information products may be combined with non-meteorological data, such as agricultural production, health trends, population distributions in high-risk areas, road and infrastructure maps for the delivery of goods, and other socio-economic variables.” Agricultural climate services collect, analyze and share climate information to ensure that farmers and other stakeholders have access to relevant information to make better-informed decisions. Some of these decisions might include how to manage livestock, and when and where to sow particular crops or varieties, as well as how to manage these crops (both in the field and after post-harvest) so that climate risks are mitigated. Weather-based crop insurance programs, and pest and disease early warning systems, in addition to seasonal yield predictions, are among the fastest growing agricultural climate services sectors. What, however is most important, is that climate information must be conveyed in ways that are decision-relevant. This requires a radical re-thinking of how many agricultural extension and ag-meteorological bulletins and advisories are produced and conveyed, with emphasis on involving farmers themselves in the development of appropriate climate information and participatory extension messaging. The ultimate goal is to empower farmers, extension agents, agricultural development organizations, and policy makers with knowledge and new insights. This will give them the capability to innovate and make informed decisions, so they are better equipped to respond to climatic variability to overcome climaterelated production and livelihood risks. Achieving this aim requires an ability to communicate across scientific disciplines, to establish the institutional arrangements to facilitate the exchange of climate information to and from farming communities. In order to share experience and boost capacity in agricultural climate services, a three-day workshop titled ‘Participatory and Institutional Approaches to Agricultural Climate Services Development: A South and South East Asia Regional Technical and Learning exchange” was held between September 17-19, 2017, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with more than 50 leaders in agricultural climate services from 11 countries attending. The workshop was sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) behalf of the Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD). The workshop was organized by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) alongside the SERVIR and Climate Services Support Activity and CSRD South Asian partners. CSRD is an international public-private partnership dedicated to promoting and enabling climate services to improve resilience to the impacts of climate variability and climate change, and to positively change behavior and affect policy in developing countries. CSRD is committed to delivering climate services - including the production, translation, transfer, and use of climate information - purposefully designed to enable policymakers and decision-makers to address significant problems and create solutions. Toward this end, CSRD promotes services that are user-centric and collaborative and effectively harness the power of information, technology, and innovation from around the world. CSRD’s founding partners are the government of the United States through USAID, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government of the United Kingdom (through DFID and the UK Met Office), the American Red Cross, the Skoll Global Threats Fund, Esri, Google, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Focusing on South Asia, CSRD implementing partners include the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), the Bangladesh Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), CIMMYT, ICIMOD, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), The University of Passo Fundo, and the University of Rhode Island. CSRD is also aligned with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). CCAFS seeks to ensure a foodsecure world in the face of a variable and changing climate, through a strategic research-fordevelopment collaboration. It brings together agricultural, climate, environmental and social sciences to identify and address the most important interactions, synergies and trade-offs between climate change and agriculture. The three-day workshop was interactive and offered new opportunities to bring leaders working on participatory approaches and instructional arrangements for the development of relevant agricultural climate services from across South and South East Asia together in one location.