Bridging the Climate Information and Communication Gaps …...±poor season (inadequate rainfall)...

Bridging the Climate Information and Communication Gaps for Effective Adaptation Decisions: An Integrated Climate

Information Management System

Participatory Decision Support Systems and Tools to Reduce Climate Risks for Small Farmers

At Hotel Galadari , Colombo

20th June 2016

By Dr. A. J. Churi

Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania

Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS), South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE), Janathakshan, Department of Meteorology of Sri Lanka (DOM)

1

Outline

• Climate change Risks in Africa

• Challenges in managing climate change risks

• Farm-level decisions and climate forecasts

• Climate information needs

• Communicating climate information products

• Participatory decision support Systems

• Way forward


2

Climate change risks in Africa

• African is among the region vulnerable to climate variability

• Frequency and severity of natural disasters in form of drought and floods is increasing

• Low GDP by 7% and increased poverty by 12%

• The continent has experienced low adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers


3

Challenges

• There is a limited use of climate information by smallholder farmers due to – poor interpretations: lack linkages to farming

operations

– timely access: tradition methods are radio, TV and email to district agricultural extension officers,

– spatial and temporal resolutions of the forecasts: by agro climatic zones

– the format understood by farmers: such as above normal, normal and below normal


4

Farming decisions and Climate forecasts

• Evaluation of the usefulness of forecasts using crop simulation model – APSIM and DSSAT confirmed that

– farming decisions that are based on forecast information have contributed substantially to adaptation risks.

• Hence, disseminating climate forecast would increase the adaptive capacity to seasonal climate variability


5

Forecast based Farm-Level Decisions

• Strategic decisions that smallholder farmers make

– deciding on the timing and choice land preparation methods and

– selecting crop and their varieties.

– type of planting techniques (such as dry planting) and

– whether to concentrate on off-farm activities: incase of poor season climate forecast


6

Climate information needs

• Smallholder farmers understand better when seasonal climatic forecasts are communicated as

– poor season (inadequate rainfall)

– good season (adequate rainfall),

• Other information needs

– onset of season which can be early, normal or late,

– existence and duration of dry spells and

– length of growing seasons.


7

Climate information needs

• Study conduct in Same District of Tanzania found that, climate information needs of farmers for adaptation decisions – include daily weather forecasts and

– seasonal climate information.

• Seasonal climate information is useful for making informed strategic farm-level decisions – while daily weather forecasts is useful for making

tactical farm-level decisions.

Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS), South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics

(SANDEE), Janathakshan, Department of Meteorology of Sri Lanka (DOM) 8

Sources of Climate Information Products

• Smallholder farmers depend on two sources of climate information products.

• Farmers receive CIP (Fig. 1) from

– TMA and

– Indigenous Knowledge (IK) forecasts.


9

Consensus Forecast Committee

• In each ward consensus forecast committee (CFC deliberate

– the scientific and IK forecasts and produce consensus forecasts that is communicated to farmers, extension agents at village levels and input dealers


10

Consensus Forecast Committee

• The consensus forecasts are used to develop farming operations on the respective cropping.

• The agreed farming operations for the season are then shared to all farmers in the village using various forums such as – village meetings,

– churches,

– mosques and market places


11

Communicating climate information products

• The study conducted in Same District of Tanzania showed that smallholder farmers

– use radio to access seasonal climate information and daily weather forecasts.

– However, they prefer use of mobile phones for accessing climate information.


12

Decision Support Systems

• A framework developed to support informed farm-level decisions of smallholder farmers in form of alert and on-demand.

• The tool is known as FarmSMS and is hosted and used by Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA).

Dr. A. Kijazi (Director TMA) during launching of FarmSMS


13

Decision Support Systems

• FarmSMS operate on web interface for updating forecasts and SMS gateway for sending SMS to smallholder farmers.

• It uses a server: web server and SMS gateway installed and a GSM/GPRS modem

Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS), South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE), Janathakshan, Department of Meteorology of Sri Lanka (DOM) 14

Registered FarmSMS users

• Currently, there are about 1200 smallholder farmers and other stakeholders registered into FarmSMS in different parts of Tanzania.

• Climate forecasts shared to farmers includes – seasonal climate forecasts,

– decadal forecast and daily forecasts on


15

Dat

a m

od

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Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS), South Asian Network for Development and

Environmental Economics (SANDEE), Janathakshan, Department of Meteorology

of Sri Lanka (DOM)

16

•P

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od

elin

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Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS), South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE), Janathakshan, Department of Meteorology of Sri Lanka (DOM) 17

Register Farmer through Mobile Phone

• Farmer register by send SMS

REG <firstname> <secondname> <location>

For example: REG PILI RAJABU DOM

Farmer can query current forecast by sending code SMS as

CF

• The DSS generate responses based on – location of farmer, seasonal forecast, daily forecast

and cropping recommendations


18

Way forward

• Building trust of smallholder farmers to use scientific weather forecasts through – improved policies related to packaging climate

information

• Extended use of ICTs, such as mobile phones for – improved access to climate information and

advisories.

• Development of decision support systems and tools – should focus on farmers’ climate information needs

and decision making.


19

BOHAMA ISTUTI

THANK YOU VERY MUCH


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Bridging the Climate Information and Communication Gaps …...±poor season (inadequate rainfall)...

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