CGIAR Climate in the News

Meanwhile, a report released at the climate change talks in Bonn last week by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) said the cloudy aspects of climate forecasts are no excuse for a paralysis in agriculture adaptation policies. “Climate projections will always have a degree of uncertainty, but we need to stop using uncertainty as a rationale for inaction,” said Sonja Vermeulen, head of research at CGIAR’s research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security (CCAFS) and lead author of the study.

Whether it's swapping coffee for cocoa in Central America or bracing for drought in Sri Lanka with a return to ancient water storage systems, findings from a new report from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) chart a path for farmers to adapt to climate shifts despite uncertainties about what growing conditions will look like decades from now.

Photoessay from AllAfrica, depicting the work of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in East Africa. www.ccafs.cgiar.org

Findings from a new report from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) chart a path for farmers to adapt to climate shifts despite uncertainties about what growing conditions will look like decades from now.

By Holger Meinke (CCAFS ISP Member): "Vietnam's population is 88 million. In 10 years it will exceed 100 million. If you think we are experiencing change, visit Vietnam. In the past 10 years Vietnam has gone from a net importer of rice to becoming one of the largest exporters. It has also become one of the largest coffee producers in the world. And though people are still poor, there is little strident poverty of the type you still see in many other developing countries and throughout Africa. "

Op-ed in Al-Jazeera by Sonja Vermeulen, Head of Research CCAFS and Andy Challinor, University of Leeds. New article presented: Addressing Uncertainty in Adaptation Planning for Agriculture, a study published online at PNAS.org  - "Global temperatures have not been this high in at least 4,000 years. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today - 400 parts per million - has not been this high for three million years. Climate change has moved from an abstract concept to a basic fact of nature, and scientists have been researching its effects on food production and prices."

Photo: P. Casier (CGIAR). South Asia has always been a climatic hot spot. According to Pramod Aggarwal, South Asia principal researcher and regional program leader for agriculture and food security for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), over 70 percent of the region is prone to drought, 12 percent to floods and 8 percent to cyclones. “Climate stress has always been normal [here]; climate change will make things worse,” he said.

Recently, the CGIAR came up with focused research programmes on specific themes and Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) introduced the concept of "Climate Smart Villages (CSVs)" in India with adoption of five villages, Sandheer, Pakhana, Beer Nariyana, Anganthali and Traveri in Haryana.

‘What happens when some of the world’s thought leaders in hunger, nutrition and climate justice meet with innovators working at the frontlines of climate change in developing countries? At the Hunger, Nutrition and Climate Justice conference in Dublin yesterday, these pairings helped bring lofty theories down to earth, infusing discussions on rights, risk, knowledge and empowerment with touching and inspiring examples from around the world.’

Frank Rijsberman, head of the world's leading Cgiar crop research stations, said: "There's a lot of complacency in rich countries about climate change. We must understand that instability is inevitable. We already see a lot of refugees. Perhaps if a lot of people come over on boats to Europe or the US that would wake them up."

“Even when our knowledge is incomplete, we often have robust grounds for choosing best-bet adaptation actions and pathways, by building pragmatically on current capacities in agriculture and environmental management, and using projections to add detail and to test promising options against a range of scenarios,” said Sonja Vermeulen, head of research at the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and lead author of the report.

Last year, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change chaired by former chief government scientist Prof Sir John Beddington - who previously warned of a perfect storm of food, water and energy shortages within 17 years - set out seven concrete, evidence-based recommendations to generate a shift toward more sustainable agriculture.

"We documented all the different types of soils and mapped them so that our decision-makers at national and regional levels can use the maps to decide where to invest in terms of food production and urbanization," said Robert Zougmore, regional program manager for west Africa at the CGIAR research program on climate change, agriculture and food security.

Vietnam: The Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) research program, part of the CGIAR agricultural research partnership, has announced it is establishing a new hub in Vietnam. The country is the world’s second largest rice exporter and plays an important role in global food supply. “Vietnam is the country most vulnerable to climate change in Southeast Asia,” said Dr Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), one of the participating organisations. (CGIAR). Photo: V. Meadu (CCAFS)

The conference on “Hunger-Nutrition-Climate Justice” that I attended in Dublin this month has shown a hugely significant development. Finally, grassroots activists, smallholder farmers, pastoralists and fishermen are being given a voice and placed at the centre of climate change discussions. Written by Frank Rijsberman

Frank Rijsberman, chief executive of the CGIAR, a partnership of 15 international agricultural research centres, told AlertNet from Dublin that attitudes among scientists have shifted to recognise that local knowledge and concerns must play a part in helping farmers adapt to climate change. It is no longer a question of researchers delivering new plant varieties and growing techniques in a one-way process.

"Farmers do have important knowledge that needs to be combined with modern science," he said. But Rijsberman noted that 60 percent of people at the conference had voted 'no' to a question on whether there is enough local knowledge to tackle hunger and climate change, adding that there is still a need for innovation.