Document

This Literature Review is the rst step towards a comparative assessment of Weather Index Insurance (WII) in the agricultural sector in East and Southern Africa. The second step involves visits to four countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Zambia) covered by the Climate Smart Agriculture Programme (Vuna) funded by DFID, which have weather index insurance programmes. The visits will allow collection of information on the recent performance of those programs and obtain the perceptions of key stakeholders on lessons learned, constraints, sustainability, and potential of those insurance programmes to address issues related to strengthening the resilience of agricultural systems to weather risk. The ndings from both stages will be summarised in an Evidence and Learning Report focussing on the determinants of success or failure of the programmes under implementation.

This paper summarizes the main findings of the global experience on the implementation of WII specically the lessons learned on the mechanics of the index, pro tability, bundling, impacts, and potential role in climate change adaptation. It also discusses the challenges of current pilot projects in East and Southern Africa, wherever secondary information is available.

Project Brief  on the Vuna report “Comparative Assessment of Selected Agricultural Weather Index Insurance Strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa,” by Carlos E. Arce (August 2016).

This information brief highlights key findings in the Vuna report “Scaling Up and Scalability: Concepts, Frameworks and Assessment,” by Pooniah Anandajayasekeram.

Crop yields in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are typically less than half of yields in the developed world. With growing populations, and with climate change already beginning to put downward pressure on crop yields, intervention is urgently needed to enable farmers in SSA to produce more food. A key first step is to ensure that farmers have greater, and more reliable, access to high-quality seed of the modern varieties of climate smart crops that will best equip them to both feed themselves and produce food for barter or sale.

In many cases, breeding work for new varieties has been done. Farmers, however, are unaware of the new varieties, or seed of these varieties is not reaching them at meaningful levels. As a result, potential farmer yield and overall production levels for the target crops are not realised. The opportunity cost associated with this is significant and, without intervention, will grow as the effects of climate change increase.

This information brief highlights key findings of the Vuna report “Reaching More Farmers with High-Quality Seed for Drought Tolerant Crops,” by Aline O’Connor and Mulemia Maina of AgriExperience (October 2016).

Climate policy commonly carries an implicit assumption that incremental improvements in agricultural systems are adequate to make them resilient to climate change. In some cases, however, agricultural systems may cross certain environmental thresholds that require more transformational adaptation. Governments and development agencies need to improve their understanding of climate thresholds and their preparedness for transformational adaptation. Climate smart agriculture frameworks should consider the piloting of strategies for transformational adaptation.

This document shows a successfully designed climate change strategies and made  innovative and effective contributions to climate change adaptation and mitigation actions designed by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)  together with its partners.

CCARDESA ICKM System overview pamphlet.

CCARDESA aspires to be a regional knowledge hub that facilitates the sharing of agricultural information and research across the SADC region. Thus, CCARDESA has incorporated knowledge, information and communication as one of the key Thematic Focal Areas of the organization.

Sustainability of rain-fed farming systems under climate variability and change conditions is a key concern for policy and adaptation planning processes to improve food and nutrition security. The challenge is to improve farming and tillage practices to enhance soil moisture availability and harvest excess runoff thereby making the farming systems more reliable and resilient to unpredictable risks of climate change and variability. In this short manuscript, an assessment of climate change impact on the agricultural water availability for rainfed systems in southern Africa is discussed through a pilot project conducted recently as part of climate change adaptation integrated modeling of crop-climate-soil systems. We consider the Pandamatenga plains in north-eastern Botswana, which was undertaken with the main indicators of crop yield impact with respect to soil water availability and excess runoff harvesting potential, for the current climatology (1971-2000) and projected over the coming decades up to the 2050s. The indicators of rainfed practices of growing maize, sorghum and sunflower are discussed, which are likely influenced not only by climate, but also the response requiring local and regional adaptation investments for improved food security and increase productivity. The manuscript recommends technical and policy interventions for incorporating climate change adaptation practices, with the view to outscale to national and possibly regional agricultural development planning processes.

Improving agricultural water productivity, under rainfed or irrigated conditions, holds significant scope for addressing climate change vulnerability. It also offers adaptation capacity needs as well as water and food security in the southern African region. In this study, evidence for climate change impacts and adaptation strategies in rainfed agricultural systems is explored through modeling predictions of crop yield, soil moisture and excess water for potential harvesting. The study specifically presents the results of climate change impacts under rainfed conditions for ma- ize, sorghum and sunflower using soil-water-crop model simulations, integrated based on daily inputs of rainfall and evapotranspiration disaggregated from GCM scenarios. The research targets a vast farming region dominated by heavy clay soils where rainfed agriculture is a dominant prac- tice. The potential for improving soil water productivity and improved water harvesting have been explored as ways of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. This can be utilized to explore and design appropriate conservation agriculture and adaptation practices in similar agro-ecological environments, and create opportunities for outscaling for much wider areas. The results of this study can suggest the need for possible policy refinements towards reducing vulne- rability and adaptation to climate change in rainfed farming systems.