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This information brief highlights key findings in the Vuna report “Assessing the contributions of conservation agriculture to building resilience to drought”

This literature review summarises theory and evidence of the contribution of conservation agriculture (CA) to resilence in the event of drought. A resilient agricultural system is able to continue to function and provide essential ecosystem services, such as food provisioning, following an external shock. If drought occurs, a more resilient system should o er higher productivity and food security. The review asks whether CA improves productivity and food security when rainfall is poor, and what aspects of CA contribute most to these benefits. The review will guide the design of a eld study on the impacts of CA after the 2015/16 El Nino drought in southern Africa.

- This paper presents a review of the commercial sustainability, profitability, challenges, impact, and potential contribution of weather index insurance (WII) products to improving resilience in weather-affected agricultural systems in developing countries. This is important given the continuing demand on governments to manage the considerable weather risk faced by smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa and other weather-exposed regions in developing economies.

This assessment has been developed in a two-step process. First, a literature review was conducted summarising the global experience in developing weather index insurance programmes. Second, we conducted a field investigation designed to extract a more detailed understanding of whether the results of recently launched WII pilots in Sub-Saharan Africa (in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) are in line with the global experience.

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).

Effective scaling up is a key measure of success for an innovation or intervention. A new approach is typically tested in a pilot project that has limited reach. With monitoring and evaluation (M&E), the lessons learned from the pilot can be used to scale up the model to create larger socioeconomic and developmental impacts. The decision to scale up, however, is often made with incomplete information. Given the high cost of scaling up, it is important for governments and development partners to carefully decide which innovations are ready for further investment. A good understanding of the scaling-up process and a framework for analysing scalability is critical for informed decision-making.

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.