CGIAR: Climate Change Mitigation/Adaptat - Phase 01

• Forschungsstelle: DEZA
• Projektnummer: 7F-06287.01
• Projekttitel Englisch: CGIAR: Climate Change Mitigation/Adaptat - Phase 01

Schlüsselwörter (Englisch)

CGIAR

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

Developing countries are highly relevant for climate change work in agriculture and forestry for three reasons. First, they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, secondly they are important sources of current green house gas emissions especially through the logging of natural forests, and thirdly there is much potential for them to receive considerable payments from industrialized countries for increased carbon sequestration (sinks) and avoiding deforestation. In most least developing countries agriculture and forestry account for up to 80% of emissions and it is anticipated that climate change will cause yield reductions in agriculture of around 30% in average in less then three decades. Most important causes are the increased number of extreme weather events, the effects of temperature change on ecosystems and changes in disease patterns. Since most of the worlds' poor, and especially in Africa, are making a living out of forest products or agriculture these two sectors intimately link poverty to climate change. It is for this reason that a number of the research centres and programs of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on Agricultural Research) have taken on climate change as a key research area. In practice however, only some of the research is directly attributable to climate change, for example on temperature/ecosystems interactions and much of the work on the mitigation of climate change. Yet, most of the research agenda of these centres is climate relevant. It is likely that the combined effects of climate change will be anti-poor, meaning will hit the poor harder than better up families. However, opportunities to increase support to poor families arise from international trade of carbon certificates and should be taken advantage of.

The Centres of the CGIAR and the partners of the Challenge Programs have defined the objective to assist rural populations and national and regional decision makers through the collaboration with national partners to

1) anticipate the effects of climate change,

2) develop techniques and practices to adapt to the changes and assure their livelihoods,

3) to explore ways for developing countries to benefit from carbon trade financing.

Programs of five Centres and two global initiatives supported by SDC are largely influenced by the climate change agenda. These are namely ICARDA, the centre dealing with dry areas, the two centres concerned with forestry and agro-forestry respectively (CIFOR and ICRAF), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and Bioversity International, dealing with biodiversity, as well as the Challenge Program Water and Food (CPWF) and the System-wide Genetic Resource Program (SGRP/PGR).

Linked through large research and development groups and networks these entities generate international public goods which are freely accessible to the public. They have the form of climate change related publications, descriptions of practices, new plant species or newly described and tested plant species and varieties. The research information is made available through information media such as open source geo-referential data banks. Particular efforts are deployed to make this information and technologies available to partners in developing countries at the political and technical level.

All centres and programs are periodically subjected to external program and management reviews carried out jointly with other donors. Impact is regularly assessed. It has been shown that each dollar invested in the CGIAR research creates 9 dollars benefit to poor people in average over the last 20 years.

The combined commitment of SDC to these five Centres and two programs is of 4.25 Million CHF. Favourable reviews and strategic assessment by SDC reserved, it is anticipated that this commitment will be renewed.

Projektziele (Englisch)

The overall goal of the research carried out by the CGIAR and its partners is to improve the livelihood of low-income people in developing countries through reduced poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition, and to foster better institutions, policies, and sustainable management of natural resources of particular importance to agriculture and poor people. Climate change research has become a key contributor to this goal through the large and mostly negative implications of climate change for the poorer rural populations in developing countries and the massive changes expected with regards to land use and ecosystems. Climate change makes it significantly more difficult to achieve the Millenium Goals (MDG) and namely the ones related to poverty, hunger and ecological sustainability (goals 1,2 and 7).

The more specific objectives of the research entities covered in this proposal are:

1) Improve predictability of the effects of climate change on managed and natural ecosystems in the developing countries.

Numerous models capturing the consequences of climate change on different world regions constantly evolve. Since developed countries also have vital interests in these models investments in advanced country research is very large and for the developing country oriented CGIAR centre the main challenge is to take advantage of these models, feed own information into them and extract data together with developing country partners for improved predictions for their specific situation and improve the ability to target especially adaptation interventions. Already by now, the CGIAR and its open source network of GIS information is one of the best sources for water availability predictions (IWMI), the implications of climate change on agriculture in the CWANA region (ICARDA) and implications for forest ecosystems (CIFOR). Bioversity International is the leading advisor of national systems to identify and conserve cultivated diversity of main crops and its wild relatives and feeds its impaired knowledge of diversity into the geographic information systems. This information is vital for rapid and intelligent pre-selection of sets of varieties and crops to be tested in environments where crop change or change of varieties is urgent. The international public character of the CGIAR creates legitimacy and responsibility for gathering this data and making it publicly available.

2) Develop techniques to adapt to climate change and assure rural livelihood.

Especially water management will be one of the key challenges for a soft adaptation of agricultural and forest systems to climate change. IWMI and the Challenge Program Water and Food (CPWF) and its national and international partners provide key information on water use and water use efficiency to be used in devising better water use systems. More crops per drop is a key motto, but water research as understood by IWMI and the CPWF is based on the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Besides technical issues around groundwater management, micro-irrigation and water efficient practices, it involves much research on the institutional arrangements for water governance and transboundary management of water resources in large watersheds. The CPWF has brought together researchers from countries sharing watersheds which have never worked together before. This is a clear indication of the comparative advantage of multilateral research schemes to tackle cross-boundary issues.

3) Identify ways for developing countries to benefit from carbon trade.

Especially in the field of forestry, developing countries may be able to capture significant amounts of carbon trade money to benefit poorer layers of their societies. However, today most of the so-called Clean Development Funding does not reach the least developed countries and less so the rural poor. On the other hand, it is them who manage much of the forests and hold the key to forest conservation or destruction for large areas and large proportions of carbon emission of the respective countries. It is urgent to generate the research information which allows assessing the benefits of forest governance practices for reducing emissions and therefore financing through CDM. This involves detailed research on carbon cycles but also on institutional arrangements and even financing technologies. The ICRAF research on novel techniques to assess carbon storage in soils is an example for this.