Update February 2008
Mon, 02/11/2008 - 21:16 — accca
The First ACCCA Technical Assistance Workshop was organized by the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) from the University of Cape Town, in cooperation with SEI and ENDA-TM, for the 9 African pilot actions in October 2007.
A kick off meeting for the 5 new ACCCA pilot actions, funded by IDRC, was held in Dakar, in November 2007. These actions are located in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa. This brings up the total number of ACCCA pilot actions to 19.
Identifying Climate Vulnerability Exposure is a short guidance sheet which outlines an approach to identify the key climatic hazards for a specific region and livelihood or economic activity.
The Climate Change Explorer, a tool to facilitate an advanced understanding of long-term climate forecasts for screening adaptation strategies and actions is available to all ACCCA pilot action teams.
Risk Communications on Climate Change and Variability is a preliminary guide to help ACCCA pilot action teams to carry out an essential part of their pilot actions.
Monitoring ACCCA Pilot Actions is available on line, a "Monthly Journal" in which the ACCCA teams and partners can regularly provide inputs on a set of indicators that have been jointly agreed upon.
The 2007 ACCCA Project Advisory Panel Meeting (PAP) meeting was held during COP13, in Bali, Indonesia, on December 7th.
Field visits are planned to Malawi and Mali in early April and to Tanzania in June. A field visit to Kenya was postponed due to security concerns but we recieved confirmation from the team that work is still being carried out.
A training of trainer's workshop with the Climate Explorer tools is being planned by CSAG-UCT for a small group of modelers for early March.
A regional workshop will be held in April for Asian pilot actions and is being organized by SEA START-Bangkok.
News from the ACCCA Pilot Actions
The 2007 European Development Days were held from November 7th to 9th in Lisbon, Portugal. Three ACCCA pilot actions were invited to present their initiatives in a side event organized by Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) called "Voices from the Field". This event was a great opportunity for UNITAR and its partners to promote the ACCCA project as well as to contribute to the discussion concerning how development policies can adapt to a shifting climate and how effective decisions about adaptation strategies can be made in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries.
Annie Roncerel, UNITAR, provided an overview of the ACCCA project, highlighting that the purpose of bringing together stakeholders and members of the scientific community in developing countries was in order to enable and support effective adaptation decisions to reduce vulnerability to climate and environmental changes. Her presentation was followed by the presentations of the three principal investigators from the Nigeria, Mali and Malawi pilot actions. All three stressed the importance of assisting their respective countries in adapting to climate change.
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Ibidun Adelekan from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Through the presentation of the pilot action "Community-led climate adaptation programme for sustainable livelihoods in coastal areas of South-Western Nigeria", Ibidun Adelekan described the active engagement of fishery communities in participatory methods of knowledge development, as well as outlined vulnerability to past and present climate risks and the range of associated adaptation options. These results will be used in education and public awareness activities targeted to coastal communities and the general public. Decision-making support tools will be developed to enable influential decision makers at the regional and national levels to work towards implementing policies and measures that will advance effective adaptation to climate change. |
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Boubacar Sidiki Dembele, from the Ministry for Environment and Sanitation, Mali. Building on NAPA and the Dutch climate change project NCAP initiatives, Boubacar Dembele explained that his pilot action "Climate adaptation from bottom up collaboration between Malian communities and scientific organizations to identify and implement responsive water management actions" aims to reinforce the collaboration that already exists in the Malian scientific community, as well as to create better risk communication tools to improve interactions between the scientific and rural communities. |
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Ethel Kaimila, from the Malawi Red Cross Society. Ethel Kaimila's pilot action "Audiovisual tools for community-based adaptation: bridging the work of the meteorological service and the Red Cross" demonstrates that communities experiencing impacts of climate change are motivated to learn more about the issue and to see how to apply climate information in their farming lives to improve their livelihoods. |
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| The fishing seasonal calendar produced during the participatory rural appraisal carried out by the Ghana pilot action illustrates the conclusion reached by all presenters: "Development that does not recognize and include consideration of climate change and climate risks is not good development practice". The feedback received from participants received demonstrated the success in raising awareness on the potential impacts of climate change. |  |
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
The workshop examined the needs identified during the inception workshop that was held in Ouagadougou a year ago. The objective was to provide a venue for hands-on work and guidance on the analysis and interpretation of climate data, and on strategies for developing risk communication materials. The workshop was also an opportunity to review the progress of pilot actions, identify the 'next steps' to be taken by the teams upon their return to their respective countries, and compile the specific needs of each country for the successful completion of the ACCCA project. (Full report)
As the leading partner in charge of technical support for these new pilot actions, ENDA-TM welcomed more than 20 participants and facilitators for the 3-day workshop in Dakar. Two participants from each pilot action team had been invited to attend the event. Training and guidance was provided by ACCCA partners and IDRC. The workshop was designed as a participatory event; it offered pilot action teams the opportunity to get together and share knowledge, thus helping to create of a project-wide community atmosphere. The workshop also provided the opportunity to introduce teams to technical advisors and to define respective roles. One of key objective of the workshop was to identify key messages regarding adaptation and risk communication to help the teams in the revision of their project documents. Pilot action teams discussed their project proposals and identified needs and opportunities for further technical assistance. ( Full report)
TOOLS AND METHODS
Several guidance tools / documents were produced and used for the workshop preparations and to support technical assistance provided to the pilot actions,
This note (Full document) describes the outcomes of the process that will allow the analyst:
- To identify measurable climate variables that can be obtained from climate information systems for global climate models for relevant time periods in the future
- To identify climate variables and thresholds of concern that would be required in planning adaptation strategies and measures. This will prepare teams to work on constructing climate envelopes that represent the range of model outputs available for potential future exposures to climate stresses.
- To identify gaps in knowledge where additional sectoral and livelihood studies are required or may be available but not brought into the team's expertise, at the local to national and even regional level.
The Climate Change Explorer (Full document) is an integral part of weAdapt http://www.weAdapt.org, a collaborative effort to make climate risk management decisions practical, yet robust. The platform assembles 'good practices' across a range of issues relating to climate change adaptation, including vulnerability and risk mapping,multi-criteria assessment, decision screening using envelopes and rules, and databases on criteria and actions. Learning through hands-on work with partners is central to the design of the platform and the CCE tool. Current developments are tested with key partners to develop prototype applications. The Climate System Analysis Group - UCT (ACCCA partner) website provides daily values for precipitation and temperature and monthly statistics for control and future conditions from several climate models. ACCCA teams can download the tool from: http://data.csag.uct.ac.za/resources.
This document (Full document) provides an introduction to the role of researchers, planners national and local organizations in risk communicaition that will allow the analyst:
- To communicate the existence of increasing climate change and variability;
- To use this information to explain current climate events and possible future ramifications;
- To communicate the need to take action as proactively as possible in order to reduce negative impacts; and,
- To create the conditions for discussing positive adaptation strategies and share experiences and lessons.
Faced with the multiple requests to meet the monitoring requirements of the ACCCA pilot actions funded by several donors, UNITAR developed a document integrating monitoring requirements from the various funding institutions; it combines the Dutch NCAP set of indicators as a starting point with the other Logframe elements of the EC-AIDCO/DEFRA as well as the additional dimension based on the "Outcome Mapping" theory proposed by IDRC. In addition to a strict logical framework method, the Outcome Mapping focuses on one specific type of results, the behavioral changes, as outcomes which are defined as "changes in the behavior, relationships, activities or actions of the people, groups and organizations with who a programme works directly". The principles of outcome mapping can be used as a foundation for developping a regular narrative account of the social and organizational learning facilitated by the Programme implementation teams at its different levels (Full document).
ON THE MANAGEMENT SIDE
ACCCA partners (SEI, START-International, SEA-START, UCT-CSAG, ENDA-TM, UNITAR) and two representatives from the European Commission were present at the meeting which was chaired by Youssef Nassef, from the UNFCCC Secretariat. The meeting gave the project partners the opportunity to share on the work completed to date as well as discuss the obstacles encountered over the past year. Next steps for the coming year were also agreed upon. Annette Moehner (UNFCCC Secretariat) briefed attendees on the status of the Nairobi Work Program on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. She highlighted the fact that the ACCCA pilot actions clearly fit into this programme. Following her presentation, a discussion ensued on how to maximize interaction and cooperation amongst the partners and other organizations. It was highlighted that adaptation is a new issue and that many questions remain to be answered, but through collaboration between the institutions, it is possible to overcome this challenge (Full document).
NEXT STEPS
