Farmer-led adaptation innovations are at the heart of CGIAR’s Livestock and Climate adaptation work
CGIAR Initiative on Livestock and Climate; Dec 31 2022
Livestock and Climate is a first-of-its-kind program in CGIAR that looks at both mitigation and adaptation opportunities for livestock in developing countries across Africa and South America. One of its key objectives is to support up to 80,000 farmers to adopt adaptation practices that are climate smart and contribute to their livelihoods in a sustainable manner.
In the second half of 2022, researchers from the initiative organized workshops in Kenya (in Nandi county) and Ethiopia (in North Shew Zone in Amhara) to ensure that key stakeholders were on board with the priorities and planned activities that were shaped by previous consultations with them. The groups consisted of government officials, national research partners, farmer cooperatives (especially ones that included women and youth) and private sector organisations. The consultations were led by researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and ICARDA in sites that overlapped with other CGIAR initiatives such as Low-Emission Food Systems, Mixed Farming Systems and Sustainable Animal Productivity.
Recently we met with climate adaptation scientist, Birgit Habermann, one of the leads on the adaptation work of Livestock and Climate, to talk about the outcomes of the inception workshops and the innovative approach the initiative is taking towards harnessing local farmer knowledge and climate adaptation practices.
How will you monitor success across the project?
We have feedback mechanisms built in all our activities that enable us to follow up on impact and outcomes. For example, we have a lot of partner workshops planned for stakeholder interactions, and we start with farmer to farmer field days in the first 6 months of 2023 to keep up the dialogue with farmers we are working with. We believe that face to face interactions are the best means of monitoring impact, as long as there is documentation as well.
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