Developing collective knowledge system and policy implications on climate change

Fondo Bioclimático in Mexico is an example of a program that is extracting payments from land, previously deemed useless because of soil degradation, through its use of agroforestry and forestry systems to foster carbon sequestration. Additionally, it is a cost-effective strategy for collective income generation because the contracts are created and brokered by the farmers, allowing them to design, manage, and monitor their programs on individual or communal land. This occurs once external assistance has been offered to make the initial contacts between smallholders and CDM programs, and to develop the capacity of local groups to negotiate and meet technical monitoring criteria.

Research and practice have shown that collective action institutions are very important for technology transfer in agriculture and natural resource management among smallholders and resource-dependent communities. They also are important for spreading information and technology practices for various climate change response strategies, both for mitigation and adaptation.

The mitigation strategy requires extension and knowledge. The ability to change fuel sources depends on access to resources and local institutions that offer education and extension work, which require various forms of collective action, both for information sharing and coordination. These types of low-capital technologies require collective action to facilitate information flows among community members as groups of smallholders cover more area, and the cooperatives assume the transaction costs of developing and enforcing contracts with individuals.

Diseases and climate change

Africa is starting one of the first efforts to look at the relationship between plant diseases and climate change. The project is called “Mitigating the impact of climate change on rice disease resistance in East Africa which work in Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. According to the International Panel on Climate Change the Great Lakes region of Africa is expected to be especially vulnerable to climate change.

In East Africa, in recent years, high temperatures and erratic rainfall in Uganda have contributed to an increase of diseases like rice blast, brown spot, grain rot and bacterial blight. In Tanzania, there are few rice varieties which are resistant to disease. Rice blast and sheath rot have caused 20% loss of the rice crop in Rwanda. Rice diseases often adapt quickly to their hosts, so that new varieties may lose their disease resistance within a few years. A first step will be to learn more about the diversity of pathogens and their relationship to rice. The project will study the interactions between diseases and rice and will identify genes that will help breeders to develop varieties with more durable resistance. Effective genes can be added to popular varieties using marker assisted selection (MAS).

The team will also study farmers’ knowledge of disease and climate change, to build on indigenous knowledge. The project will link with advanced institutions, especially German universities. 

New project to identify best approaches to improve agriculture in developing countries

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) launched a new project, Global Futures for Agriculture, to improve agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability in developing countries. Focused on evaluating promising technologies, investments, and policy reforms and high global food prices in 2008 underscored the importance of research to help achieve the goals of feeding the world’s burgeoning population while protecting critical natural resources.

The researchers feel that sustainable agricultural growth in developing countries is challenged as never before by climate change, increasingly volatile food and energy markets, natural resource exploitation, and a growing population with aspirations for a better standard of living.

The project will enable researchers to develop an enhanced version of IFPRI’s International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT), a state-of-the-art economic model that projects the future production, consumption, and trade of key agricultural commodities, and can assess the effects of climate change, water availability and other major trends.

Improvements to the IMPACT model will make it possible to more effectively evaluate potential research expenditures and their impact on the world’s most important crops, forests, and livestock. The research will focus on regions most vulnerable to global changes in the next 30 to 50 years, with special attention on the rural poor and smallholder farmers.

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