Climate Exchange

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ommunities

Funding

While there are significant funds available for both climate change

adaptation and climate science research, funding for activities which

support dialogue between the two and enable the operationalization of

climate information is difficult to identify, particularly where efforts are

focused on meeting the climate information needs of community and

non-governmental users. In July 2011, the Climate and Development

Network approved £120,000 for a 12-month pilot.

The award is held by

King’s College London, with sub-award contracts withCRS andChristian

Aid, which lead in-country activities in Senegal and Kenya respectively.

Project funding covers the costs of exchange activities and a very small

percentage of staff time for those leading the coordination of activities.

While implementation is to some degree dependent on all partners being

willing to contribute expertise for free, it is also clear that all benefit from

the engagement. Scientists are able to demonstrate the tangi-

ble impact of their work, humanitarian and development

policymakers can develop more effective forms of support,

and community decision-makers have access to relevant

sources of expertise. The approach has not required infra-

structural investment, and the potential and appetite for

upscaling the approach is evident.

Involving the community

Community-based evaluations at the end of the rainy

season review the process to ensure that communities

receive timely, relevant information and allow partners to

undertake the changes in format, channels and types of

information required to better support community deci-

Case study: Senegal

This two-way exchange in the Kaffrine district of Senegal has brought together

climate science and meteorological expertise from national, regional and

international institutions with humanitarian decision-makers acting at

community, district, national, regional and international levels. This project has

been led by the National Senegalese Civil Aviation and Meteorology Agency

(Agence Nationale de l’Aviation Civile et de la Météorologie du Sénégal –

ANACIM) together with the Senegal Red Cross (Croix Rouge Sénégalaise – CRS)

as part of its national disaster risk reduction efforts and undertaken through

its countrywide network of community volunteers and coordinated with HFP at

King’s College London. The study aims to:

• Contextualize understanding of weather and climate hazards alongside

other threats to human vulnerability

• Strengthen access to, understanding, and appropriate application of

climate information among humanitarian and development organizations

• Improve climate scientists’ understanding of humanitarian users’ climate

information needs.

More than three quarters of Senegal’s population works in the agricultural sector.

Since the mid-1990s, Senegal has witnessed an increase in flood disasters, while

in 2011 the rains were poor. Both types of climate event have destroyed harvests,

depriving agriculture-dependent families of income and driving them to migrate

to flood-prone informal settlements in urban centres. The Kaffrine district has

500,000 inhabitants, 90 per cent of whom are rural.

On average, 20,000 people

in the district are affected by are affected by rain damage and flooding each year.

Exchange activities are timed around Senegal’s seasonal rains and

embedded within ongoing humanitarian and development frameworks to

support flood-prone communities. Focused on using forecasts in the near

term – where the outcome of the forecast can be quickly assessed – the

exchange uses a workshop methodology developed by Dr Arame Tall to bridge

the gap between providers of climate science and users of climate services.

The approach was developed and tested within the auspices of Red Cross

work, and aims to build the confidence of communities to make greater use of

information on longer-term climate change.

The initial section of each workshop comprises a series of modules tailored

to promote user understanding of relevant areas of climate information.

As well as information on seasonal, medium and short-term forecasts and

climate change, the workshop in Senegal included modules on hydrological

impact, environmental mapping, health and climate. A number of other

dialogue approaches incorporated in the workshop format are specifically

designed to support users’ understanding of the levels of confidence and

uncertainties within the science and how these might be downscaled to

support national and community-level decision-making. These include:

• Knowledge Timelines, comparing community and scientific indicators

• Probabilistic downscaling, comparing local experience of impact with

national observations and forecasts

• Joint scientist/policymaker/community decision maker Early Warning>Early

Action forecast scenario game, supporting appropriate application of climate

information at different timeframes in specific contexts

• A joint scientist/policymaker/community decision maker visit to the

community where exchange activities are being undertaken.

Many participants in the exchange have welcomed the creation of space

for cross-sectoral, cross-departmental dialogue to support community

resilience, recognizing its current absence at many levels of decision-

making. In Senegal, exchange workshops have brought together extension

workers from the Government Departments of Agriculture with the National

Meteorological Agency, hydrologists and university climate modellers

with humanitarian and community decision makers to share institutional

expertise in climate research and environmental mapping. There is scope

to further develop the range of bodies relevant to other decision-making

processes as the exchange approach is upscaled and developed.

The study has identified gender-differentiated vulnerabilities and

capacities in the community to cope with hydrometeorological disasters

– for example, women were particularly keen to receive further

information on dry periods as their planting takes place after men’s,

leaving a very short period for their crops to mature – and helped to

define priority adaptation needs beyond the local capacity to cope. It has

enabled meteorologists and climate scientists to better understand the

types of climate services which users need to inform specific livelihood

decision-making processes.

As in Kenya, the exchange approach allowed an opportunity to consider

the range of information needs identified through the community-based

evaluation within technical consultations among exchange partners in

order to identity areas where existing climate data might better strengthen

the information currently available. This process identified data which are

not currently being made available to national meteorological agencies,

but which easily could be – for example, it found that the National

Meteorological Services have restricted access to detailed short-range

forecasts and products from the European Centre for Medium-Range

Weather Forecasts, particularly monthly forecasts.

The exchange offers the opportunity to make greater use of

humanitarian and development organizations and faith networks as

conduits for both the dissemination of climate information and feedback

to scientists on ways in which climate services may better meet the needs

of those most vulnerable to climate impacts. For communities in the

Kaffrine district, SMS text messages in local languages, blackboards with

assigned neighbourhood relays and mosques were among the media that

were relevant to community members, with women finding locations such

as water boreholes – where they tend to meet in the course of their daily

routines – useful for disseminating information. By making use of these

dissemination methods, information can empower communities so they

are better prepared for hydrometeorological disasters.

Climate information is often difficult to understand, either because of

the terminology used or because it isn’t translated into local languages.

Participants also felt that the formats used to provide information did

not always convey inherent uncertainties to users, and that the timing of

climate information did not always meet the communities’ needs. There

is a need to transform scientific information, which is often complex and

in the form of maps or percentages, into simple and accessible messages

that would allow people at risk to make sensible decisions on how to

respond to an impending threat.