Poor Ethiopian Farmers Receive ‘Unprecedented’ Insurance Payout

Last week, Oxfam America and the Rockefeller Foundation announced a weather index insurance payout of unprecedented scale directly to poor farmers. Thanks to a groundbreaking new program that relies on advanced satellite technology, more than 12,200 farmers in 45 villages in Northern Ethiopia will benefit from drought protection.  As a result of this year’s drought conditions each farmer will receive a share of the total $322,772 in payouts offered through the Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaption Program, known as HARITA, to help cover crop losses.

A farmer signs his name indicating he received compensation for participating in games run by IRI and REST to determine how farmers perceive economic risk and value compensation from insurance at different timescales. Brian Kahn/IRI

In many rural areas, disaster often strikes poor farmers hard, forcing them to make choices that drag their families deeper into poverty. To survive, they might have to sell their tools for cash to buy food, or take their children out of school to save on fees. With weather insurance, farmers can protect the investment they make in their crops, and feel confident in taking out loans for fertilizer and better seeds to improve their harvests.

 “We used to be blocked because it was too expensive, if not impossible, to get drought and crop loss data in time to help the farmers,” said Dan Osgood, an economist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, who leads a team that helped design the insurance contracts for the farmers. “This payout was triggered by rainfall estimates measured by the same cutting-edge satellite technology used by NASA and NOAA, but engineered together with Ethiopians to target their risks and vulnerabilities. This allowed us to calculate the payouts just as crops were beginning to suffer, so farmers will get the money when they need it most,” he said.

Oxfam, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, partnered with Swiss Re, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, the Relief Society of Tigray, Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, Nyala Insurance Company and Africa Insurance Company to start HARITA in 2007. Last year, the United Nations World Food Program, supported by United States Agency for International Development and Oxfam expanded HARITA, now known as the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, to help poor farmers protect their crops and livelihoods from the impacts of climate variability and change, including drought.

Visit the Oxfam website for more details on the program and the historic payout.

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The Sahel Is Getting Wetter, But Will It Last?

The Sahel is a semiarid region south of the Sahara Desert that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. In the 1970s and 1980s it was hit by a series of persistent droughts and recurring famines, epitomized by the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. The Sahel remains one of the poorest and least developed regions in the world. It’s also one of the most vulnerable to climate change and variability. One bright spot for the region is that since the mid-1980s, average rainfall has increased steadily [see this animation]. People engaged in sustainable land management techniques such as agroforestry have been able to take advantage of it, rebuilding their livelihoods.

IRI scientist Alessandra Giannini explains her recent work on the natural forces that influence climate in the Sahel in a video abstract.

Scientists investigated many theories about the cause of the droughts in the years and decades since their inception. Initially they blamed it on land degradation from decades of poor land management made worse by rapid population growth. But ten years ago, Alessandra Giannini, a scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society conclusively showed that changes in global tropical sea-surface temperature were are all needed to explain the shifting rainfall patterns in the Sahel.

Since then, Giannini and others have been trying to understand what specifically about the oceans and their behavior could lead to droughts in one decade, and rainfall in the next.

Giannini’s latest study, published in Environmental Research Letters, makes a strong case that the answer lies in the North Atlantic–more specifically, how it behaves compared to tropical oceans elsewhere. She and her colleagues analyzed climate model simulations of the 20th century as well as projections for the 21st century. They discovered that by simply looking at what North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures were doing relative to those in the rest of the world’s tropical oceans, they could explain not only the Sahel’s climatic ups and downs of the 20th century but also tie in to the observed trend of increasing rainfall in the region, and to projections of wetter conditions.

“For the first time, we have a unified, sensible explanation of the past, present and future climate of the Sahel,” Giannini says. She explains her results in this video abstract.

Bucking the Trend

In the 20th century, while the global tropical oceans grew consistently warmer because of greenhouse gas emissions, the North Atlantic changed little and in some areas even became cooler.

“Why? Because sulfate aerosols–essentially pollution from fossil fuel burning in North America and Europe–stopped the sun’s radiation from reaching the surface there,” Giannini says. “Normally, the North Atlantic will feed moist air in monsoon flow into the African continent, which is ultimately carried across the Sahel and gives it its rainfall.”

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Giannini and colleagues hypothesize that the aerosols over the North Atlantic ocean significantly reduced evaporation, cutting off the supply of moisture to the Sahel and throwing the region into a state of persistent drought.

Since the passing of the Clean Air Act and other environmental legislation in the U.S. and Western Europe, aerosol concentrations have steadily decreased. As a result, the North Atlantic has been warming up, actually outpacing the warming occurring in the global tropical oceans. With its moisture supply back online, the Sahel’s average annual rainfall has crept back up.

“The North Atlantic makes or breaks the deep convection that brings rain over the Sahel,” Giannini says.

“The mechanism proposed by Dr. Giannini should be further evaluated in both models and observations, but already the connection of rainfall to a warmer Atlantic should allow us to better gauge the reliability of  future projections and to understand the sources of current uncertainty in our models,” says Michela Biasutti, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who studies the Sahel and was not involved in the study.

‘Seeing’ Climate Change

Climate change scenarios for the region indicate that average annual rainfall will increase  throughout this century if the North Atlantic continues to warm.

Giannini’s coauthors, Seyni Salack and Tiganadaba Lodoun, Ph.D. students at universities in Dakar and Ouagadougou, respectively, found that these projections were remarkably consistent with current rainfall trends. They looked at actual rainfall measurements across West Africa over the last 60 years and found that the increased average rainfall is caused by fewer, more intense bursts rather than more rainy days.

“Not only has rainfall been increasing, but interestingly,  the increase is better explained by increased intensity of rain events, rather than by more rainy days,” says Giannini.

This is markedly different than the wetter Sahel of the 1940s and 1950s, before the droughts. Back then, the higher rainfall came from more frequent rain events. But it is consistent with the general expectation from climate change that a warmer, moister atmosphere may lead to more intense downpours.

The increase in rainfall doesn’t necessarily bring only good news for the people of the region, however. The more intense downpours have led to recurrent flooding in recent years, causing loss of life, crops and infrastructure.

This is why it’s critical we understand the nature of climate variability and change in the Sahel, and help develop sound adaptation policies, so that people aren’t pinned between drought-induced famine one year and losing their homes to floods the next.

In addition to this scientific research, in part funded by the National Science Foundation, IRI has a number of ongoing training and data-sharing activities in the Sahel that are helping the region build its capacity to better predict changes in rainfall and temperatures over the short, medium and long term. This work is being funded through a number of partners, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, and the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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IRI Names New Deputy Director

Category> Climate, Donor and Partner News, General Earth Institute   Tags> Adaptation, Climate, Development, IRI, law

Haresh Bhojwani, IRI Deputy Director. Photo by Brian Kahn

Haresh Bhojwani has been appointed to be the Deputy Director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, part of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He will coordinate IRI’s connections with development and humanitarian organizations so that IRI’s research can target the needs of those vulnerable to climate impacts, especially through the institution’s international collaborations.

“Haresh has helped IRI transform itself and has fostered strong relationships with development organizations,” says IRI director Lisa Goddard. “These relationships have positioned us to fulfill our mission to improve people’s lives and livelihoods in areas of the world plagued by recurring droughts, and floods and extreme weather.”

In his previous roles as IRI’s International Development Officer and more recently, as Director of International Partnerships, Bhojwani worked to ensure the institution’s ideas and approach about climate risk management and adaptation left their imprint on key global discussions such as the World Climate Conference-3 . IRI was recognized as an important international institution by the conference’s International Organizing Committee. Under this designation, Bhojwani was able to participate in the two-year planning process leading up to the conference, which ultimately developed the Global Framework for Climate Services.

He also played an important role in organizing the International Conference on Climate Services and establishing the new Climate Services Partnership . Efforts such as these have helped convince major development organizations that IRI and its research scientists are effective partners that can help them achieve their development objectives in the face of climate variability and change.

“As USAID and other agencies direct increasing attention to addressing climate change impacts, it is critical that the development and climate science communities understand each other,” says John Furlow, a climate change specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “Haresh has played a great role in facilitating that communication and helping us move toward a model of collaborative learning.”

The agency has asked IRI to develop a range of new climate services to inform its decision making and help vulnerable communities anticipate and effectively respond to droughts, floods and other climate-related impacts.

At Columbia University, Bhojwani will work with Lisa Goddard on connecting IRI’s climate-related work to other units of the Earth Institute, such as the Columbia Water Center, the Agriculture and Food Security Center, the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions and the Mailman School of Public Health.

“Haresh has the rare ability to see what IRI scientists could bring to a problem and explaining so that funding partners can see it too,” says Mark Cane, G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences at Columbia University, who was instrumental in founding IRI.

Prior to joining IRI in 2005, Bhojwani worked on issues of economic development and environmental conservation in Latin America – managing a network of sustainable development organizations in the Andean region under the banner Tropical Nature. He has represented human rights victims in Europe, Central America and the United States and has worked in indigenous and land rights in Latin America and the USA. He received his J.D. from Marquette University Law School and his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

“IRI is helping to solve problems that have beleaguered societies for centuries,” says Bhojwani. “We are a unique institution whose ideas and approach on helping society better cope with climate impacts continue to gain traction around the world. I will work to strengthen the dialogue between the scientific, development, climate change adaptation and humanitarian communities.”

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Improving the Water Outlook in the Himalayas

Category> Climate, Water   Tags> American Geophysical Union, water matters

Andrew Robertson, a climate scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, discusses his research on helping reservoir managers in northern India make better planning decisions by improving their ability to predict how climate change will influence water availability. In order to do this, Robertson worked with colleagues at the Columbia Water Center and the Tree Ring Laboratory. The team reconstructed 500 years of past streamflow from tree-ring records collected in Pakistan and then combined this data with weather and seasonal forecasts to generate preliminary water scenarios for the region going out ten years.

Watch the interview below, and view the full poster.

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Managing Water in a Dry Land

Category> Climate   Tags> Andes, chile, climate matters, Dam, drought, puclaro, rain, snow, Water

The original village of Gualliguaica, where Natalia Edith Codoceo Flores lived until the 1990s, was flooded when the Puclaro Dam was built. But the long lasting drought has diminished the reservoir to 10% (or less) of it’s capacity. The entire old village is now exposed, as the “reservoir” essentially receded back to the original bed of the Elqui. She stands inside an old door frame of a once-submerged house.

The Elqui River basin in Chile’s Coquimbo region is one of the driest places on Earth. It receives only about 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain each year, and most of it during one short rainy season. The rainfall is also highly variable. In some years, the region will get close to zero rainfall, while in others it will get five times the normal amount. All of this presents quite a challenge to those managing the Elqui basin’s water resources, which provides drinking water for two cities and irrigation for large vineyards, small farmers and goat herders.

The Elqui River is fed by snowmelt from the Andes and that collects in two large reservoirs, one of which is the Puclaro Reservoir. A widespread, multiyear drought that started in 2009 has depleted the Puclaro to only 10 percent of its capacity as of May 2013. Old villages that were abandoned and inundated after the Puclaro dam was built are now completely exposed and bone dry.

Since 2010, the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society along with UNESCO and their colleagues in Chile have been working with Elqui’s water authority to help them use seasonal forecasts as way to better allocate water and prepare for droughts.

The water authority used these forecasts to generate water availability estimates for the first time in 2012. Now the goal is to better-integrate the climate information into policies that impact water management across the region.

To learn more about the people of the Elqui basin and IRI’s work there, take a look at a new visual story IRI has put together for World Day to Combat Desertification (#WDCD2013). Note: there’s an audio track of ambient sounds from Elqui that will play automatically.

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Where’s My Seasonal Tornado Forecast?

The nation’s experts on tornadoes, derechos and other types of “severe convection” had a meeting of the minds earlier this month at Columbia’s Lamont campus to discuss ways of advancing our poor understanding about how the frequency and occurrence of these storms are related to climate variability and change. They also presented the latest efforts at predicting these events on a practical scale.

John Allen/IRI

Currently, the prediction of tornado activity more than a few days ahead of time is considered difficult, if not impossible. Last year, Michael Tippett, from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society and his colleagues Adam Sobel and Suzana Camargo from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, showed that climate information might help make extended-range forecasts feasible—but that was only a start.

The three scientists decided it was a perfect time to jump-start progress in this nascent field and organized the two-day workshop.

Scientists who study severe storms and those who study climate tend to operate in different circles and rarely communicate with each other, says Sobel.

“We saw a similar situation a decade ago between the hurricane and climate communities,” Sobel says. “Back then, what it took was a concerted effort of those two groups talking to each other, telling each other what they were doing wrong and learning from each other to make progress,” he says.

“The important first step was to get the right people in the same room,” says Tippett. These included researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research as well as  representatives from the insurance industry.

“Just by having these disparate groups together, we identified some actions which could be done now and would really have good success,” Tippet says. For example, the severe-weather researchers helped the climate scientists identify key parameters that they should save from their model outputs for later analysis.

“One of the points scientists learned from the re-insurance participants was that despite the high-impact of tornadoes, losses from hail are a bigger concern for the industry,” he says.

For Tippett, the workshop showed there is a lot of promise and progress being made toward understanding severe convection. “Even though we currently can’t make computer models of tornadoes because they are too small and too complex, we’re getting close,” Tippett says. “If we decide to put effort and resources into it, I think we can do a lot right now.”

Learn more on the current state of tornado/climate research by watching the video interviews below.

1. Why a workshop for predicting severe storms and tornadoes?
Adam Sobel and Michael Tippett reflect on the workshop they convened with colleague Suzana Camargo, why the time was right and why the Earth Institute was the perfect place to host it.

2. The president asked, where’s my seasonal tornado forecast?
Hear from Harold Brooks from NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory and Michael Tippett on the state of tornado prediction. Alice Underwood from Willis Re North America explains why insurance companies are keen to be part of the discussion.

3. How will climate change affect tornadoes and severe storms?
Lamont’s Adam Sobel, Harold Brooks and Michael Tippett tell it like it is.

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Food Security in the Face of Changing Climate

Then Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 900 million people in the world were chronically hungry between 2010 and 2012. The organization is also warning we could face a global food crisis in 2013 because of historically low grain reserves and rising food prices.

Add to this the ever-present challenge of trying to increase both production of and access to food on a planet with increasingly more people on it and whose climate is changing, and you have raison d’être of the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security research program (CCAFS).

The program is run by the CGIAR, a network of 15 international agricultural research institutes and a driving force behind major advances in food security and poverty reductions in Asia and Latin America in the latter third of the twentieth century. Think Green Revolution.

CCAFS is the world’s largest research program focused specifically on climate change and food security. It works across the developing world, but currently emphasizes sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

James Hansen, an agricultural scientist at the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, also happens to be one of the key research leaders within CCAFS. Below, he discusses his role and the issues that most interest him in the Q&A and video below.

What is your role within CCAFS?
The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security is organized around four themes: Adaptation Through Progressive Climate Change, Pro-Poor Climate Change Mitigation, Integration for Decision Making and the theme that I lead, which is called Adaptation through Managing Climate Risk.

What is the focus of your theme?
We try to enable promising innovations for managing climate-related agricultural risk at local and regional levels. We also support improvements to climate-related information products and services that enable a range of agricultural risk management interventions. The theme targets the many short term, climate-sensitive decisions that farmers, humanitarian response organizations and others have to make on a routine basis and that can influence their long term vulnerability to climate.

You’ve also been a research scientist at IRI for 12 years. Did the work you were doing here evolve naturally into the mission and goals of CCAFS?
We recognized for a long time that the best way for IRI to have an impact on food security and rural livelihoods was to partner with the CGIAR, which has enormous reach and influence on these matters. At the IRI, we believe any approach to adapting agriculture to climate change must address the system’s vulnerability to current climate variability–events such as droughts, floods and extreme weather events. We were successful in convincing the agricultural research community to accept that argument, and ultimately the CCAFS program was formulated to take into account both longer term climate change and these shorter term fluctuations in climate.

What do see as being the key challenges to tackle?
If we’re going to adapt agriculture to a changing climate–no matter the time scale–people will need to have access to relevant and timely climate information. Right now, this is a significant constraint. Within the theme I lead, I see a particular opportunity to connect global efforts to strengthen climate services with the agricultural research community in a way that will give farmers and other agricultural decision makers a voice in the design and evaluation of the information that they receive. It can’t just be handed down from the climate or meteorological communities. Feedback from end users is critically important.

We’re also working to strengthen connections to the humanitarian community that deals with food crises. Typically, when the impact of an extreme event, such as a drought or flood, on food production reaches a certain threshold, a set of institutions and interventions is mobilized. Too often, these humanitarian interventions are disconnected with mainstream agricultural planning.

Can you give an example of this disconnect?
In Ethiopia, ten times as much overseas development assistance is devoted to responding to food crises as is invested in the long-term development to reduce vulnerability to those food crises. I believe this cycle of increasing vulnerability and dependency on emergency relief can be overcome through a combination of better management of climate related risk by rural communities, better coordination between agricultural development and food security response, and earlier intervention when climate information indicates a likely shortfall in agricultural production.

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