CSDi Online Lite
OL 341—Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change

This week, we continue posting samples of our light version of our most popular course. This will allow you to have a little background on what students are posting on our Facebook page, and at our Development Community. Just click on the two links below.

Week 2: What’s your Theory of a Solution?
OL 341 Assignment Two CBA Discussion

Magee Example Project OL 341 Assignment Two

Developing a theory of how you plan to solve the problem developed last week.
	You concluded Assignment One with a set of community identified problems organized into a unique project outline. You also wrote a short and concise description of the overall problem. Now is your opportunity to develop a theory of how to solve this problem, and to begin exploring specific project activities that will fulfill your theory.

The Lite Version
Each week, running in parallel with the course, I will be posting a discussion sheet about community-based adaptation, and an example of the week’s homework. This is simply to give you the opportunity of seeing what these courses are like from the student’s perspective & also give you an opportunity to better understand what the students are discussing that week.

This is called the Lite Version, because the full course has a collection of online student resources, expanded discussions about that week’s assignment, and, of course, it has the course leader who works with students in reviewing their assignments and in making suggestions for their projects.

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Learn how to develop a community centered, impact oriented project.

Climate change is a study in injustice, as the people least responsible suffer the brunt of its impacts.

An excellent brief was released this week by CARE: Adaptation and Food Security. In this short brief, they provide a thorough synopsis of both climate change impacts and potential adaptive solutions.

Climate change impacts on food security:
It is estimated that food production will need to increase by 50 percent by 2030 just to keep up with the demands of a growing global population. At the same time, climate change is projected to cause decreases in global cereal production. These decreases will be greatest in developing countries, and particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Reduced production leads to increasing food insecurity, particularly for rural families in developing countries who are net buyers of food.

A Study in Injustice

WFP estimate that globally, 10-20 percent more people will be at risk of hunger by 2050 than would be without climate change. Of these, almost all will be in developing countries, with 65 percent expected to be in Africa. This has severe implications for nutrition, particularly for children. In sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that 10 million more children will be malnourished as a result of climate change.

Defining food security: FAO
	‘Food security exists when all people at all times have physical or economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’

In places where people are vulnerable to both climate change impacts and food insecurity, it is necessary to adopt an integrated approach which addresses resilient livelihoods, risk reduction and the underlying causes of vulnerability and food insecurity (for example, by promoting conservation agriculture practices, restoration of degraded soils and agricultural biodiversity).

Integrated adaptation strategies include:

• Increasing agricultural productivity, climate resilience and sustainability, particularly for smallholder farmers
• Promoting rights of vulnerable people, particularly women, to critical livelihood resources such as land and water
• Integrated water resource management
• Sustainable land use management and ecosystem services
• Technology transfer (irrigation, conservation and sustainable agriculture, biogas technology, etc.)
• Disaster risk reduction strategies
• Enhancing government capacity to implement social protection schemes
• Linking emergency food assistance to longer term food security responses
• Promotion of savings and insurance schemes

Read this excellent 5 page brief:
CARE International Climate Change Brief: Adaptation and Food Security 2011

How much of an impact do YOU think climate change is going to impact food production, food security and nutrition?

Learn how to develop a community based adaptation project.

Participatory Mapping
	CSDi Partner Prem Goolaup, of the Island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, has been developing a community based adaptation project for the past eight months. The adaptation components of his project include a Soil Restoration and Water Management Program and a farmer workshop on early maturing crops varieties for adapting to climate variability.

He has developed these adaptation components for his project because farmers in the village of La Chaumière are suffering from poverty due to a reduction in crop yields caused by climate variability:

• Increasing number of intense tropical cyclones
• Shift in the start of the rains – starting later and ending earlier
• Drought: long dry spell in October, November and December
• Unpredictable rainfall during the rainy season
• Increased intensity of rainfall in between longer dry spells
• Flash floods

His farmer’s adaptation strategies include:

• getting more organic matter into their soil to better hold water
• using mulches to reduce evaporative loss
• composting
• water conservation techniques
• water management techniques during periods of heavy rain and flooding
• drought resistant and early maturing crops varieties
• buffering techniques to protect plants against unpredictable rainfall
• techniques for protecting young plants during torrential rains and flooding

He’s using a participatory mapping technique to not only learn more about the specific challenges the farmers face, but by including them in the research and drawing of the map, they are better understanding their current challenges and also developing a sense of ownership for the project.

“The workshop was about drawing a participatory community map especially indicating farmlands and water sources. It went on well, people voluntarily contributed information and the resulting map was quite good. We tried to include each and every plot as far as possible. We also noted the existing infrastructure, the potentially vulnerable areas, the risks and hazards. This map pictured a good baseline of where the community is now. As the project finishes in about two years time it will indicate how well we performed.”

To learn more about this participatory mapping workshop that Prem held with the farmers you can see his homework assignment complete with photographs here.

Prem’s long-term impacts of the project:
100 agricultural households near La Chaumière village have surmounted the cycle of poverty and now lead a productive, meaningful and prosperous lives.

Prem’s near-term outcomes for the project:
Families at La Chaumière village adopt climate resilient agricultural practices through soil restoration and water management program which increased production, improved overall welfare of the community and ensured  food security.

Farmers at La Chaumière adopt good overall farming practices by developing greater resilience to climate variability through adopting drought resistant crops and buffering against weather variability practices which increased production, and help villagers to be prosperous, productive members of their communities.

To learn more about the course, visit OL 344.

Do you think that engaging subsistence farmers suffering from the hazards of climate change in a participatory mapping exercise is a good idea?

Learn how to develop a community centered, impact oriented project.