Southern Africa Regional Workshop on Climate Research Partnership Concludes
29 May 2016
A two days’ workshop on climate
change research and development organized by Climate Research for Development
(CR4D) in Africa came to a conclusion with delegates agreeing to pursue focused
climate research in Agriculture. The Southern Africa Regional workshop was
hosted by University of Botswana from 26 – 27 May, 2016 and attracted delegates
from all member states of SADC. The major objective of the workshop was to
expand the landscape of collaboration among critical stakeholders and
institutions to include a balanced representation from academic institutions,
policy makers, NGOs, and other grassroots players/practitioners within the SADC
region. Specific objectives of the workshop include: scoping and assessment of
user-driven climate research priorities for Southern Africa and initiating
Multi-Stakeholder Collaborative Partnership for effective integration of new
research into applications; facilitate the formation of multi-disciplinary
participatory climate research and outreach teams jointly focused on
identifying, co-designing and undertaking priority user-inspired climate
research that can improve quality and access to climate information and
services for policy making and development planning
The forum aimed at kick-starting a
consultative process of assessing and consolidating the unique regional
challenges and opportunities for multi-institution and multi-stakeholder,
user-driven and integrated climate research that contributes to enhancing
climate information and services for policy and development planning. The wider
representation was to ensure that inputs from all critical stakeholders are
fully integrated into the identification of user-driven climate research
priorities, in the co-design and co-production of new climate knowledge and
information, as well as in the translation of new science into applications.
The CR4D is an initiative that aims to facilitate integration of
the Africa climate research community (scientists and institutions) with
end-user climate information needs. These are the first steps towards building
an effective network or climate scientists and practitioners in Africa to
better create platforms for integration of climate science into development
planning for Africa. The overarching mission of CR4D is to create a
Pan-Africa Collaborative Platform and a federated network of African climate
science, services, policy, and practice communities as well as development
partners and other stakeholders to co-explore, co-design, co-produce and
co-communicate climate information and services, thus improving access,
quality, and usability as well as mainstreaming of climate information into
Development Planning in Africa.
Notable outputs from the workshop include:
a.Identification
of agriculture as priority user-driven climate research need, with main focus
on prediction/forecasting and projections on pattern and distribution of
rainfall. Other additional elements to be considered include temperature
changes and water tables.
b.Identified
platforms such as Monitoring for Environment and Security in Africa (MESA) and
Climate Services Centre (CSC) for sharing of information;
c.Adopted CSC
Strategy on Communication as guidelines for communicating climate research
outcomes in the region. This is opposed to the duplication of efforts to
develop new guidelines when this has not been fully implemented by member
states;
d.Establishment
of communication channels for climate research outcomes to all stakeholders.
The workshop established that dissemination workshops that are normally
conducted do not produce desired understanding. The research communication can
easily be understood by potential end users, but also requires adapting,
synthesis and customizing knowledge to context – consider how to communicate
technical terms.
Other critical issues noted from the workshop
include:
1.“users” do
not know enough about climate change and issues related as such may contribute
to low uptake of climate research information. As such, there is a need to
build a strong relationship between “users” and generators of climate
information at all levels and there is need for conversations among all key
stakeholders;
2.Regional
governments overall are hard to get on board in different affairs mainly due to
bureaucratic processes, even those related to climate hence scientists seem to
be doing little. Efforts should be made to get on board government support at
all cost;
3.There is
need to establish one-stop climate data/information centre which is reliable,
accessible and packaged to sector specific. Various players already are doing a
lot with regards to climate research, but such information is scattered and
sometimes kept confidential…so the centre will make it possible to share;
4.Use of
already existing structure such as institutions of higher learning, research
centre and data producers such as national meteorological departments can
accelerate accomplishment of tangible results. This is opposed to establishing
new structures to implement components of the initiative.
Progress Namibia representative found the
meeting to be very useful. He was not only representing youth perspective
during the meeting, with his vast experience working with the
communities/farmers, he was able to share their concerns. The knowledge gained
will thus help in programming youth interventions in various networks he is
associated with at national and international level. This will also be an
opportunity for him to align his research areas (academic
and otherwise) as gaps and needs have been identified for meaningful impact on
African development.