About
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This platform provides site-specific climate-change risk assessments with corresponding portfolios of priority adaptation practices for cocoa, coffee and tea producers in West and East Africa and latinamerica. Climate adaptation and risk management is a transversal process that is interrelated to all aspects of farm management, from establishment, soil and water management, to harvest and post-harvest processes. The aCLIMAtar platform is a tool that helps extensionists and decision makers to consider this transversality in both climate change-specific planning and general workshop and farm planning.
The problem:
Climate change is progressing at alarming rates and, despite efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, is expected to increasingly impact agricultural production and thereby threaten the farmers’ livelihoods and productivity. In perennial crop production, such as cocoa, coffee and tea, adaptation of production systems to emerging climate conditions often has a long lead time, meaning that the time between implementing an action and seeing results may take several years or even decades, for example in the implementation of new shade trees or farm renovation and adopting new crop/tree varieties. Forward-looking adaptation planning, which seeks to avoid potential negative impacts by adjusting production practices in anticipation of climate impacts, urgently needs to be promoted.
Climate data is available, as are knowledge on climate adaptation and risk mitigation practices. However, climate data is often coarse or not crop specific. Also, focusing on the people who will use the data and base their decisions on the information provided is needed, to provide data that is understandable and useful. Moreover, the local capacity to implement novel practices can be limited by knowledge, labour and cash availability, and on-farm changes need to include not only practices, but also adjustments in strategies and an enabling environment for the adaptation to take place.
Our solution:
aCLIMAtar facilitates planned adaptation by providing crop-specific climate-impact assessments and corresponding portfolios of hazard-specific practices. The platform combines climate analysis with local adaptation knowledge and generates reports with prioritized action options for users.
This platform allows you to:
- Visualize the geospatial climate data available for your area.
- Understand risks and threats arising from climate change for your specific crop, to support decisions today that will make you more resilient against tomorrow’s changes.
- Identify specific actions that respond to the local climate hazards.
- Access further information on applicable climate-smart practices and related links..
- Plan your workshops, farmer training and on-farm action to strategically build-up climate resilience..
Data and a list of practices can be found online or downloaded as a pdf report. You can also save locations of interest to access the corresponding data later on.
The use of the aCLIMAtar platform is free of charge. Currently, the following countries are supported (in brackets: crops per country):
- West Africa: Cameroon (cocoa), Côte d’Ivoire (cocoa), Ghana (cocoa) and Nigeria (cocoa).
- East Africa: Kenya (coffee and tea) and Uganda (coffee and tea).
- Central America (see aCLIMAtar Central America)
- South America (cocoa: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru)
The platform is designed as a tool, so it should always be embedded in further learning on climate change. The implementation of climate-adaptation practices should be accompanied by extensionists that are familiar with the local context. Take a look at our basics concepts section for more information on our approach. You may also want to consider taking the climate-change learning course available to the public at the Rainforest Alliance Learning Platformfor more information. Likewise, practices listed are not described exhaustively and need to be complemented by local knowledge (adjusting it to the local farming system) and/or through further reading. Below is a list of major references that have been used to describe practices and/or can be used as reference material.
(Note that for tea and coffee, the lists of adaptation practices were mainly elaborated based on in-country workshops with local experts. See also Methdology )
Background
Rainforest Alliance (RA) and the Alliance of Bioversity and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) teamed up to make climate-change insights available to extension agents and farm managers. The aCLIMAtar tool enables extensionists to receive actionable advice based on future climate projections and to take climate-change adaptation into account when planning actions and interventions. This can also be of importance for decision makers when planning related funding schemes to create an enabling environment
The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organization working to create a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities. To achieve our mission, Rainforest Alliance partners, with diverse allies around the world, are helping to drive positive change across global supply chains and in many of our most critically important natural landscapes.
The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture The Bioversity-CIAT Alliance delivers research-based solutions that address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation. The Bioversity-CIAT Alliance focuses on the nexus of agriculture, nutrition and the environment. We work with local, national and multinational partners across Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, and with the public and private sectors and civil society. Through novel partnerships, the Alliance generates evidence and mainstreams innovations to transform food systems and landscapes so that they sustain the planet, drive prosperity, and nourish people in a climate crisis.
The bilateral project between Rainforest Alliance and the Bioversity-CIAT Alliance is part of the Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) CGIAR Initiative, which is led by IITA. IITA is an award-winning, research-for-development (R4D) organization, providing solutions to hunger, poverty, and the degradation of natural resources in Africa. Both the Bioversity-CIAT Alliance and IITA are part of One CGIAR, which is a global research partnership for a food-secure future dedicated to transforming food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.
To properly cite this content, please use the following citation format: Schmidt, P.G.; Castro-Llanos, F.; Gutierrez, N.; Bunn, C. (2023) ACLIMATAR: Climate adaptation planning tool for cocoa, coffee and tea farming. Website.
Please also indicate access data (MONTH DD YYYY, e.g. March 23 2024).
This website has been edited by the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT Science Writing Service.