France CGIAR action plan - climate change research
The CGIAR is undertaking a global reform, oneCGIAR, to deploy faster, at larger scale agricultural innovations for a more inclusive and systemic transformation of smallholder agriculture in the developing countries. France supports this reform and IRD is fully engaged with CGIAR research teams to develop impactful global research programmes called initiatives which will start in 2022 under three science groups: Systems transformation, Resilient Agrifood Systems and Genetic Innovation.
The action plan signed between France and the international organization CGIAR in February 2021 aims at strengthening collaboration between French research organizations and CGIAR in three priority development issues: climate change impact, nutrition and agroecological transformation of farming and food systems in the South.
IRD (Dr Vincent Vadez) is coordinating the consultations under the climate change theme of the France CGIAR action plan. During an initial 2 Degree workshop coorganized by the CGIAR research programme on climate change (CCAFS) and IRD - DIADE in 2019 (read the synopsis for further details) French and CGIAR researchers brainstormed around six themes: one health (linkage with PREZODE initiative); adapting to multiple stresses; climate security in MENA region; resilient and adaptive water systems; securing Asian mega deltas; circular bioeconomy.
Several France CGIAR collaborations emerged from this workshop including:
DESIRA project “Strengthening the evidence base for a climate resilient and low-carbon smallholder agriculture through agroecology in Latin America” developed and launched in 2020, with the participation of IRD and CIRAD teams.
CCAFS funded literature review « Agroecology and climate change : a case study of CCAFS research programme » published in 2020 (Andrieu N., Kebede Y., 2020).
A BRIDGE concept note on low-cost digital decision tools to improve water efficiency and climate resilience of legume based systems submitted to DESIRA . While not successful due to tight deadline, its unique inter and transdisciplinary approach has attracted positive feedback for donors and research partners.
BRIDGE: integrated model-based approaches for climate and water smart decisions
Indeed, one promising area of climate change research collaboration between France and CGIAR is the co-creation of holistic climate and water smart decision-support systems. Data revolution and more integrated model-based approaches could help water and agriculture stakeholders better evaluate the potential impact and trade-offs of various climate adaptation options to select locally adapted, robust solutions for a much needed sustainable and inclusive transformation of the agriculture and food sector.
This approach is called BRIDGE for co-Building Resilient climate and water smart farming systems with Interdisciplinary and Integrated models and multi-actor Decision and chanGE platforms.
DIADE and local partners in water-scarce MENA and Sahel regions (Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal) are engaged with CGIAR to be part of the Climber initiative on systemic climate resilience.
Two BRIDGE literature reviews financed by CCAFS are carried out in 2021 on climate-hydro-crop-system model integration and processes of co-creation of climate and water decision support tools.
Ressource documents are available here.
For more information about BRIDGE, please contact Dr Vincent Vadez (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).