This paper compares and contrasts two cases of smallholderinclusive agricultural investment in Tanzania and investigates the factors that shape their vulnerability and resilience to risks and uncertainties that influence their performance and viability as a development strategy. Drawing on observations and interviews with smallholders, key informants and management and staff of two large-scale rice and sugarcane estates, we discuss how the division of ownership, voice, risks and rewards in these investments affect how small- and large-scale producers negotiate their relationships in practice, highlighting the role of the state and political economy factors in shaping these dynamics. We find that a lack of transparent and reliable policies and mechanisms for governing access to land, resolving contractual disputes, and marketing the crops in question reinforces power asymmetries between the participants, undermining the potential development impacts of both investments. The two estates moreover appear to enjoy different levels of state protection that render their commercial operations more or less vulnerable and resilient to various political and economic risks. We conclude that smallholder-inclusive agro-investments in Tanzania are unlikely to fulfil both a commercial and a development function in the absence of consistent, transparent and enforceable 'rules of the game' that incentivize and reward responsible agricultural investment behaviour. ; publishedVersion
This report is an output from the Global Framework for Climate Services Adaptation Program in Africa (GFCS-APA) Tanzania country activities. The aim of the report is to establish a baseline for monitoring "User Satisfaction with Climate Services" at the national, district, and local levels, with a focus on the programme target districts of Longido and Kiteto. A qualitative approach was employed to document 1) existing institutional coordination and steering mechanisms for a dedicated climate services platform at the national level; 2) respondents' awareness of and access to climate information and services at national, district and local levels; 3) respondents' perceptions of the 'usability' of climate information and services, and 4) the role of indigenous knowledge (IK) about weather, climate, and related adaptation options. Following Cash et al., (2003), we analyzed "user satisfaction" in relation to respondents' perceptions of the credibility, salience, and legitimacy of climate information and services. Key findings include: 1) A national steering mechanism for climate services has been adopted, but there is a need to strengthen institutional coordination across all scales; 2) Awareness of and access to climate information and services are highly variable across institutional scales, indicating a need for increased awareness of the concept of climate services as well as efforts to enhance delivery of climate information; 3) Perceptions of the credibility of climate information and services are paramount to increasing user satisfaction, and depend upon respondents' experience using climate information in practice. Mismatches between the timing of decision-making and the production and delivery of forecasts, as well as the limited spatial and temporal resolution of climate information and products, undermine the salience of climate information. The way in which forecasts are currently packaged and communicated presents additional challenges to understanding and interpreting the information for practical decision-making. At the local level, disparities in capacities to access and benefit from climate information and services and the potential for climate information to take on political implications when attached to specific advice pose challenges to the legitimacy of climate information and services development. 4) IK was seen as being particularly important to decision-making at local levels, where it gains its credibility through the long-term observations it is based on, as well as the experience that communities already have working with this knowledge. Incorporating IK within climate services development is necessary to enhance the legitimacy of the processes and the applicability of the knowledge that is generated to local decision-making, but there are a number of challenges to incorporating scientific and indigenous knowledges. The findings highlight that improving user satisfaction with climate services will be a long-term process that requires capacity building among producers, intermediaries, and users at all levels, particularly to promote innovation in delivery, communication, and tailoring of climate services products. Developing knowledge that is salient, credible, and legitimate in particular decision-making contexts will also require long-term collaboration, as well as transparency about the strengths and limitations of scientific information and open dialogue about the various ways in which stakeholders at different scales assess the credibility of climate information. Based on the analysis, the authors put forward twelve recommendations to improve user satisfaction with climate information and services in Tanzania in the future.
This report is an output of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Adaptation Programme in Africa. The goal of the report is to describe and assess the current institutional landscape for development and delivery of climate services in Tanzania and to suggest pathways for leveraging current opportunities, as well as for addressing current institutional barriers, to enable improved production, access, and use of climate services in Tanzania. This report is based on a review of relevant policy documents and grey literature, focus group discussions with communities in Longido and Kiteto Districts, and key informant interviews with selected policy-makers, authorities, and non-governmental actors at national and district levels involved in the fields of agriculture and food security, health, and disaster risk reduction and management. The report findings suggest that there are four major institutional challenges to the delivery of usable climate services across institutional scales in Tanzania: 1) potential mismatches between national institutional arrangements and legal mandates, 2) limited technical, financial, and human resources, 3) lack of sufficient mechanisms to facilitate systematic flows of information between government agencies, both vertically and horizontally, and 4) limited specialized climate change knowledge and expertise within government structures. Recommendations are made for addressing these challenges
This report is an output of the Global Framework for Climate Services Adaptation Programme in Africa. The goal of the report is to: 1) assess the extent to which climate change concerns have been integrated or mainstreamed into national policy documents in mainland Tanzania, 2) to consider the role of climate services in achieving national sectorial policy goals, and 3) identify entry points for the further development of climate services within the current policy frameworks. Fifteen key policy documents relevant to economic development, climate change and environment, agriculture and food security, disaster management and risk reduction, and health planning were analysed. Three major findings emerged from this analysis. First, while climate change is addressed in a number of the policy documents, the concept of climate services was not. Second, policy documents across all sectors identified improved early warning systems as a specific objective. This represents a common entry point for development and delivery of climate services, as well as an opportunity to increase cross-sectorial adaptation coordination and planning. Third, the analysis highlighted that efforts to manage short- and long-term climate risks are not well integrated under current policies and legislation in Tanzania. Additionally, we found that the National Environmental Policy and National Environmental Management Act are the primary policy documents that oversee climate change-related issues. It will be important to link the development and delivery of climate services with the established institutional structures for climate change adaptation under these current policies and legislation, to avoid creating isolated or duplicative institutional arrangements. Based on these findings, several recommendations are made that can inform climate services development and delivery in Tanzania.
17 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables.-- Data Availability Statement: The data analyzed in this study are subject to the following licenses/restrictions: Requests to access datasets related to this publication should be directed to caroline.cusack@marine.ie ; This paper discusses the conceptual and methodological challenges to co-developing high-quality and transferable knowledge to understand and manage harmful algal bloom (HAB) risks as part of adaptation to changing aquatic ecosystems in Europe. Global HAB-climate change research efforts to date have focused on enhancing the credibility of scientific knowledge by conducting basic scientific research aimed at understanding the physical and biogeochemical drivers and mechanisms shaping HAB dynamics in order to predict their occurrence and prevent their societal and ecological impacts. However, the rapid and interconnected changes occurring in marine ecosystems worldwide necessitate a simultaneous shift toward enhancing the salience, legitimacy, usefulness, and usability of this knowledge for decision-making. To address this need, we present and discuss empirical findings from the marine-focused CoCliME project, which set out to co-develop user-oriented climate services to support HAB risk mitigation and adaptation in European coastal regions. We present lessons learned in relation to four areas of project implementation, across five regional cases, that emerged as essential for enhancing the quality of knowledge for managing HAB-climate risks: (1) Engaging stakeholders to understand their knowledge, experiences, interests and concerns; (2) Co-developing a shared terminology and framing of the "HAB-related problems"; (3) Advancing scientific understanding of drivers and interactions shaping HAB-climate risks and; (4) Co-producing prototype services that integrate social and HAB-climate data and knowledge to support decision-making. We find that efforts to reduce scientific knowledge gaps and uncertainties about HAB-climate linkages (efforts to enhance credibility), while important, risk overlooking key aspects of knowledge co-production and application that are necessary to render this knowledge more salient, legitimate, useful, and usable. Understanding the multi-risk decision-making context within which societal stakeholders appraise HAB and climate change risks and approaching knowledge co-production as a learning process, are vital lessons learned in this respect. Drawing on project learning, we highlight key priorities for enhancing the societal relevance and impact of HABs-climate research during the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development ; Project CoCliME is part of ERA4CS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, and funded by EPA (IE), ANR (FR), BMBF (DE), UEFISCDI (RO), RCN (NO), and FORMAS (SE), with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462). CoCliME is endorsed by the International Programme of IOC UNESCO and SCOR GlobalHAB (www.globalhab.info). [.] EB received institutional support from the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S) ; Peer reviewed
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how 'adaptation success' is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of 'local' vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with 'vulnerable' populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation. ; publishedVersion
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how 'adaptation success' is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of 'local' vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with 'vulnerable' populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation. ; publishedVersion
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how 'adaptation success' is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of 'local' vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with 'vulnerable' populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation.
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how 'adaptation success' is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of 'local' vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with 'vulnerable' populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation. ; publishedVersion
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how 'adaptation success' is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of 'local' vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with 'vulnerable' populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation.
This guide presents a joint effort of projects funded under the European Research Area for Climate Services (ERA4CS) (http://www.jpi-climate.eu/ERA4CS), a co- funded action initiated by JPI Climate with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462), 15 national public Research Funding Organisations (RFOs), and 30 Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) from 18 European countries. This guide sets out to increase the understanding of different pathways, methods, and approaches to improve knowledge co-production of climate services with users as a value-added activity of the ERA4CS Programme. Reflecting on the experiences of 16 of the 26 projects funded under ERA4CS, this guide aims to define and recommend good practices for transdisciplinary knowledge co-production of climate services to researchers, users, funding agencies, and private sector service providers. Drawing on responses from ERA4CS project teams to a questionnaire and interviews, this guide maps the diversity of methods for stakeholder identification, involvement, and engagement. It also conducts an analysis of methods, tools, and mechanisms for engagement as well as evaluation of co-production processes. This guide presents and discusses good practice examples based on the review of the ERA4CS projects, identifying enablers and barriers for key elements in climate service co-production processes. These were: namely (i) Forms of Engagement; (ii) Entry Points for Engagement; and, (iii) Intensity of Involvement. It further outlines key ingredients to enhance the quality of co-producing climate services with users and stakeholders. Based on the analysis of the lessons learned from ERA4CS projects, as well as a review of key concepts in the recent literature on climate service co-production, we provide a set of recommendations for researchers, users, funders and private sector providers of climate services. ; This report is not externally peer-reviewed Revisions: 2022-02-11 The report PDF was published. 2022-05-06 An incorrect spelled author name was ...