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agriculture, climate change, climate impacts, policy, scientific evidence, sub-Saharan Africa
Abstract:
Climate change poses a threat to the agricultural sector, increasing the risk of crop failures, food insecurity and poverty. Given the need for an efficient allocation of scarce adaptation finance, scientific evidence can help to guide the prioritization of adaptation options. This article offers reflections on lessons learned from the AGRICA project, a collaboration between the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Running from 2018 to 2024, AGRICA aimed to provide scientific evidence on climate risks, related impacts and suitable adaptation strategies for the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Bringing together insights from science, development cooperation and policy, we argue for the need to produce and use rigorous scientific evidence for adaptation policy and planning, including for the formulation and implementation of ambitious National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). This is motivated by assessments such as from the IPCC (2022), which deems current NDC efforts in the agricultural sector insufficient for achieving the Paris Agreement. We discuss lessons learned with a focus on trade-offs between in-depth and standardized assessments, data availability and spatial resolution, modelling uncertainty and methodological pluralism to bridge the science-policy gap.
