Food and Agriculture
Transcrição
Food and Agriculture
Mudansa Klimatica iha Ambiente Seguru Climate Change in a Secure Environment PARTNERSHIP APPROACH BUILDING ON KEY STRENGTHS CLIMATE-RESILIENT FOOD SYSTEMS ENHANCED ADAPTIVE CAPACITY HEALTHY ECOSYSTEMS SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE LIQUIÇÁ DISTRICT SIX SUCOS (VILLAGES) 19,816 PEOPLE IMPROVING CLIMATE RESILIENCE: INTEGRATED APPROACHES TO SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY Mid-Term Review Report March 2014 Mudansa Klimatica iha Ambiente Seguru (MAKA’AS) Climate Change in a Secure Environment Timor-Leste WaterAid/Tom Greenwood Poor rural residents of Liquiçá District in Timor Leste are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Traditional agricultural practices are unsustainable, highly reliant on ever more sporadic weather patterns and are exacerbating food insecurity. This briefing outlines how CARE and partners are working to increase food security and resilience to climate change in Liquiçá District through the promotion of integrated approaches to sustainable agriculture and protection and management of ecosystem services — particularly soils and water sources. These approaches empower subsistence farmers, *CARE/Takara Morgan particularly women, to take responsibility for ensuring their local Josie Huxtable and Takara Morgan ecosystem remains healthy and that natural resources are utilised in a sustainable manner. CARE Australia “Through the home gardens we are now able to produce enough vegetables for our families to eat but also to sell at the local market.” Berta dos Santos, Aldeia Kamalelara, Suco Dato Context As a small island developing state, Timor Leste is highly vulnerable to a broad range of climate change impacts — due to geographical location and ongoing development challenges. Environmental hazards such as droughts, flooding and heavy rains can affect community livelihood systems — particularly those dependent on agriculture and natural resources. Climate change is likely to exacerbate these challenges. Mudansa Klimatica iha Ambiente Seguru Climate Change in a Secure Environment In Timor Leste, over 80 percent of the rural population depends on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods. More than 90 percent of the agriculture systems in rural areas are rain fed. These two facts mean that rural populations are highly susceptible to environmental change. As climate change impacts intensify, food security will be harder to achieve and sustain. Liquiçá District is already one of the most food insecure in the country, with inhabitants often farming un-irrigated marginal slope areas. Traditional gender roles exacerbate the risks for women in a changing climate and minimal access to weather and climate forecasting hinders adaptive actions. In response, CARE, along with WaterAid, Centro do Desenvolvimento da Economia Popular, Malaedoi, Hafoun Timor Lorosae and Naroman Timor Foun, are working to build the adaptive capacity of women and men in vulnerable households living in six sucos in Liquiçá District, aiming to increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change. Practice With food and agriculture systems so insecure, even minor climatic shifts can signal disaster for poor rural households. In order to ensure increased food security in a changing climate the project is promoting a combination of different practices in the food production chain to increase resilience of the whole food system to a variety of shocks and stressors. Key strategies include: • The use of high productivity and climate hazard resistant crop varieties (Sele maize, for example). Enhancing yields, even in a changing climate, is essential to achieving sustainable food security. • Ensuring an adequate and constant source of water to produce enough food year round, especially in the dry season. Protecting water sources, appropriate retention and storage techniques, and improving accessibility and efficiency are critical to sustainable agricultural practices. • Improving agricultural production techniques to increase sustainability. Techniques like Sloping Agriculture Land Technology (SALT), conservation agriculture and permaculture help farmers to produce food while protecting the soil and local biodiversity. • Ensuring produce is properly stored post harvest to increase available food and income. Helping farmers to reduce produce and selected seed losses through better storage is a key factor in increasing local resilience. The use of air-tight metal storage drums has reduced losses and increased families' ability to cope with crop failures and market fluctuations. It also ensures families have sufficient high quality seeds for the next planting season. • Increasing incomes through sales of surplus produce. Farmers have been able to increase yields using the above strategies and selling produce has increased incomes and helped create a financial buffer for times of crisis. Integrating these elements into a holistic approach helps create climate-resilient food systems. The MAKA’AS project is supported by the Australian aid program and runs from 2012 to 2015. It aims to build the adaptive capacity of women and men in vulnerable households living in six sucos (villages) in Liquiçá District, to increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change. The project aims to achieve three key outcomes: 1. Vulnerable households are implementing water management and protection strategies to support livelihoods, household consumption and DRR actions. 2. Vulnerable households are implementing integrated climate resilient land management practices which support sustainable livelihoods and household food security. 3. Communities, partners and local government have enhanced understanding of and capacity in climate change adaptation that informs local planning processes. Key MAKA’AS project food system outcomes Relevance Traditional farming practices in Liquiçá District do not consider the balance between soil management and efficient water use. This has resulted in degraded environments and increased food insecurity. Without a shift to a more sustainable agricultural model, anticipated climate change impacts would further erode these fragile systems and entrench poverty and vulnerability. Identifying and promoting integrated, climate-smart agricultural, water management and food security practices provides vulnerable farmers the opportunity to increase their resilience to current climate extremes as well as reduce the risk of anticipated future changes undermining their livelihoods. To date, the MAKA’AS project has achieved a number of significant outcomes in Liquiçá District in the areas of agriculture and food security, including: This approach works directly with farmers, combining their understanding of the local environment with modern sustainable farming techniques and technologies and knowledge of essential ecosystem services. It empowers subsistence farmers, particularly women, to take responsibility for ensuring their local ecosystem remains healthy and that natural resources are utilised in a sustainable manner. • Improved agricultural production techniques have been widely adopted across sucos — including by a growing number of nontargeted farmers. Lessons • Significant reductions in post-harvest losses of produce. • A strong uptake of climateresilient seed varieties and increased yields. • Increased crop diversity among targeted farms, leading to improved food security. • Targeted farmers have seen increased income levels from agricultural produce during the project timeframe. • Chefe Aldeias (village chiefs) are monitoring wind, rain and disasters to provide local data on climatic change. An evaluation in early 2015 will provide further qualitative and quantitative information on project outcomes. Several key lessons have emerged from project implementation to date, these include: • Working in partnership can leverage different skill sets. The consortium approach to this project has facilitated communities’ access to specialist knowledge across a range of issues while allowing individual partners to focus on their key strengths in implementation. • Focusing at the watershed level rather than more traditional borders is innovative but challenging. Working across the three agro-ecological zones within the watersheds has highlighted the varying impacts climate change can have at the micro scale. Finding tools and techniques that work across zones is crucial to increase replicability and the potential for scaling up successful actions. The Government of Timor Leste is promoting the watershed approach as an alternative for natural resource management, so the MAKA’As project will contribute in this area with good practices and lessons learned. • Sustainable adaptation takes time and commitment from all parties. Achieving sustainable change within the parameters of a time-limited project is difficult. Climate change is still often seen as a long term challenge by planners and community leaders and as less important than other more immediate concerns. The project addressed this issue by focusing on adaption actions that have immediate benefits as well as building longer term resilience. CARE and Community-based Adaptation CARE promotes community-based adaptation to climate change because we believe it to be a highly effective approach for the following reasons: • Generating adaptation strategies with communities and other local stakeholders improves the uptake and sustainability of the process because communities develop a strong sense of ownership and their priorities are met. • Enhancing communities’ awareness and understanding of climate change and uncertainty enables them to create responsive plans and make more flexible and context-appropriate decisions. • Embedding new knowledge and understanding into existing community structures expands and strengthens those structures as well as institutional mechanisms.