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.