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Focus on Climate Advisory

With COP26, the world is enforcing global climate action and coordinated efforts to reduce climate change and its impacts. Even with increased efforts to mitigate climate change in the coming decades, the impact of climate change on agriculture will be severe. This will put substantial pressure on the agri-food value chains world-wide, and particularly affect the livelihoods of small-scale producers in low- and middle-income countries. To mitigate the risks of a changing climate and associated extreme weather-related events, farmers need good and actionable advice. Digital Climate Advisory Services (DCAS) are a way to merge high-quality data on weather and weather forecasts with the many other information sources that determine how (extreme) weather will affect local conditions and which action might be needed. 

Digital Climate Advisory Services in the Digital Agri Hub

Digital Agri Hub collects data on digital solutions for agriculture in low- and middle-income countries. From the Hub’s specific focus on small-scale producers and climate resilience, Digital Climate Advisory Services are a crucial mechanism for farmers to anticipate climate change and cope with the increasing risks coming with changing weather patterns. Digital Agri Hub has identified around 60 solutions providing climate advice, sourcing among others from studies of Wageningen UR and MercyCorps.To explore these global DCAS solutions in the dashboard click the green button.

If your Digital Climate Advisory solution is still missing and you want to include it, please  send us an e-mail so we can get in touch.

Insights on Digital Climate Advisory Services

As part of the work on the assessment of digital solutions in agriculture, Digital Agri Hub also publishes associated knowledge products and insights. In the field of Digital Climate Advisory, we have recently published an insights brief on DCAS, presenting a framework to assess the potential to succesfully develop and scale Digital Climate Advisory Services and applying that framework to 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. 

We have also specifically looked into the role of impact investors in the evolution of DCAS solutions for small scale producers, with specific examples from use cases in India, and published our insights in  this blog post.

COP26 – EU Side event on Digital Climate Advisory Services

At COP26 in Glasgow, Wageningen University & Research (WUR), World Resource Institute (WRI) and Digital Agri Hub​ organised an EU side event on Digital Climate Advisory Services. We investigated the divide between science, policy and practice with a special focus on the domain of Digital Climate Advisory Services and called for actions to bridge that divide. We have taken stock of the work by WUR on more effective science-policy interfaces in food and climate, the ‘Blueprint for Climate Informed Digital Advisory Services’ by WRI, IRI, WFP, WBCSD and on Digital Agri Hub as a data and knowledge broker.

If you were not able to attend the side event, you can still watch the video recording of the session.

We also published a blog summarising the outcomes of the session and calling to action.