On Promoting Policy-Science Dialogue for Adaptation Planning in Agricultural Sector

Abstract

Climate change poses considerable risks to agriculture and food security especially in developing countries. Taking urgent adaptation action is required, and the global agendas to support the countries are in place. An important element for adaptation planning is to build robust evidence about past and future climate risks and vulnerabilities and to identify and appraise options of adaptation practices.

However, many impact assessments in agriculture focus either on small-scale area, such as farm level, or global scale, and there is lack of information at national and sub-national level to address the climate risks for making adaptation policies. In many developing countries, the capacity to conduct assessments is also weak. In an attempt to fill these knowledge and capacity gaps, FAO has developed an integrated assessment tool MOSAICC and implemented in eight countries. It packages multiple models from different disciplines into one system to promote collaboration of an interdisciplinary group of subject experts and policy makers. Thus, we tried to promote a dialogue between science and policy. There are high expectations for science community to translate scientific research into practical risk and vulnerability assessment for decision-making at national and sub-national levels.