Modules on Sustainable Agriculture MOSA

Climate Resilience
How to withstand in a changing environment?

Page 1
A few words before we start: What is…???

Resilience
• capacity of a system to absorb
disturbances and reorganise
Vulnerability
• susceptibility to be harmed; defined
by exposure, sensitivity and adaptive
capacity
Exposure
• degree to which a system experiences
external shocks or stresses
Sensitivity
• degree to which a system is affected © GIZ/Dirk Ostermeier
by shock or stress
Adaptive capacity
• ability of a system to evolve or adjust
Page 2
Different forms of resilience

“Ecological” resilience
• magnitude of disturbance that a system can absorb before it redefines its
structure by changing the variables and processes that control behaviour
Individual Resilience
• a person’s capacity to cope
with changes and challenges
General Resilience
• resilience of a system to all
kinds of shocks and stresses
Climate resilience
• resilience to climate-related
shocks and stresses, ability to
survive, recover and even thrive
in changing climatic conditions
© GIZ/Ursula Meissner

Page 3
What contributes to resilience?

ge
e chan
persistence diversity flexibility

climat
CLIMATE
BUFFER
RESILIENCE

decreases
targeted
system
recover, reorganise and evolve

adaptability transformability learning vulnerability

Page 4
Interlinkages and interdependencies

Farm systems are complex and influenced

by numerous factors
• Environmental (biome, soil, climate,…)
• Social (culture, traditions, history,…)
• Economic (markets, prices, demand,…)

© GIZ/Andreas Koehn

 The center of each farm is a farm household with its own roles,
history, culture, knowledge and preferences .
 All this needs to be considered and included into the concept of climate
resilience.

Page 5
Resilience = poverty reduction???

In general “resilience” is considered

advantageous.
But:
• Unwillingness or impossibility to
change may hinder development
© GIZ/Dirk Ostermeier
• Consider equality and social justice
• “Resilience at someone else's
expense”?!

© GIZ/Ursula Meissner

Page 6
Climate resilience…

…is often described as the ability to

withstand climatic challenges, e.g.,
rainfall failure, increased temperatures and
greater variability (FAO, 2015).
Hence, it is highly relevant to maintaining
and improving livelihoods connected to
agriculture all over the globe.
But higher yielding crops alone will not
necessarily protect against hunger…
Why? What other factors may be taken
into account?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ewGX52qqL.jpg

Page 7
Self-evaluation and Holistic Assessment of climate
Resilience of farmers and Pastoralists (SHARP)
• Tool by FAO to evaluate climate-resilience on the farm level
• Understand current level of resilience, find ways to increase adaptive
capacity and hence lower vulnerability
 Improve climate resilience

Source: FAO (2015)

Page 8
Self-evaluation and Holistic Assessment of climate
Resilience of farmers and Pastoralists (SHARP)
• Holistic approach to resilience
• Allow for locally customized
adaptation strategies
• Participatory
• assessment areas: governance,
environment, society, economy
and general information on the
farm
• Android app for smartphones
and tablets
© FAO/David Colozza

Page 9
SHARP App

A tablet-based android tool assesses governance, environmental, social

and economic resilience with facilitators in a participatory manner. Using
this assessment serves for informing and improves agricultural practices
as well as curricula and government policies.
Practical tablet-based application with 52 questions that gives significant
flexibility of the user to implement in different contexts and timescales to be
downloaded at: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.fao.sharp
 

Page 10
Page 11