You are invited to attend a webinar on:
Subnational climate-smart agriculture action planning: lessons from Kenya and Tanzania
Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Time: 9:00am EDT / 13:00 GMT / 15:00 SAST / 16:00 EAT
Duration: 1.5 hours
Register for this webinar HERE
Speakers
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- John Recha, Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS)/International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya
- Hassan Shelukindo, President’s Office Regional Administration and Local Governments, United Republic of Tanzania
- Veronica Ndetu, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries, Republic of Kenya
Facilitator
Caitlin Corner-Dolloff, Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Description
Countries across Africa have made progress towards the development of national climate-smart agriculture policies and programs, and evidence of the impact of CSA practices at the farm level has grown. But, limited support to subnational actors for addressing CSA across their jurisdictions has held back the uptake of CSA needed to address the challenges facing farmers. This webinar will discuss new training curriculums on Landscape CSA Action Planning for subnational decision-makers. Government representatives from Tanzania and Kenya with discuss lessons from pilot trainings that aimed to increase incorporation of CSA into subnational initiatives across nine districts in Tanzania and three Counties in Kenya.
For more information on the webinar content and speaker biographies, click here.
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach for transforming and reorienting agricultural development under the new realities of climate change. CSA is defined as “agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, enhances resilience, reduces or removes greenhouse gases where possible, and enhances achievement of national food security and development goals”. Countries across Africa have made progress towards mainstreaming CSA into national policies and have developed CSA programs and guidelines. Research institutions, civil society organizations, and private sector have also supported the assessment and uptake of CSA practices at the farm level, but widespread adoption of CSA in landscapes is lacking.
CSA addresses climate change, integrates multiple goals and manages trade-offs, maintains ecosystems services, has multiple entry points at different levels, is context specific, and engages women and marginalized groups.
Ensuring sub-national technical and government stakeholders have the capacity to incorporate CSA into planning processes, and implement effectively, is critical to addressing the adoption gap for many practices. For this reason, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service partnered with the EcoAgriculture Partners, Cornell University, the USDA California Climate Hub, UC Davis, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) developed training programs on landscape level CSA action plans, which were piloted in nine districts in Tanzania and three Counties in Kenya.
The Tanzanian and Kenyan governments are playing an active role in advocating for the uptake of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) at both the national and subnational levels. In Tanzania, the President’s Office for Regional Administration and Local Governments (PO-RALG), in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture on the mainland, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources, Livestock and Fisheries in Zanzibar, is guiding Local Government Authorities (LGAs) to incorporate the concept of CSA at landscape level into their local policies and programs. In Kenya the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries is socializing the national CSA Implementation Framework at the County level with the aim of having CSA prioritized for inclusion in county agriculture plans.
This webinar will introduce the new CSA action planning curriculum and share lessons from pilot trainings in Kenya and Tanzania to assist other countries on their journey to incorporating CSA into subnational policy implementation.
Biographies of Speakers
Dr. John Recha, is a Scientist focused on Climate-Smart Agriculture and Policy with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) (https://ccafs.cgiar.org/regions/east-africa) East Africa Regional Office at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) (https://www.ilri.org/), Kenya.
Since 2011, John participated in developing the CCAFS Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) Research for Development (R4D) approach in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Using participatory methods, he provided leadership in testing technological and institutional options for dealing with climate change in agriculture, with the aim of scaling up and out the appropriate options and drawing out lessons for policy makers from local to global levels. CSVs act as ‘lighthouses’, to demonstrate how communities can test, co-develop and adopt integrated portfolios of CSA practices. They provide a solid framework through which to investigate the enabling environment that facilitates the adoption of CSA practices, and they build the evidence base to support scaling up and out CSA.
John provides CSA training, based on emerging lessons from ongoing participatory testing of a portfolio of CSA technologies and practices in the CCAFS CSVs in East Africa, including institutional innovations.
Dr. Hassan Bashiru Shelukindo is a Principal Agriculture Officer at the President’s Office Regional Administration and Local Governments (PO-RALG), Dodoma, United Republic of Tanzania, working in the Department of Sector Coordination.
Dr. Shelukindo holds a PhD in Climate Change from the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania. He has extensive experience in rural development, Project Planning and Management, CSA, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Coordination and Supervision of Agricultural Interventions. He is also a Master Trainer in Participatory Methodologies (PRA, PLA, POP).
The main duties of Dr. Shelukindo are to coordinate, advise and supervise Regional Secretariats and Local Government Authorities in areas of implementing the Agricultural Sector Development Programme (ASDP II), such as CSA, fisheries and agroforestry. He is also Project Coordinator of the PO-RALG–AGRA project, where he links civil society organizations, development partners, non-governmental organisations, and faith-based organizations with Regional Secretariats and Local Government Authorities ASDP II.
Recently, Dr. Shelukindo has been involved in building capacity for disseminating climate-smart agriculture practices and technologies at a landscape level to Local Government Extension Officers in Tanzania. He has numerous publications on the potential of soils in global climate change regulation.
Veronica Nzilani Ndetu works for the State Department for Crop Development and is the Coordinator of the Climate Change Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries (MALF), Kenya.
Veronica holds a master’s degree in Seed Science and Technology from the University of Eldoret, Kenya and a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. She has vast experience in agricultural extension and training, crop production and food security, agricultural transformation, climate change risks in agriculture in Kenya and CSA, as well as agricultural policy development.
Veronica has implemented climate related projects with topics such as “adaptation to climate change and insurance” (GIZ/GOK) and “integrating agriculture in National Adaptation Plans (NAP-Ag)” (FAO-UNDP), and has conducted evaluations and assessments for various climates other climate change projects in Kenya. She also contributes directly to studies in Kenya, such as on decentralized climate risk preparedness and response and CSA-agroecology nexus policy assessment.
In her role in MALF, she has been involved in the development of national strategy documents, which include the Capacity Building Strategy for Agriculture Sector, National Adaptation Plan (NCCAP), Kenya CSA Strategy, and the CSA Implementation Framework. She has been active in disseminating the CSA Implementation Framework and conducting capacity building initiatives for County Governments in Kenya to facilitate implementation of CSA by small scale farmers and other value chain actors.
Veronica coordinates the Multi-stakeholder Platform for CSA, which facilitates partnerships among state and non-state actors at both National and County levels in areas of CSA research-extension-farmer liaison and funding, policy prioritization and advocacy, programmatic planning and implementation, institutional capacities development, data collection, information management and dissemination.
As a member of the Kenyan and African Climate Group of Negotiators she is involved in the Koronivia Joint work on Agriculture (KJWA) discussions and coordinates the drafting of the Kenya submissions.
Caitlin Corner-Dolloff is the Resilient Agriculture Program Lead in the Office of Capacity Building and Development in the United States Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Her programs partner with government institutions to build capacity for evidence-based agriculture development planning and implementation in the face of environmental challenges.
Caitlin has led programs in over 25 countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Prior to joining USDA Caitlin was a Climate Change Adaptation Specialist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), researching interdisciplinary and multi-level engagement and decision-support processes for prioritizing investments in and scaling of CSA. She holds a MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford and a BA in Participatory Environmental Management from the College Scholar Program at Cornell University.
Join us Tuesday, October 1, 2019 at 9:00am EDT / 13:00 GMT / 15:00 SAST / 16:00 EAT
Register for this webinar HERE
