Transcript Agrometeorological Risk Management: Workshop Summary and Recommendations M.V.K. Sivakumar, WMO R.P. Motha, USDA World Meteorological Organization.

Agrometeorological Risk
Management: Workshop Summary
and Recommendations
M.V.K. Sivakumar, WMO
R.P. Motha, USDA
World Meteorological Organization
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Presentation
• Introduction
• Workshop Sessions
• Workshop Summary
• Recommendations
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Introduction
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Developing Countries are Hit the
Hardest …
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Risk and Uncertainty
• Risk = chance of something happening that
will impact on your objectives
• Chance = uncertainty
• Uncertainty  Risk
• Risk management involves managing
uncertainty
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For decision-making
–Risk Assessment: Monitoring defines the nature of
the risk
–Risk Perception and Choice: Monitoring affects
choices
–Risk Management: Monitoring leads to alternate
strategies
Overall: Increased monitoring will reduce the uncertainty
and the ambiguity now embedded in the process
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Risk management strategies….
• Avoid dangers
• Prevent/reduce the frequency of impacts
• Control/reduce consequences (adaptation
measures)
• Transfer the risk (e.g. insurance)
• Respond appropriately to
incidents/accidents (e.g. disaster
management)
• Recover or rehabilitate asap (e.g. media
response)
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Workshop Sessions
• Weather and Climate Risks, Preparedness and Coping Strategies:
Overview
• Challenges to Coping Strategies with Agrometeorological Risks
and Uncertainties – Regional Perspectives
•
Agrometeorological Risks and Uncertainties – Perspectives for
Farm Applications
• Coping Strategies
Uncertainties
with
Agrometeorological
Risks
and
• Weather Risk Insurance for Agriculture – A Special Symposium
• Coping with Agrometeorological Risks and Uncertainties –
Policies and Services
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Workshop Summary
• Risk in agriculture
• Risk and risk characterization
• Approaches for dealing with risk
• Risk coping strategies
• Perspectives for farm applications
• Challenges to coping strategies
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Risk in Agriculture
• Yield risk
• Production risk
• Price risk
• Income risk
• Financial risk
• Institutional risk
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Risk and Risk Characterization
• Risk considers not only the potential level of harm arising
from an event or condition, but also the likelihood that such
harm will occur.
• Climate anomalies and extreme climatic events dominate in
providing challenges for coping with agrometeorological
risks and uncertainties.
• Risk has both natural and social components
• The risk associated weather and climate for any region is a
product of both the region’s exposure to the event (i.e.,
probability of occurrence at various severity levels) and the
vulnerability of society to the event.
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Poverty and Risk
• Extreme poverty makes people very risk averse; producers
facing these circumstances often avoid activities that entail
significant risk, even though the income gains might be
larger than for less risky choices.
• This inability to accept and manage risk and accumulate and
retain wealth is sometimes referred to as the “the poverty
trap”.
• In most developing countries, livelihoods are not insured by
international insurance/reinsurance providers, capital
markets, or even government budgets.
• Without access to credit, risk-averse poor farmers are locked
in poverty, burdened with old technology, and faced with an
inefficient allocation of resources.
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Agrometeorological Risks and Markets
• Agrometeorological risk and uncertainty permeate
the entire marketing system with far-reaching
consequences.
• There are a vast array of risks and uncertainties that
directly or indirectly impact the global agricultural
marketing system.
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Approaches to Dealing with Risks
• There is a well established approach to characterizing and
managing risks and this includes risk scoping, risk
characterization and evaluation, risk management and
monitoring and review.
• Preparedness planning, risk assessments, and improved early
warning systems can greatly lessen societal vulnerability to
weather and climate risks.
• The goal of effective risk management is to impose
management and policy changes between hazard events such
that the risk associated with the next event is reduced through
the implementation of well-formulated policies, plans, and
mitigation actions that have been embraced by stakeholders.
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Approaches to Dealing with Risks
• Taking actions to reduce the likelihood of risk event
occurring, avoiding the risk, redistributing the risk, and
reducing the consequences.
• Enterprise diversification, vertical integration, contracting,
hedging, liquidity, crop yield insurance, crop revenue
insurance and household off-farm employment or investment.
• Farmers have many options for managing the risks they face,
and most use a combination of strategies and tools.
• Weather derivatives and weather index insurance play a role
in developing agricultural risk management strategies.
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Requirements for Management of Risks
• Awareness that weather and climate extremes, variability and change will
impact on farm operations
• Understanding of weather and climate processes, including the causes of
climate variability and change
• Historical knowledge of weather extremes and climate variability for the
location of the farm operations
• Analytical tools to describe the weather extremes and climate variability
• Forecasting tools or access to early warning and forecast conditions, to give
advance notice of likely extreme events and seasonal anomalies
• Ability to apply the warnings and forecasts in decision making.
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Risk Coping Strategies
• Operational agrometeorological services eg., use of seasonal
forecasts in agriculture, forestry, and land management with
strategic relevance to national policy with respect to planning to
help alleviate food shortages, coping with drought and
desertification etc.,
• Use of integrated agricultural management, crop simulation
models and climate forecast systems to reap the highest benefit.
• Minimization of pesticide application through understanding the
relationship between meso- and microclimate, and the effects on
the cycles of disease agents and prediction of climatic influences
• Contingency planning to alleviate the increasing costs of impacts,
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Coping Strategies (contd.)
• Surface irrigation, minor irrigation, steps to reduce excessive
groundwater utilization, increased efficiency in the rainfed areas
and crop diversification for efficient water use
• Technological innovations (direct seeded rice (DSR) cropping
system to increase net income)
• Local indigenous knowledge (coping mechanisms of farmers to
various environmental and natural challenges)
• Improved cultural/farming practices (tillage, sequence of
cropping, use of crop residues, appropriate soil and water
management etc.,)
• Optional use of resources (crop and variety diversification)
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Perspectives for Farm Applications
• Proper management of natural resources to sustain agricultural
production within specific agro-ecosystems
• Combination of locally adapted traditional farming technologies,
seasonal weather forecasts and warning/forecast methods may help
farmers improve productivity and incomes
• Utmost need for “middle level” intermediaries to facilitate two-way
guidance between the providers and users of agrometeorological data
and services. Lack of resources and skills have prevented significant
technological progress in most rural areas of many developing
countries.
• Establishment of an Emergency Response System (ERS) in
agricultural management to be considered as an on-farm application
for
decision-making
support
system
(DMSS)
against
agrometeorological risks and uncertainties.
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Challenges to Coping Strategies
• A key challenge is in the combination of the coping strategies
and in facing a combination of challenges to each of them.
• Impact of the different sources of climate variability and change
on extreme events
• The strategy of erring on the safe side through over-irrigation,
over-protection and over fertilization of crops has been counter
productive
• Development of well differentiated and sufficiently scaled up
operational agromet services supporting preparedness strategies.
• Lack of systematic and standardized data collection from
disasters. There is no recognized and acceptable international
system for disaster-data gathering, verification and storage.
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Challenges to Coping Strategies (contd.)
• Lack of effective communication services in the timely
delivery of weather and climate information to enable
effective decision making
• Weak linkages between farmers and agricultural extension
services
• Spatially correlated risk, moral hazard, adverse selection, and
high administrative costs in agricultural insurance markets
• Lack of an enabling environment for effective and efficient
insurance markets in developing countries
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Recommendations
•
•
•
•
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•
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Risk management
Risk management tools
Research needs
Policy issues
Emphasis on user needs
Communication
Marketing
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Risk Management
• Develop a pro-active risk-based management approach
to deal with the adverse consequences of weather
extremes and climate anomalies which includes risk
scoping, risk characterization and evaluation, risk
management and monitoring and review.
• Emphasize preparedness planning and improved early
warning systems to lessen societal vulnerability to
weather and climate risks.
• Provide accurate, timely, consistent, and widelyavailable information to optimize decisions relative to
the risks and uncertainties within the global agricultural
production and distribution system.
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Risk Management Tools
• Use of decision-support systems as risk management tools should be
promoted as an effective means of providing output of integrated
climate-agronomic information in the form of scenario analyses
relating to impending risks that can be valuable to users
• For medium and low input systems in the developing countries, crop
or agro-ecosystem modeling should be used to guide general decisionmaking on a higher institutional or farm advising level.
• Current and future trends of simulation model outputs should be
analysed for sensitivity to climatic hazards of different agricultural
systems and defining specific critical thresholds according to farming
characteristics in agricultural areas. Based on this, possible
modification of crop protection methods, irrigation programs,
cultivation techniques, harvesting, storage and commercialisation
strategies can be evaluated in conjunction with economic aspects.
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Risk Management Tools
• Risk assessment and risk management models supporting
coping strategies for integrated pest management could be
used in a prototype conceptual framework that can be
utilized in other agricultural-related risk approaches.
• Statistical forecasting tools to link observed weather data to
crop yields in major crop-producing regions should be
developed
• Emergency response system (ERS) based on advanced
Information Technology (IT) such as information network,
simulation models, tools for GIS and remote sensing could
be developed to address agricultural hazards and early
warning.
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Risk Management Tools
• Climatic risk zoning could be used for quantifying
climate-plant relationships and the risk of
meteorological extremes in agricultural financing
programs.
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Research Needs
• Local indigenous knowledge has been blended with
specific and important weather patterns in a cultural
tradition in many poor, rural areas. Introducing new
scientific-based weather/climate forecast services,
which provide accurate and reliable outlooks into this
cultural system may help farmers improve yields and
cope with risks.
• There is an essential need for the development of
standards, protocols, and procedures for the
international exchange of data, bulletins, and alerts for
some types of agricultural hazards. WAMIS offers the
potential to assist with this technology transfer.
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Research Needs
• The application of seasonal forecasts for crop
management strategies, risk management planning, and
national policy implications needs to be considered, as
these outlooks become more accurate and reliable.
• Developing methods for screening satellite imagery to
identify crop-specific impacts of weather in crop
regions around the world should be research priority.
• For effective management systems to be put into place,
integrated climate-crop modeling systems need to be
developed at the appropriate farm or regional scale
suitable for the decision-makers needs.
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Policy issues
• In many developing countries, the inability of poor in rural
areas to gain access to support mechanisms in terms of
technical expertise or technological innovations, including
formal sources of credit or crop insurance, requires urgent
attention.
• Agrometeorological services and support systems for
agrometeorological services should be strengthened for
effective management of weather and climate risks.
• Aspects of drought contingency planning, drought preparedness,
and drought impact assistance policies need to be urgently
considered as to their future effectiveness under long-term
climate change.
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Policy issues
• Drought contingency plans on paper should be translated
into an effective policy covering the range of activities
required to address short and long-term consequences.
Effective and interactive management systems need to be
set in place.
• Public-private partnership models need to be further
explored in order to ‘mainstream’ drought risk management.
Involving the development of risk management tools and
approaches within the context of overall rural livelihood
strategies, integrating risk arising from markets and threats
to the natural resource base. It also involves communicating
risk management knowledge through functional, existing
communication networks of farmers and other landholders,
rather than pursuing specific communication programs.
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Policy issues
• The concept of a drought mitigation and monitoring center,
coordinated by both meteorological and agricultural agencies at
national and state levels, to define standards and policy for
monitoring and mitigation of drought at both state and national
levels should be promoted.
• A scientific desertification monitoring and evaluation system
involving all appropriate sectors including agriculture, forestry,
water conservation, environmental protection, meteorological
and natural resource conservation should be established.
• Measures to combat desertification must be vigorously pursued.
These include: shelterbelts, windbreaks, converting cropland to
forests, grazing prohibition, grassland construction, water-saving
irrigation project, and integrated ecological agro-forest measures
or integrated ecological agro-economic measures.
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Emphasis on User Needs
• Develop clear and useful guidelines on the exact nature
of agrometeorological products needed for local user
communities
• Strengthen the use of intermediaries in training farmers
and the use of information technologies fit for target
groups.
• Implement an effective user-driven delivery system
comprising of decision support tools and the training of
users on their application at critical decision points in
farming.
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Communication
• Communication and dissemination are critical links to the
transfer of early warning information to the right decisionmakers. For disseminating warnings Internet is an useful
medium for expanding coverage and reducing time lags and its
active use should be promoted.
• Enhancements in communication channels for the improved
dissemination of agricultural meteorological information must
take into account the literacy levels of users, socio-economic
conditions, level of technological development, and accessibility
to improved technology and farming systems.
• For effective inter-sectoral and multi-stages communication of
risk, appropriate involvement of communication pathways and
common dialogue between scientists, managers, and
communities should be promoted.
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Communication
• A documentation of the many and varied types of
management strategies to cope with agrometeorological
risks and uncertainties should be posted on WAMIS web
server.
• Methodologies and tools to assess precipitation anomalies
and drought should be posted on the WAMIS web server
for potential application elsewhere.
• Efficient irrigation water management plays a key role in
agricultural productivity and also protects the soil health.
Proper and timely agro-advisories related to irrigation
scheduling, fertilizer management helps the farmers in
better planning of agricultural operations.
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Marketing
• The entire global agricultural economy encounters
price, income and other forms of risk related to weather
uncertainty. Increased interdisciplinary collaboration
between meteorologists, agronomists, and economists
can improve the quality of information upon which
agriculture-related businesses and agricultural policymakers around the world depend.
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Thank you very much for your
attention
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