Time for tea? Co-producing future climate information for supporting adaptation
Abstract
Providing usable future climate information is vital for businesses and decision makers to understand risks from and adaptation to climate change. Several studies discuss conceptual models and frameworks for generating usable climate information. However, few studies present applications, and the associated limitations and challenges. We present such an application using an iterative co-production approach, for a highly climate sensitive crop with a long economic life span ( 100 years); tea. We generate tea plantation scale climate information for stakeholder-identified climate metrics by using long-term station observations, 29 bias-corrected Global Climate Models and Convection Permitting high-resolution ( 4km) climate model (CP4-A), for Africa's largest tea producers; Kenya and Malawi. Constant communication, describing the research process in detail, and transparency in information provision, helped tea producers feel more comfortable in sharing information and knowledge. The iterative processes of engagement helped gain access to local weather station observations in the tea producing regions. This enabled the downscaling of climate projections at the tea estate scale. Stakeholders could use relevant climate information for future temperature and precipitation projections and associated uncertainties to identify and prioritise adaptation options, using Multi Criteria Analysis. While both large tea estates and smallholder farmers are vulnerable to increasing temperature in the future, they have different priorities for future adaptation options. Since the generation and communication of climate information involves stakeholder feedback, it become more credible and provides a sense of ownership amongst stakeholders. Such studies can usefully contribute to on-going and future policy initiatives like the Malawi Tea 2020 Revitalisation Programme because the resultant climate information is co-produced.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMPA41C1334M
- Keywords:
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- 0850 Geoscience education research;
- EDUCATIONDE: 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1637 Regional climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES