Co-producing Gender-responsive Climate Services for Enhanced Food and Nutrition Security and Health in Ethiopia and Tanzania

The COGENT project adopts an inter-disciplinary approach to improving household food security and nutrition-related health outcomes in households and among women and children in the face of climate change in selected areas of Ethiopia and Tanzania. In recent years, increasing investments have been made in developing climate services to reduce societal vulnerabilities and enhance adaptation and resilience to the impacts of climate variability and change. However, co-production of climate services rests on some assumptions. First, that providing more and better climate information will enhance the uptake of such information into decision-making. Second, that the application of climate services will lead to improved development outcomes. While a growing body of research documents the potential for climate services to improve local livelihoods and climate risk management, considerable knowledge and capacity gaps, in Africa and elsewhere, continue to hamper the co-production, communication and uptake of socially equitable and gender-responsive climate services, thus undermining their potential beneficial impact. COGENT has advanced our understanding of the key mechanisms that facilitate the co-production of usable climate information in two African case studies, with the potential to improve the quality of climate services across other African contexts. Led by Chr. Michelsen Institute, the project has brought together researchers and climate services practitioners from institutions across Norway, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, including NORCE, Cicero, University of Bergen, Hawassa University, Ethiopia Meteorological Institute, Sokoine University of Agriculture, and Tanzania Meteorological Agency. The project aimed to generate knowledge that could help to address critical social, technical, and institutional aspects that currently constrain the co-production of usable and actionable climate services by men and women farmers and health personnel in the two countries. The project has also aimed to strengthen the long-term capacities of local institutions to undertake high quality, policy-relevant research, while simultaneously building new interdisciplinary networks and collaborative experience and expertise within the climate research community in Norway. To study the social barriers, the project took a two-pronged approach. In Tanzania, a qualitative approach was employed to collect two rounds of data at a district, ward, and village level across two districts in the Morogoro region. The findings from this fieldwork underscore the seasonal dimensions of food and nutritional security and health, and compound vulnerabilities facing smallholders in the target districts during the main rainy season. In Ethiopia, an quantitative approach was employed, which included a a two-year prospective recording of food availability, consumption, household food insecurity, and nutritional status in the drought-prone Boricha area of the Rift Valley, and use of publicly available weather forecasts and remote sensing information. Results clearly show the causal link between climate variability, crop production, household food security, and women's and children's nutritional status, which has allowed us to understand adaptation measures that the government has used to mitigate the effect of climate variability in this drought-prone setting. As part of studying the technical barriers, the project looked at identifying an appropriate, useful, and usable definition of rainfall onset for agricultural activities in Ethiopia and Tanzania. There are two main recommendations from COGENT: 1) Providing a range of rainfall onset dates rather than producing a single date is more useful to users. Currently, the rainfall onset definitions used in both countries give a deterministic onset date. 2) The onset definition should be regionalized/ localized based on the amount of rainfall and the number of rainy days an area receives. The latter recommendation is planned to be implemented at a regional level for the upcoming October-December 2024 forecast. To study the institutional barriers, the project organized several workshops in both countries, bringing together agricultural and health extension officers, smallholder farmers, and other relevant stakeholders to identify appropriate communication formats and channels for improving the advisories accompanying seasonal forecasts and combining them with locally relevant and actionable advice. A key recommendation emanating from these workshops was that Local Government Authorities must be more closely involved in co-producing and delivering climate services since decision-makers at the district level oversee the provision of health, nutrition and agricultural advisory services to farmers in their respective districts.

WP1 (Social barriers): ->The fieldwork and data collection undertaken in Tanzania and Ethiopia highlights that compound climate, agricultural and health vulnerabilities require evidence-based and context-sensitive understandings to close the science-usability gap and enable climate service providers to deliver effective and actionable advice. ->In Tanzania, the qualitative work underscored the seasonal dimensions of food and nutritional security and health, and compound vulnerabilities facing smallholders in the target districts during the main rainy season. ->In Ethiopia, the project identified a causal link between climate variability, crop production, household food security, and women's and children's nutritional status. To our knowledge, this is one of the first attempts to look at the total chain of events and establish a causal link. WP2 (Technical barriers): ->The project has shown that the definition of rainfall onset should be regionalized/localized based on the amount of rainfall and the number of rainy days an area receives. This recommendation is planned to be implemented at a regional level (ICPAC) for the upcoming October-December 2024 forecast. ->Another recommendation emanating from the project is that providing a range of rainfall onset dates rather than producing a single date is more useful to users. ->Project partner, Tanzania Meteorological Agency, (TMA) trained 24 experts on the computations and predictability of the accuracy of onset and cessation dates of seasonal rainfall forecast in the country. TMA also conducted village level meetings on Indigenous Knowledge (IK) indicators and preparation of IK March to May (Masika) rainy season forecast in one Tanzania district. WP3 & WP4 (Institutional barriers and knowledge exchange barriers): ->In Tanzania, project partners Sokoine University of Agriculture and TMA organized a national stakeholder workshop and two dissemination workshops at district level. ->Project partners Hawassa University and Ethiopia Meteorological Institute organized the first meeting in Ethiopia between the meteorological service provider, agriculture, disaster prevention and preparedness officers, health extension personnel, and representatives from local communities. ->These stakeholder engagement activities together with other interactive dissemination activities provide concrete recommendations that offer promising avenues for further developing and implementing needs-driven and gender-responsive climate services going forward. The findings from COGENT are currently being disseminated to key stakeholders in East Africa, including the meteorological institutes and Ministries of Agriculture in Ethiopia and Tanzania. ->The findings have also fed into new CS initiatives and proposals which aim to develop, provide, and test the impacts of needs-driven climate services across the region.

COGENT represents an inter-disciplinary approach to improving household food security and nutrition-related health outcomes among women and children in the face of climate change in selected areas of Ethiopia and Tanzania. Over the past decades, growing investments have been made in developing climate services that can reduce societal vulnerabilities and enhance adaptation and resilience to the impacts of climate variability and change. Yet the development of climate services, in Africa and elsewhere, rests on several assumptions. First, that providing more and better climate information will enhance the uptake of this information into decision-making. Second, that the application of climate services will lead to improved development outcomes. While a growing body of research documents the potential for climate services to improve local livelihoods and climate risk management strategies, considerable knowledge and capacity gaps continue to hinder the co-production, communication and uptake of socially equitable and gender-responsive climate services, undermining their potential impact. COGENT will advance understanding of the key mechanisms that facilitate the co-production of usable climate information in two African case studies, with the potential to improve the quality of climate services across other African contexts. Working together with local climate service practitioners in Ethiopia and Tanzania, we will generate knowledge that can help to address critical social, technical and institutional aspects that currently limit the co-production of usable and actionable climate services by men and women farmers in the two countries. The project aims to strengthen the long-term capacities of local institutions to undertake high-quality, policy-relevant research, while simultaneously building new interdisciplinary networks and collaborative experience and expertise within the climate research community in Norway.