The role of policy and media in building community resilience to climate change
The Agricultural Climate Resilience Enhancement Initiative (ACREI), is a 3-year joint regional programme between the WMO, FAO, and ICPAC, and is funded by the Adaptation Fund. As part of ACREI’s key activities, ICPAC in collaboration with partners is planning 4- day workshop on policy dialogue and media engagement to be held in Adama, Ethiopia from 1-4 February 2022. The main objective of this workshop is to discuss and assess the role of policy and media in building community resilience to climate change in Ethiopia.
The Greater Horn of Africa is extremely vulnerable to climate variability. Recurrent weather extreme events such as droughts and heavy rainfall events have been experienced more frequently during the last 30-60 years across the region resulting in substantial loss of rural livelihoods and income due to climatic hazards particularly in arid and semi-arid areas, largely inhabited by communities engaged in pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihood systems. These communities have limited access to information and technical support and financing for adaptation options, restraining adaptive capacity or coping strategy to local climate variability and uncertainty. Therefore, enhancing the capacity of communities to cope and adapt to climate variability will build the resilience of communities and livelihoods dependent on climate-sensitive resources.
Thus, the Agricultural Climate Resilience Enhancement Initiative (ACREI), is a 3-year partnership program between WMO, FAO, and ICPAC and funded by the Adaptation Fund, and designed to develop and implement adaptation strategies and measures that will strengthen the resilience of vulnerable smallholder farmers, agro-pastoralists and pastoralists to climate variability and change in the Horn of Africa region. The overall objective of ACREI is to: “Improve adaptive capacity and resilience of targeted farmers in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda to climate change and uncertainty”.