Climate and Geospatial Research Strategy 2016-2030

Abstract

The beginning of Ethiopian agricultural development dated back to more than thousands of years. In the process, the sector has developed its own risk profile, much of it being climate related. Ever since, weather and climate variability have affected agriculture both positively (making rainfed agriculture the livelihood for most of Ethiopian population) and negatively (by inducing climate related production risks to the farming system). Climate related uncertainties and risks stemming from the dynamics in environmental and economic change made Ethiopian smallholder farmers reluctant to adopt improved agricultural technologies, and challenged their ability to produce sufficient food through sustainably increasing productivity. Unfortunately, Ethiopia will continue to be exposed to severe weather hazards and climate change that affect the agriculture and this will present additional challenges. Hence, understanding the potential benefits and the possible risks and uncertainties of the Ethiopian climate system remains to be a top research priority. In another dimension, the biophysical and socioeconomic factors are highly diverse in time and space, which could be considered as potential in terms of rich diversity if utilized properly, or could be constraints if the understanding of the resource such diversity and variability of the base is limited. Hence, rational spatial decision-making highly depends on the identification and depiction of the spatial and temporal distribution of agricultural production potentials and constraints for improved production, productivity and resource use efficiency of the land, water and crop resources while at the same time avoiding unwise use of the resources. Furthermore, detailed geospatial analysis is required for judicious use of resources according to their suitability and capability. This requires detailed research on the spatial and temporal nature of production factors and production situations, which are particularly relevant for Ethiopia with a diverse and complex ecological and socio-economic setup. The complexity is even tremendous and the need for research becomes more important considering the dynamic nature of production factors in response to the drivers like climate change and variability on one hand, and to the advances in science particularly of data capturing methods and tools for geospatial analysis and decision making. These experiences have generated valuable insights and lessons in terms of what information is needed, how it can be communicated, how it can be used by various societal categories including smallholder farmers, and to what effect. However, the initiative consists of experimental efforts in micro-level settings that are highly contextdependent. Efforts have been made by the Climate and geospatial research team of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research to generate climate information and advisories and integrate it with farm level decision making at pilot levels, and to map the suitability of major crops under current climate. However, the climate related production problems and the need to understand their geospatial perspectives requires a strategic thinking taking into account: the possible increase in severity of the problems, the need to respond to the increasing needs for development of stakeholders, and the need to contribute to the national development and environmental agenda including the target towards net zero emission by 2050s the anticipated advances in science and technology in the coming 15 years. Accordingly, we conducted stakeholder’s analysis, identified 12 key strategic issues that are relevant and need to be addressed in the coming 15 years. We finally designed five key strategic programs that need to be in place to address the identified strategic issues:  Geospatial database and agro-meteorological station management program;  Climate adaptation, mitigation and risk management program;  Geospatial based agricultural technology targeting and precision agriculture program;  Climate and agricultural modeling program and  Capacity building.