A virtual workshop organized by the Nordic Africa Institute in collaboration with researchers from Kenyatta University, Kenya, and the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This workshop is the first among a series of workshops planned under the theme - From Climate Change Adaptation to Climate Resilience – Identifying the missing links.

The workshop is part of research networking activities supported by funding from the Swedish Research Council. The workshop aims to bring together relevant stakeholders in the region to discuss the challenges of the poor and vulnerable communities – the smallholder farmers and the urban marginalized poor – in attaining climate resilience.

Climate change impacts are critical in vulnerable societies in Africa mainly because a climate crisis within no time translates into a humanitarian crisis through acute food shortage and lack of access to safe and clean water. This workshop aims to understand the current state of climate change adaptation policies and practices among vulnerable communities – the smallholder farmers and the urban marginalized poor – in Kenya and Tanzania.

The specific questions that we are aiming to explore through this workshop are:

1. Are the relevant and timely climate information disseminated to the vulnerable end-users? If not, what are the main challenges? Is it the unavailability of relevant climate information, the institutional constraint in disseminating it, or the incompetence in applying this information in the respective livelihood planning by the end-users? Is it the nature of communicating or is it the packaging of the climate information?
2. Can the climate information, traditional knowledge and available technological applications converge in building a climate-resilient society?
3. Which initiatives and best practices for building climate resilient communities are ongoing and functional in the region?

The aims of this VR network project are:

1. To understand the adaptation and resilience practices followed in the case study areas in Kenya and Tanzania at different stages of the occurrence of an extreme climate event, that is (1) during the preparatory stage before the event actually impacts the region, (2) during the course of the extreme climate event and (3) the short and long-time period after the event has passed.
2. To understand whether these adverse climate events and the adaptation measures that follows has actually helped the society to come back stronger, or are they barely managing to come back to their original state (just before the event occurred)?
3. To understand the core reasons for the unpreparedness/lack of adaptive capacity/lack of climate resilience. Is it because of the lack of dissemination of relevant and timely climate information, or is it because of the lack of social, institutional and financial capacities among these vulnerable sections and the respective local administrating organizations?
4. To suggest and formulate possible sustainable solutions and mechanisms to address these issues incorporating better facilitation of top-down climate information dissemination and bottom-up integration of traditional/local environmental knowledge systems and practices.

This event is organized by:

• The Nordic Africa Institute (host)

In collaboration with researchers from;

• Kenyatta University, Kenya External link, opens in new window.
• The University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania External link, opens in new window.