Farmers in central Mali, Sibougou to be precise, have been part of a programme by ICRISAT that prepares agriculture-based communities for changing climatic conditions. |
By looking north, can you visit your farm's future as climate change takes hold?
Nouhoun Tigana, a
farmer in rural central Mali, doesn't know for sure what the weather
will be tomorrow - other than that it's likely to be blisteringly hot
again.
"The heat is so bad
now that we can't work between noon and 3 p.m.," he said, waving a
skinny pigeon away from the chicken coop he is guarding.
Oddly, however,
Tigana now has some idea of what conditions might look like 30 years
from now in his village, near the southern fringes of Africa's Sahel
zone.
That's because,
with 30 other farmers, he last year climbed into a Jeep and headed off
for a bit of "time travel": A visit to the Mopti region, to the
northeast, that today has the kind of conditions experts believe
Kolondialan can expect in decades to come as climate change takes hold.
"The idea is to get
communities to learn from each other by visiting an environment that is
similar to their own - so based on farming - but not identical in terms
of climate conditions," said Bouba Traoré, a scientist at the
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, one of
the organisations piloting the "farms of the future" project in Mali.
"It's like they are
visiting their 'future village', if temperatures were to continue to
rise and rainfall to decrease," he added.
The initiative is
part of the Building Resilience to Climate Extremes and Disasters
(BRACED) programme, supported by Britain's Department for International
Development.
Kolondialan, like
many villages in central Mali, is grappling with recurring periods of
drought which destroy crops and make it increasingly difficult to work
in soaring temperatures often reaching 45 to 50 degrees Celsius (113 to
122 degrees Farenheit).
"But we can't sit here and do nothing. We have to find a way to get by," Tigana said.
The farmers are
working on ways to adapt to the changing conditions, such as
experimenting with new crops and trying to find additional sources of
income beyond crop farming, to build their resilience to worsening
harvest losses.
But making those
efforts effective for the long run will require adapting not only to the
tougher conditions being experienced now but the even harsher ones to
come, experts say.
Over the past year,
with the help of climate experts and an online weather prediction tool,
Tigana and other local farmers have helped identify villages further
north - such as Bankass and Koro - that are experiencing the kind of
climate conditions Kolondialan could face in 30 years' time, mainly
higher temperatures and less rain.
Men and women from
Kolondialan and a nearby village have then traveled to visit them, to
understand how residents there are coping with current weather.
After the visit,
each of the project village has received a grant of 1 million CFA francs
(about $1,700), which it can spend on any kind of adaptation effort its
community groups decide on.
"We hope that by
seeing how farmers have adapted to a hotter climate, for example through
smarter farming techniques and new ways of sharing weather information,
visitors will implement these innovations at home," Traoré said.
PREDICTING THE FUTURE
The online weather
tool used by the farmers, called Climate Analogues and developed by
agricultural research organisation CGIAR, allows users to locate areas
whose current climate is similar to the projected future climate of
their own area, based on precipitation and temperature data.
"Although they are
only a few hundred miles apart, a village like Kolondialan in the
Koulikoro region receives on average about a third less rainfall than
Bankass in Mopti," said Traoré. "That makes a difference to what crops
you can grow, and when."
Maarten van Aalst,
director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that
improving Sahelian communities' generally limited access to weather
information is key. But even more important, he said, is placing it in
the context of their lives, "so they can understand what's coming".
"Being confronted
with the possibility that future climate conditions could be even more
challenging than current ones is a good way to get communities to invest
in resilience," he added.
INVESTING IN CHICKENS AND STOVES
Tigana's community has settled on one particular option to fight higher temperatures and crop losses: Chickens.
He stands in front of a group of men and women huddled together on a bright blue carpet.
"At the end of the
month your household will get a loan of 50,000 CFA francs (about $85)
for the next half of the year," he tells the crowd, which greets the
information with a murmur of approval.
"We recommend you
use this money to buy chickens, which we will help you raise so you can
sell them at a profit at the market," he said.
The public meeting,
chaired by Tigana, aims to share with the rest of the village the
measures the village's community group have decided on after their
"future village" visit to the Mopti region.
These include
buying and fattening animals like chickens and goats before selling them
at a higher price, as well as protecting maize harvests more
effectively by hanging them in trees, out of reach of pests, livestock
and floods.
The activities vary from one village to another, said Traoré, depending on the farmers' skills and the resources available.
For example, in the
village of Sibougou - also in central Mali - the community has chosen
to build stoves made of mud and straw, which burn less wood, as well as
insulated baskets, which conserve heat to cook food even when there is
no sun.
Mariam Touré, a
farmer who has been using the improved stoves and baskets since the
beginning of the year, says they have allowed her to start her own
bakery business while still reducing her wood consumption by about 25
percent.
"God is angry at us
for using so much wood so he sent us this drought," she said, wrapping
up loaves of bread in yellowing paper. "Hopefully we can change his mind
by using less wood."
SECURITY CHALLENGES
John Riley, project
director at International Relief and Development (IRD), a charity
managing the BRACED project in Mali, said the "farms of the future"
approach aims to "help communities grow more independent in the long
term, rather than rely on external assistance".
But a recent rise
in jihadist attacks in Mali's north - and increasingly in the country's
centre - have hampered progress. A ban on motorcycle travel, aimed at
reducing the attacks, prevents farmers and field agents from travelling
to the villages they're meant to visit or assist, Riley said.
"They [the bandits]
aren't necessarily against our work with farmers but they often think
we're plotting with the government to get rid of them," he said.
"As a result we've
had to stop or relocate activities in about a quarter of the villages we
operate in," he said. "That's tricky because while we may leave, the
communities are still there and grappling with the same challenges."
For now, said
Traoré, security and budget permitting, the project hopes to repeat the
"farms of the future" experience in other regions in Mali, and in
neighbouring countries.
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