Project: Analyzing Countries’ Human, Organizational and Systems Capacity and Policy Process to Proactively Respond to Impending C

What is the challenge?

International research has increasingly demonstrated the devastating risks to coastal regions, particularly countries with extensive, low lying stretches of coastal land, as a result of rising sea levels. However, despite the increased attention given to climate change issues at the global level, there has been minimal organized effort to react appropriately at the country level. There is a pressing need to understand what is needed to develop and implement effective policies that mitigate climate change, especially in the context of the food and agricultural sectors. This project aims to rectify this by determining who is involved, what the individual capacities or qualifications are, what role each organization plays in the policymaking process, and what the effective capacity of the policy process system is itself.

Key research questions

• Determine the individual, organizational, and system-wide capacities of a country's policy process with respect to the ability to recognize the impending threats of climate change to their country and to respond proactively
• Identify the critical capacity gaps in each country's research, policymaking, institutional development, and program implementation processes
• Analyze the effect of the various capacity short-comings on the policy process and the resulting impact on the food and agriculture sectors

Basic information about the activity

The aim of this project is to better understand the impact pathways of the policy processes within four countries (Bangladesh, Ghana, India, and Vietnam) to enable researchers and partners of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) to focus on the most impactful pathway within each country to generate the strongest change.

For example, determining who has the strongest influence currently will indicate whom researchers should work with to yield immediate policy changes. However, there may also be a large, potential group of policy actors (for example farmer-based organizations) who could benefit from capacity strengthening and may be potential partners of data generation activities and in the long run, may be able to exert strong influence over the policy process. The primary assumption of this project is that its outputs will serve as inputs into the other CCAFS projects as a guide for where and how to target capacity building activities as well as who to partner with to undertake action research, including scenario analyses and modelling. This project uses stakeholder consultations, organizational assessments, and surveys to track system, organizational, and individual-level capacity across sectors related to climate-readiness for agriculture policymaking.

Collaborators

• Bangaldesh
• Ghana
• India
• Vietnam

Contact

Suresh Babu s.babu@cgiar.org

This project is led by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)