Our Cohort 2017-2018

The capacity to collect and analyze massive amounts of data in analyzing the response and prediction about future events has also transformed the businesses, policy making and all types of sciences, along with its implication at each sector of economy. In the presence of escalating data science, the twentieth century has been controversial in highlighting the global environmental issues with wide concerns about sudden observed change in climate relevant variables. The Big Data science has been imperative in solving these major concerns through volume, variety, velocity and veracity in gaining data from various sources. Various global initiatives that already sought to catalyze the interest of the climate change field have been documented that includes, United Nation’s Global Pulse Big Data Climate Challenge on climate resilience - A global call for data solutions to address increasingly pressing issues surrounding climate resilience in specific sectors, e.g. food Security, nutrition, forests and watersheds and the White House Climate Data Initiative.

The issue to deal with climate change is one of the largest examples of scientific modeling and simulation with wide variety of outcomes on frequent basis. Big data play a vital and essential role in climate prediction science, by providing corrective actions on the evolving predictive simulations through on-going data assimilation. The model output data that come out of these supercomputer simulations is enormous-terabytes of data from each of these daily simulations. These massive computer simulation output data require all of the typical big data tools for data storage, processing, analyzing, visualizing, and mining (for discovery) through computer-generated, thus complementing the massive observational data streams that come from the ubiquitous worldwide network of Earth sensors. Big data in climate first means that we have sensors everywhere -- in space looking down (via remote sensing satellites) and in situ ("on the ground") sensors, which are used to monitor and measure weather, land use, vegetation, oceans, cloud cover, ice cover, precipitation, drought, water quality, sea surface temperature, and many more geophysical parameters. These data sets are augmented with correlated data sets: biodiversity changes, invasive species, "at risk" species, etc.

Additionally, data science perspective on the climate adaptation is already embedded in research, business and policy arena. Various sectors of economy including industry, trade, manufacturing, transportation and agriculture are well documented to use the big data science in adapting to climate change. In most of the sectors, data science have been used as input to develop the production at wide ranging sectors, including water conservation technology at industrial sector, green vehicles at transportation and well recoded use of fertilizer as well as pesticides in agriculture clearly indicate that data science have been used as input to simulate and develop the production at wide ranging sectors.

Recently, adaptation finance has been growing concern of policy makers, mainly due to its essential role to get the productivity gains in financing adaptations across the sectors. In addition to that, big data science has been essential in various area of investment analysis including, risk investment, agriculture and transportation, trading, customer, interaction analysis and behavior modeling. These investments modeling scenario using Data science has also been effective to finance the most vulnerable household during natural calamities. But the use of more complex data system in analyzing the financial behavior is limited mainly due to the ill forecasting attached in predicting the future behavior of respondent using past information, data privacy as customer right, restricted accessible and transferable opportunities about data science etc. This restricted use of data science has made it less valuable among policy makers, scientists as well as business community, thus restrict its use in analyzing the financial behavior of customer.

In view of projected increases in global extreme events, which are likely to give rise to longer and more intense droughts across sub-Saharan Africa, the risks facing vulnerable households relying on rain-fed agriculture as livelihoods are more pressing than ever. The fundamental risk-pooling mechanism that underlies the African Risk Capacity has been recognized as a new and important adaptation tool for countries to be utilized at the highest levels of climate negotiations. The 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 18) of the UNFCCC Decision on loss and damage, in 2012 in Doha and at COP 19 in 2013 in Warsaw, Poland emphasized that risk transfer and risk sharing through regional collaboration is crucial elements to climate change adaptation. This decision focus on implementation of a regionally-driven risk transfer and risk-sharing mechanism, supporting comprehensive climate risk management approaches, addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change especially, slow onset events and extreme weather events; and strengthening regional collaboration and networks on strategies and approaches.

African Risk Capacity is well-positioned as a concrete regional risk management tool within the institutional framework to be established. It is in the process of establishing the Extreme Climate Facility, a new financial mechanism that will secure direct access for African governments to climate finance to respond to the impacts of increased climate volatility. In the attempt to achieve these visions, the United Nations World Food Programme developed Africa RiskView which provides a transparent system to estimate crop losses and the impact on populations’ food security from past and future droughts for sub-Saharan African countries. It combines a number of different disciplines including crop monitoring and early warning, vulnerability assessment and mapping, and financial planning and risk management that provides a standardised approach for estimating drought response costs systematically across a number of African countries.

The knowledge of African climate variability has increased considerably over the past decade, as researchers now have a significantly improved understanding of the mechanisms that determine specific characteristics of climate patters in vulnerable parts of the continent. Africa RiskView will make possible to evaluate the future impact of climate variability and changes on critical issues such as food security and long-term resilience and growth.

Africa Risk Capacity can contribute substantially to building resilience against rainfall deficit or drought requiring major humanitarian intervention and emergency response in sub-Saharan Africa. However, in the meantime, insurance as a stand-alone tool to deal with this chronic risk will not work. In order to improve resilience and enabling sustained growth in Africa, two key elements are required, namely, risk management and investment. Investments that support long-term resilience against food insecurity can address chronic risks and provide a base of predictable on-going assistance that can support vulnerable households to build assets and livelihoods, which will in turn develop resilience to cope with normal and frequent shocks without external assistance. The stability fostered by investment and sound risk management will pulled in private sector investment, in addition to creating space for donors to back programmes that focus on long-term growth, rather than supporting costly humanitarian interventions. These two initiatives will drive increased resilience when households become less vulnerable, enjoy increased productivity and subsequent food security, and develop more diversified African economies.

The identification, access and deployment of adaptation financing is critical for SIDS, LDCs and African States to respond to the adverse impact of climate change as well as to assist them in un-locking some of the benefits which climate change will bring. The online presentation seeks to examine three cases, the first of a climate adaptation fund in Saint Lucia, a Caribbean SIDS; the second findings on Microfinance institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa and the third exploring the role of remittances in funding adaptation.

From the Policy perspective developing national funds to propel local adaptation action for sectors and stakeholder groups who are likely unable to access resources for adaptation through commercial channels, is an emerging trend. In the case of Saint Lucia, exploring the case of the Climate Adaptation Financing Facility will provide insights into what works and what can be improved.

From the Business Perspective, the online presentation will explore whether the optimistic expectation by its proponents, that microfinance will halve global poverty within a few years, can withstand the scientist pronouncements (IPCC 2001: 227), that the desperately poor will be the most adversely impacted by climate change. The presentation will seek to demonstrate whether or not microfinance is a panacea and or a critical part of the mix of adaptation financing solutions.

Finally the online presentation will explore findings of a research study in Africa on how remittances can play a role in funding adaptation activities in villages across Africa.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has established financial mechanism to provide financial resources to developing country parties. As of today, there are four financial mechanisms under the convention. The funding mechanisms are Adaptation Fund, Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) and Green Climate Fund.

In addition, there are few funding mechanisms outside the convention namely; Climate Investment Fund and Nordic Climate Facility (NCF) among others. Over the course of time, these funds have been mobilizing financial resources to help implement adaptation and mitigation projects in developing countries.

As climate crisis increases, there is a demand of more financial resources to help countries combat climate change impacts. With the demand, the need for effective disbursement and mobilization of the financial resources is imperative. However, the financial mechanism has some strength and weakness, which needs to be assessed and analyzed so as to effectively mobilize the climate finance for the poor and vulnerable communities and help mitigate greenhouse gases as well.

The webinar presentation focuses on (i) constitution of board, (ii) proposal selection process, (iii) accreditation process, (iv) implications of direct and non-direct access, and (v) role of observer in the Pilot Program on Climate Resilience (PPCR) under Climate Investment Fund (CIF), Adaptation Fund (AF) and Green Climate Fund (GCF). The analysis will be supported by some reference to case studies that highlight those strengths and weaknesses.

Climate change has been adversely affecting rural communities, particularly small farmers whose production decisions and performance have become hostage to shifts in rainfall pattern and increasing severity of droughts, floods and typhoons. Even with agricultural insurance as a means of risk management for farmers and other stakeholders, the challenge and costs of managing covariate risk can significantly constrain its utilization as a climate change adaptation tool. The introduction of the weather index based insurance (WIBI) in the past years provides a favorable alternative. WIBI is an insurance instrument that places a guarantee on weather risks such as drought or flood, which are typically highly correlated with agricultural production losses (Collier, Skees, & Barnett, 2009). For the past two decades, WIBI has been introduced to a number of developing countries, mostly as a government initiative. However, as with many other efforts toward climate change adaptation, little is known about the role of private sector finance in the delivery of WIBI to rural communities.

This online seminar aims to level-off understanding among AFFP community members about the concept and progress of WIBI as an CC adaptation tool for farmers in developing countries and in particular, the Philippines. It will also explore the prospects and challenges for private sector involvement in WIBI provision, drawing mostly from the experience in Pakistan. Finally, successes, challenges, the needed inputs for providing an enabling environment for private sector engagement in WIBI provision will be discussed, based mainly on the context of Ethiopia.