Community Climate Change Response (CCCR)
Climate change will have serious consequences for the most of our agricultural activities and effecting livelihoods of small-scale farmers practicing agriculture under harsh agro-ecological conditions. There are a number of indigenous crop and crop varieties that have higher potential to cope with challenges of climate change in which most our farmers still depend on for food security. Diversifying, sustainably managing and utilizing PGR provides opportunities to ensure food security and to enhance local peoples’ resilience to adverse climatic conditions at local and national levels. However, lack of attention and investment for improving and enhancing the use values of these local resources limit its wider potential use for climate change adaptation.
The project which focused on interrogating farmers’ perceptions of climate change, comparison of these perceptions with 30-60 year meteorological data, assessing what crop diversity has been lost, what was the reason/cause for these losses, whether farmers felt the impacts of the losses and what strategies they think should be put in place to bring back the lost diversity. From different research, it has already proved that practices and methods of conserving, managing and developing PGR on-farm like Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB) and Participatory Varietal selection (PVS), Community based biodiversity management, home garden management etc. were developed and still refining in changing context.
Proven practices and methods need to be further adapted, shared with research and academic institutions and scaled up to reach policy makers so that they make decisions on the revising climate change and respective agricultural policies in the country. In addition, there is need to collaborate with institutions of higher learning (Relevant agricultural colleges and universities) in the country and start making contributions to curriculum development, capacity building of teaching staff and research students. In the process, the project will explore the interactions between farmers’ livelihoods and their changing environment, and will develop and promote ways for them to create better options to produce food, acquire income and improve their livelihoods.
Working districts: Tanahu, Gorkha, Dhading
Project Duration: 2014 - 2015
Partners: Community Technology Development Trust (Zimbabwe), Ethio - Organic Seed Action-Ethiopia (EOSA)
Funded by: Oxfam Novib, The Netherlands through Community Technology Development Trust (CTDT), Zimbabwe
Contact Person: Reshna Udas