Climate change vulnerability assessments and tools for planning adaptation actions were shared at a regional UNEP/IICA workshop. Researchers and policy makers from 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries, including CCAFS and CIAT, participated. The key lesson was that different political and geographic contexts call for different ‘recipes’ for vulnerability assessments, with relationships to government and end users being critical to creating actionable results.

Since becoming available in June 2011, the on-line and stand-alone versions of the MarkSim GCM stochastic weather generator tool have been widely tested. A few problems were found, which have now been corrected.

A new series of workshops in the Decision and Policy Analysis Program (DAPA) at CIAT have the aim to share knowledge and experiences among DAPA employees and visiting scientists, help facilitate connections between different research programs and areas at CIAT and with other external institutions, and build capacity for DAPA personnel in the use of relevant
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Two thirds of plants and half of animals under threat from climate change if no mitigation actions are taken. Mitigation could avoid ~60% of biodiversity loss.

Yesterday we had a field visit out to Machakos District in Kenya, following the bean value chain.  We saw research which is developing the next generation of bean varieties, through to farmers eking a living out of their bean fields, finishing with the highly motivated entrepreneurs who are making the markets work for the farmers.  We
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Gap analysis results have been completed for CWR taxa related to 29 crops, including maps displaying distributions, patterns of richness, and areas worldwide where CWR are particularly in need of collecting for conservation.

El último taller del proyecto Agricultura, Vulnerabilidad y Adaptación (AVA), realizado el pasado jueves 4 de Abril, concluyó con gran acogida por los múltiples sectores e instituciones que participaron del mismo.
El taller permitió socializar la metodología propuesta y avalar su utilidad para enfrentar la situación de vulnerabilidad ante el cambio climático tanto a nivel nacional, regional como gremial. Así mismo, se resaltó la importancia de realizar una amplia difusión de los resultados obtenidos por esta iniciativa a los actores del sector y sobre todo traducirlos en acciones concretas.

Interested in movie stars, geeks, misfits and international development? If so, check out a reflection on where we are with the DAPA research area. The Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) of the CGIAR are in town, and we had the opportunity to showcase our science for impact.

Cross-posted from AgTrials Blog Researchers for the AgTrials and AgMIP projects met at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida last week to advance collaboration between the two initiatives. The CCAFS project AgTrials is a file repository and database on evaluation of agricultural technologies, especially varieties that have been tested in crop improvement programs. The
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During the month of November, CIAT researchers from Cali and Nairobi implemented participatory action research in 4 CCAFS sites in East Africa. The participatory research was part of a multi-disciplinary project that aims to combine data on inherent soil properties, as well as ecological and land degradation status of the sites (see Land Degradation Surveillance Framework
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