The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Earth Observation for Sustainable Development Climate Resilience (EO4SD CR) has released a new brochure providing an overview of its work with the International Fund of Agricultural Development (IFAD). Earth Observation (EO) data and climate risk information were provided to help build pastoral communities’ resilience to climate change across Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Click here to download the brochure
The brochure describes how the EO4SD CR cluster supported IFAD in working to alleviate rural poverty and improve land management through the provision of climate data. In Kyrgyzstan, IFAD’s Regional Resilient Pastoral Communities Project (RRPCP) aims to contribute to rural poverty alleviation through increased resilience, incomes and enhanced economic growth in rural farming communities. In Tajikistan, the Community-based Agricultural Support Project II (CASP-2) aims to spur inclusive growth and drive poverty reduction among highly vulnerable, rural communities.
To maximise the impact of both projects, IFAD is applying for funding through the Green Climate Fund for its project in Tajikistan and from the Adaptation Fund for its project in Kyrgyzstan. Climate finance can be hard to come by and requires prospective beneficiaries to provide detailed evidence in support of their applications. This evidence ranges from the provision of climate data timeseries, such as related to temperature and precipitation, to the generation of bespoke vegetation health and multi-hazard indices. These data enable decision makers to access high-resolution climate data at a country-scale, enabling the identification of communities most exposed to different types of hazard, and how hazard severity is changing over time.
Through the provision of high-quality climate information, the EO4SD CR cluster is helping IFAD’s beneficiaries to secure valuable climate finance and ultimately enable the two countries to access the resources to enable rural, agriculture-dependent communities to increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change.
The EO4SD CR cluster provides insight about the potential of Earth Observation (EO) data to support climate-resilient decision making at the regional and national scale. In collaboration with several International Financial Institutions, the EO4SD CR cluster has developed EO-based screening and risk management products that can be integrated into different platforms and project cycles.
Other summaries of EO4SD CR projects can be found here, as well as a webinar series prepared for stakeholders in Kyrgyzstan regarding the principles of climate resilience and how EO data products can help propel climate resilience.