Adaptation as Resilience Building:

1. Adaptation as Resilience Building: A policy study of climate change vulnerability and adaptation on the Canadian prairies A project update presented at the Canadian Agricultural Drought Adaptation (ADA) Project Researchers and Advisory Group Workshop November 29, 2006 Henry David Venema, Director Sustainable Natural Resources Management, IISD Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada With funding from NRCan’s Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Directorate

2. Acknowledgements • Harvey Hill, PFRA-AAFC Saskatoon (co-PI) • Fikret Berkes, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba (co-PI) • Peter Myers, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba • Brian Abrahamson, PFRA-AAFC (retired) • Darren Swanson, IISD • Jim Hiley, PFRA-AAFC Edmonton • Al Howard, PFRA-AAFC Regina • John Fitzamaurice, PFRA-AAFC Winnipeg • Wade Nyirfa, PFRA-AAFC Regina • Ryan Schwartz, CCAF-NRCan

3. “Outstanding Problems”Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Nitrogen Flows “The intense vulnerability of the 2 billion people living in dryland agricultural regions to the loss of ecosystem services, including water supply; and the growing threat to ecosystems from climate change and nutrient pollution.” Global Temperature past/projected

4. Moisture Deficit 1961-1990 Climate Change: Projected Moisture Deficit 2050 (CGCM1)

5. Nutrient Stresses Emerging:(Recall the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment)

6. A Resilience Theory Framework [Berkes et al,2003] Change/Stress/Shock Innovation, learning Social-ecological system Capacity to adapt to change Memory, institutions These are the policy dynamics we’re trying to understand and influence Sustainability “Resilience” This is what we (think we can) measure

7. “We don’t get average weather, we get the extremes” the bad news the extremes will get more extreme [Diagram from Smit et al, 2002] This range Increasing? In a sense, therefore, the continual “testing” of the system gives them the resilience they have. Their self-correcting responses to the unexpected exist because they are used occasionally….impact assessment… must at least be measured in terms of the degree of variability that has been historically experienced [Holling, 1978]

8. Lessons From Recent Development Practice • Agricultural (Scoones, 2004): • Past policy interventions that assume equilibrium conditions “wildly inappropriate” in large swaths of Africa where the coefficient of variation of annual rainfall is more than 30% - linear policy models failed. • Water resources (Moench et al, 2003) • “While it may be possible to identify some emerging problems in advance, changing conditions often render specifically targeted management proposals irrelevant or impossible to implement. Because of this, our research indicates a clear need for frameworks that are "adaptive" - that reflect uncertainties and can respond and adapt as contexts change or unforeseen problems emerge. Specific solutions are less important than the existence of processes and frameworks that enable solutions to be identified and implemented as specific constraints and contexts change.” • Hazards / Disaster (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2003) • “Experience gained coping with current climate variability is the basis for future adaptation to climate change”

9. Climate Variability (a surrogate for “Change/Stress/Shock”)Growing Season Precipitation Coefficient of Variation: precursor to desertification

10. Canadian Climate-Agricultural Policy Reccomendations

11. Operationalizing the Vulnerability ApproachVulnerability = f(Exposure, Adaptive Capacity)Smit and Pilifosova (2003) Vulnerability Exposure Adaptive Capacity Adaptation occurs continuously; (successfully and unsuccessfully) Ongoing successful adaptation is resilience Objective: identify, learn and replicate The policy environment that creates these successes. Historic climate stress Future climate stress

12. Lessons learned from these case studies: what policies and practices are impeding resilience and adaptation Lessons learned from these case studies: what policies and practices are exacerbating vulnerability Case Study Identification with Vulnerability Space Mapping what policies and practices are promoting resilience and adaptation high Adaptive Capacity what policies and practices are impeding resilience and adaptation low low high Climate Exposure Index Lessons learned from these case studies: what policies and practices are promoting resilience and adaptation

13. Project Schematic: identifying the strong signals Key outputs Key inputs Climate Exposure data Vulnerability Analysis Where are the key lessons to be found? Adaptive Capacity Adaptive Capacity data Climate Exposure Index Resilience Analysis What is working, what isn’t Case study identification Stakeholder narratives Current Policy Synthesis Adaptation Priority Analysis Where and how? Future Climate Models Policy Recommendations: influence the APF

14. Measuring Adaptive Capacity

16. Adaptive Capacity Mapped

17. Climate Exposure MappedGrowing Season Precipitation Coefficient of Variation (%)

18. Site Selection for Resilience Analysis Climate Exposure Adaptive Capacity Candidate Sites Selected

20. Narrative Development: Farm-level Interviews - interrogating policy directly • 1. Please briefly describe your operation including both type and size. • 2. Have there been any large changes to your operation in the last five years? • 3. List any weather extremes which have impacted you in the last five years. • 4. List any other events which have impacted you in the last five years. • 5. Please describe how (insert event) impacted your operation and quality of life in general. • 6. How did you respond to (insert event)? • 7. What aided you in your response? • 8. What impeded you in your response? • 9. What measures and policies would be useful for improving your ability to respond to the weather events we have discussed? • 10. Have you heard of the (insert policy/program*)? If so, did you apply, or consider applying? • *see list of appended policies and programs

21. Initial Findings: Stresses

22. Initial Findings: Responses to Weather Stresses

23. Initial Findings: Responses to Non-Weather Stresses

24. Initial Findings: Stress-Response

25. Initial Findings: Raw Policy Data

26. Status and Next Steps • The Bad News: • Synthesizing Raw Field Data from Manitoba: explaining N-S differences • Saskatchewan field study starting now. • Resilience Synthesis and Policy Analysis starting now on limited field data (one province) • Project scheduled to end March 31, 2007 • The Good News: • The project lives on as an input to a large comparative Canada-India comparative project on “Adaptive Policy” funded by IDRC: www.iisd.org/climate/canada/adaptive_overview.asp • Early outputs from the linked IDRC project released at COP12 in Nairobi earlier this month. • The Prairie Climate Resilience Project will be completed in fy 07-08

27. Phase I Report and Website

29. Equilibrium and Non-equilibrium Agricultural Policy