Ex ante impact assessment and seasonal climate forecasts: status and issues Philip Thornton

1. Ex ante impact assessment and seasonal climate forecasts: status and issues Philip Thornton International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland International Workshop on Climate Prediction and Agriculture: Advances and Challenges WMO, Geneva, 11-13 May 2005

2. Outline • Ex ante impact assessment • Some methods and tools • Impact assessment and climate forecasting • Moving the agenda forward 2

3. Presentation focus • Ex ante methods of assessing impacts at an aggregated level • potential societal impacts of change in agricultural systems • Change as a result of • indigenous innovation • research (technology, policy) • drivers such as population growth 3

4. Presentation focus • A large and growing literature on ex ante assessment of climate forecast use at the household and individual level • Much less seems to have been done at aggregated levels 4

5. A traditional view of impact assessment Impacts Year Z Research costs Extension costs Adoption costs on-farm Adapted from Randolph et al. (2001) 5

6. A traditional view of impact assessment • A vast literature exists based on this model • The effectiveness of this type of ex ante IA is dependent on monitoring and evaluation • In practice, if things cannot be valued relatively easily, they tend to be ignored • Sees the innovation process as being highly linear and one-way 6

7. Sayer and Campbell (2003) 7

8. Another view of impact assessment Adaptation, uptake, dis-adoption % • Impacts on: • Production • Income • Food security • Vulnerability • Adaptive capacity • ... Year Y Year 0 Adaptation Successive INRM learning cycles Updating Action Subsystem Identification Reflection Implementation costs of doing INRM 8

9. Questions of ex ante impact assessment • However the innovation process is seen, it involves some sequence of change  uptake  impact, and there are common questions to be answered: • Who are the clients? • Impact where? • Impact on whom? • Which impacts? • How to value the impacts? 9

10. Who are the clients for ex ante impact assessment? • Policy makers at national, regional, local level (decisions to be made in pursuit of policy objectives) • Donors (priority setting, targeting) • Researchers (priority setting, targeting) • Private sector (investment decisions) • General public (direct impacts of the use of public resources) 10

11. Impact where, and on whom? • Physical location – “recommendation domains”, targeting • Characteristics of target populations in these areas 11

12. Site selection, Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme • Spatial data • Administrative boundaries • Climatological data • Farming systems • Length of growing period • Livestock populations • Market access • Human population • Soils and erosion risk • Vegetation cover • Protected areas • Watersheds, lakes, rivers • Non-spatial data • Institutional environment • Policy environment • Local livelihood options • Critical health issues • Broad poverty trends • Social capital • Commercial sector linkages • Added value • Representative-ness • Potential for impact 12

13. SSA-CP site selection 13

14. SSA-CP extrapolation domain for Lake Kivu Elevation > 1500 m Rainfall > 800 mm Pop density > 50 / km2 Access indicator < 90 Area 19,500  361,700 km2 Population (2000) 15  69 million Population (2030) 29  131 million Notenbaert (2004) 14

15. Which impacts, and how to value them? • Which impacts will depend on the situation: • Production, productivity • Poverty alleviation • Food security • Environment • Capacity building • Commodity prices for consumers • Others ... 15

16. Production objectives of livestock keepers in Vryberg District, Northwest Province, RSA • Commercial • Raise calves for market (reproductive capacity of the herd is key) • Age-sex composition of the herd is carefully controlled • Want quick turn-over in calf production • Cull unproductive animals • Communal • Maintain cattle as a capital and social asset • Maintain as large a herd as possible, sell animals only in extremis • Practise goat production as a hedge against drought • Do not under-utilise pasture Hudson (2002) 16

17. Mixed crop-livestock systems in Kenya and N Tanzania after Seré and Steinfeld (1996) 17

18. Characteristics of four maize-based mixed systems identified in the Eastern and Southern Africa region Functions of livestock Dairy, manure Dairy, manure, draft Draft, meat, manure Draft, meat Source: Thorne et al. (2002) 18

19. Evaluating the impacts (a subsample) 19

20. Information needed for an ex ante assessment Stage 1. Change (e.g. research) Resources required Time Partnerships and skills Intermediate and final outputs Probability of success Level of uncertainty Mod Mod Low Mod Mod-High How to obtain Peer review Scoring methods Econometric methods 20

21. Information needed for an ex ante assessment Stage 2. Uptake Who, characteristics Where, characteristics Infrastructure needed Policies needed Adoption rate, ceiling Costs involved Level of uncertainty Mod Mod High High High Mod-High How to obtain GIS, surveys GIS, surveys GIS Surveys Scoring methods Scoring methods 21

22. Information needed for an ex ante assessment Stage 3. Impact quantification Production Income Environment Capacity building Costs, prices, elasticities Level of uncertainty Mod Mod High High Mod How to obtain Biophysical models Household models Models, scoring Scoring methods Lit review, surveys 22

23. Challenges in doing ex ante impact assessments related to climate forecasts 1. The nature of climate forecasts Which impacts to measure? Seasonal climate forecasts may modify risk, and this has to be taken into account Impacts on whom? People grow crops and keep livestock for various reasons, not all to do with food production and cash generation How to assess uptake?Seasonal forecasts may be inaccurate Their uptake will depend on credibility of the source and forecast skill 23

24. Challenges in doing ex ante impact assessments related to climate forecasts 2. The need to assess impacts across time and space Which impacts to measure? Aggregate impacts of seasonal climate forecast use may substantially modify local prices Impacts of modified management may be felt over entire production cycles, or even multiple production cycles 24

25. Challenges in doing ex ante impact assessments related to climate forecasts 3. Assessing what is required of the institutional and policy environments How to assess uptake? What support is likely to be necessary, and how much may it cost to set in place and maintain? 25

26. Information needed for an ex ante assessment related to seasonal climate forecasts Stage 1. Change (e.g. implementation) Resources required Time Partnerships and skills Probability of different levels of success Level of uncertainty Mod Mod High High How to obtain Scoring methods Peer review 26

27. Information needed for an ex ante assessment related to seasonal climate forecasts Stage 2. Uptake Who, characteristics Where, characteristics Infrastructure needed Policies needed Adoption rate, ceiling Costs involved Level of uncertainty Mod Mod High High High High How to obtain GIS, surveys GIS, surveys GIS Surveys Scoring methods Scoring methods 27

28. Information needed for an ex ante assessment related to seasonal climate forecasts Stage 3. Impact quantification Production Income, risk and food security Changes in vulnerability Changes in adaptive capacity Capacity building Costs, prices, elasticities Level of uncertainty Mod Mod-High High High High Mod-High How to obtain Biophysical models Household models Models, scoring? Models, scoring? Scoring methods Lit review, surveys 28

29. Future developments to help overcome the challenges • 1 Understanding better who the potential clients are, and what characterises them • Partly a question of spatial info (poverty maps, new continental/global data layers, etc) • But also a question of information on non-spatial determinants of poverty and vulnerability, how decision makers actually make decisions, information flows and power structures in communities, etc 29

30. Future developments to help overcome the challenges • 2 Developing tools that are better able to cope with the demands of climate forecast assessment • May need new or adapted behavioural frameworks, beyond profit or utility maximisation, to take account of impacts on • food security • reduction of household vulnerability • increases in household adaptive capacity • Different types of models may help: agent based, systems dynamics 30

31. Future developments to help overcome the challenges 3 Developing approaches that combine quantitative and qualitative elements Linked also to provision of baseline data, for monitoring and evaluation That can then be linked to ex post impact assessments, so that the lessons learned from this whole process can be applied elsewhere in the pursuit of poverty alleviation goals 31

32. Future developments to help overcome the challenges 4 Making the process of impact assessment participatory The process is often as important as (if not more important than) the results of the analysis Getting all stakeholders involved in thinking broadly about the problems involved and the potential impacts 32

33. Thank you p.thornton@cgiar.org