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{"metadata":{"id":"0118f37f2847e6cb48d323c555fa5cde","source":"gardian_index","url":"https://cgspace.cgiar.org/rest/bitstreams/6fb273ab-f055-414e-a1dc-b78372e105a5/retrieve"},"pageCount":17,"title":"This publication was prepared as an output for DeRISK SE Asia and is aligned with the new CGIAR initiative on Asia Mega-Deltas. It has not been peer-reviewed. Any opinions stated herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policies or opinions of DeRISK SE Asia, donor agencies, or partners","keywords":[],"chapters":[{"head":"","index":1,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":63,"text":"Agriculture is an important component of the Myanmar economy, where 67% of the population is rural. Agriculture accounts for 32% of the gross domestic product (GDP), 56% national employment, and 21% of its total exports (CSO, 2012). As an agriculturebased country with a large percentage of smallholder farmers, Myanmar's food security, nutrition, and livelihoods are highly vulnerable to climate change risks. (Bernardo, 2018)."},{"index":2,"size":123,"text":"Myanmar lies in a tropical climate region, which is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (Aung et al., 2017). Climate change in Myanmar is manifested by uncertainties in monsoon patterns, longer periods of drought, increasing temperature, highly variable rainfall volume and patterns, stronger cyclones that cause destructive floods, and causing heavy losses to agricultural production (MOAI, 2015). The Ayeyarwady delta and Central Dry Zone are regarded as major agricultural production zones of Myanmar but are also the most vulnerable areas to climate change (David A, Larry, & Jindra, 2015). Lowland area is dominated by rice cultivation, with access to irrigation in most areas, while the upland area is mainly of oil seed crops and pulses cultivations (Mather et al., 2018). In "}]},{"head":"TRANSLATE","index":2,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":11,"text":"Farmers make many farm decisions, many of which are climate sensitive."},{"index":2,"size":80,"text":"For example, deciding on what variety of crop to plant requires information on whether the length of the monsoon will be normal or not; decisions for sowing time, irrigation, and applying fertilizers all depend on whether there will be a rainy week or not. In addition to other players in the value chain also make decisions that rely on climate conditions-deciding when to dry, store and transport farm products, for instance, will be made effective with climate information and forecasts."},{"index":3,"size":11,"text":"This also includes other businesses such as insurance providers, finance 2)."}]},{"head":"Table 2. Decision-making in rice cultivation under different climate condition","index":3,"paragraphs":[]},{"head":"Local Technical Agroclimatic Committees (LTAC)","index":4,"paragraphs":[{"index":1,"size":131,"text":"The project team also promoted the Local Technical Agroclimatic Committees (LTAC) as an approach and a venue to conduct a more participatory and consultative manner for generating agroclimatic advisories. The LTAC is a dialogue process among a diversity of local actors, including scientists, technicians, representatives from the public and private sectors, and farmers, which seeks to understand the climate's possible behavior in a locality and to generate recommendations to reduce risks associated with expected climate variability. (Loboguerrero, 2018) This dialogue is then used to create an agroclimatic bulletin containing the region's climate forecast, its possible impact on crops for specific conditions in time and space, and recommendations for each production sector. The CDTs are useful tools in generating these recommendations for decisionmaking. Figure 3 shows the general components of the LTAC."},{"index":2,"size":214,"text":"The LTAC, as the name suggests, is local. In the case of Myanmar, this. can mean township level or a group of townships in a district. The agroecology and the similarities of crops cultivated determine the basis for the level of the LTAC. LTAC is a participatory approach to address climate risk issues by forming a local committee consisting of crop experts, meteorologists, NGOs, CSOs, and the private sector working for the agricultural sector and farmer groups. The committee is to run in a dynamic action through a series of discussions throughout the cropping season. The committee first identifies the major cropping systems in the region, including the cropping calendar and risks which are likely to occur through the reviews of past climate events, observation data, and forecasts. Then the committee members collaborate to develop and disseminate the local agroclimatic bulletin using forecasts and crop decision trees. CDTs are developed as a static document for crop management recommendations prepared for different climate scenarios, such as normal, wetter, and drier conditions. Based on the forecasts, they are used as decision support tools in local agroclimatic bulletins. In Myanmar, support can be given for studying, piloting, and assessing how financial services (credit and insurance) can be bundled with climate information services provided by Myanmar's private sector."}]}],"figures":[{"text":" This paper is developed to inform about the importance of climate information services in enhancing the resilience of the agriculture sector to the impacts of climate change in Myanmar. The following sections are presented: i) overview of climate risks and their impact on Myanmar agriculture based on the findings the context of Myanmar with key methods and tools; and iii) areas of further investment and support for scaling out of the activities in future. "},{"text":" Recently, Myanmar has experienced some of the most destructive cyclones. Cyclone Nargis impacted the country most significantly, which occurred on 2nd May 2008, destroying about 783,000 ha of farmland in the Ayeyarwady delta due to flooding (Tripartite Core Group, 2008). In July 2015, Cyclone Komen caused major floods in Myanmar's river basins, is highly vulnerable to climate risks, especially to frequent dry spells and erratic rainfall patterns, and water shortage is a major problem of rainfed agriculture in the region (its first year designing the approach and collecting data for national CS demand assessment. The project team planned to conduct the demand assessment by organizing a climate risk workshop (CRW) with relevant stakeholders, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation (MoALI) officials. CRW is an approach to map the demand for climate services by identifying major livelihood activities, cropping systems and the associated climate risks affecting them, viable coping strategies, and demand for climate information and advisory services to carry out adaption and mitigation measures. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project team had to change the plan to conduct the CRW assessment through individual interviews with structured questionnaires instead of physical workshops. The CRW assessment conducted focused on the Central Dry Zone (CDZ), one of Myanmar's climate hazard-prone areas. CDZ lies in the central part of Myanmar, consisting of three regions, 16 districts, and 58 townships. There are two major cropping systems in the CDZ: lowland and upland cultivation. "},{"text":" Magway and Sagaing regions, cropping systems are dominated by rice cultivation, while sesame is the most important crop in Mandalay. Drought and flood are the major climate risks across the CDZ, affecting the major cropping systems throughout the monsoon season (May to October). The appearance of climate risks in three regions of the CDZ can be seen in Figures 1, 2 and 3. To enhance the resilience of farmers in the CDZ, the recommended responses are focused on drought and flood, such as using drought and floodresistant varieties, using water-saving technologies, preparing water drainage systems, adjusting planting dates, etc. The demand for climate information products is linked with the advisories mentioned above. Since the crop production in the CDZ largely relies on monsoon rain and the major climate risks normally occur during the monsoon period, the required climate information products become rain and temperature forecasts, flood and storm warnings, heat wave warnings, and forecasts for the time of onset and withdrawal of monsoon. "},{"text":"Figure 1 . Figure 1. Appearance of climate risks in Magway Region of CDZ "},{"text":"Figure Figure 4 (next page) presents the four important interrelated components of climate information services in a country. "},{"text":"Figure 4 . Figure 4. Climate service value chain (Adapted from WMO) "},{"text":" experts can now develop decision-support tools that match climate information with decision-making from the farm to other sectors in the value chain. This process of interpreting climate information and developing advisories to guide decision-making is the focus of this component-translation. An important decision support tool that the DeRisk SE Asia project implemented in Myanmar is the crop decision tree (CDT) for the primary crops of the central dry zone. agriculture. Here is an example of a CDT for rice (Table "},{"text":"Figure 5 . Figure 5. Components of Local Technical Agro-climatic Committees (LTAC) "},{"text":"Figure 6 Figure 6 presents the main features of the SESAME mobile application. "},{"text":"Figure 6 . Figure 6. Main features of the SESAME mobile application "}],"sieverID":"ffe4ea5b-e860-4c2b-9af1-976f476dfa77","abstract":"Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV), the project aims to develop climate risk management systems, best practices, and insurance products that will shield smallholder farmers and businesses across the agricultural value chain in key Southeast Asia countries from physical and financial disaster associated with climate change. It assists governments in developing national and regional adaptation and risk management strategies. To know more about our project, please visit: https://deriskseasia.org/."} |
