Natasha Grist

For farmers everywhere, and especially in the Sahel, innovation is a way of life, as they adapt and change farm practices to increase yields and decrease work inputs. With climate change posing increased risks, community and farm innovations that build climate resilience will help support and enhance the lives of many marginalised people. This paper examines five innovations from the BRACED programme working with vulnerable Sahelian populations, drawing lessons for other resilience-building efforts.

KEY MESSAGES

Humans use shortcuts to help make decisions. Sometimes called ‘cognitive biases,’ these shortcuts are essential for making quick decisions such as deciding to swerve to avoid a car accident. However, these automatic judgements can also lead to bad decision-making when intuition is relied on too heavily and defective reasoning is used. This infographic series explains 5 common shortcuts, how they play a role in decision-making related to climate risk management, and strategies to outsmart the tendency to use shortcuts.

By Lena Weingärtner, Alice Caravani and Pablo Suarez

KEY POLICY MESSAGES

Working with rural households to improve their access to met service-generated climate information has highlighted the prevalent use of traditional weather forecasting, which still remains one of the main accessible and trusted sources of weather and climate information in rural communities in Burkina Faso and Ethiopia.

This learning paper examines how the concept of resilience has impacted on the way the BRACED programme in Ethiopia (CIARE) and Burkina Faso (Zaman Lebidi) has been conceived in terms of organisational structure, learning and research and in turn, on how working in consortia and a focus on organisational learning has supported or challenged the task of building resilience.