Adapting agriculture to climate change by developing promising strategies using analogue locations in Eastern and Southern Africa: Introducing the calesa project

Abstract

The impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa are significant and call for concrete measures that allow a better understanding of these problems, as well as the identification of the means to address them. One of the means to tackle them is by using analogue locations, i.e. locations that have the climatic characteristics today that are expected tomorrow. This paper introduces the project “Developing promising strategies using analogue locations in Eastern and Southern Africa” (CALESA). Using a combination of model-based ex ante analyses and iterative field-based research on station and in farmers’ fields, the project will test potential agricultural adaptation strategies for rain-fed agriculture in the semi-arid and dry sub-humid tropics. This will be achieved through choosing four currently important crop production zones (two in Kenya and two in Zimbabwe) and then identifying corresponding ‘spatially analogue locations’ for each production zone, providing experiences which may be replicable elsewhere.