STATEMENT
OF WORK

outputs

Climate Variability and Household Welfare in the Andes:
Farmer adaptation and
use of weather forecasts in decision making

Relevance to the goal of the Climate and Global Change Program and the program priorities

 The proposed research aims at identifying how climate, especially drought, affects the portfolio of economics activities, i.e. the production and market decisions of rural households, as they respond and adapt to climate variability. Our study will identify groups of the population that are in the best position to take advantage of climate and weather information, and understand the constraints they experience. This research also intends to evaluate, based on current production strategies, the potential impact of using the climate forecasts. Recommendations will be developed from the findings, to formulate policies intended to eliminate current constraints on the use of forecasts. Recommendation will also be developed on the type of weather and climate reports are useful to agricultural producers in this region. The announcement of El Niño Event of 1997-1998 and its effect on production will be studied in the region. Reinoso (personal communication, CIRNMA) mentioned conservative planting after the announcement of El Niño were taken that decreased production (Woodman, 1998).

Our research will shed light on how rural households and communities currently adjust to climatic variability, evaluate the outcome of current decisions identifying use of climate and weather information, and analyze the institutions that influence their decisions to identify how climate forecast information can be incorporated.

 Benefits to the public and scientific community

 We expect our research to advance the understanding of decision making under uncertain environments and non perfect functioning markets; we also hope to improve the evaluation methods by incorporating a household portfolio approach; integrate information generated from crop and livestock models with forecast predictions to the evaluation of rural household strategies. Contribute to the knowledge of the role of non market institutions, networks and organizations in the use of climatic information and weather forecasts. Contribute information to the community on the type of weather and climate forecasts that are useful to producers in the Altiplano region in the production of food crops such as potato and quinoa.

 Linkages

 CIRNMA, PNUD, PROINPA, and CIP are institutions working in the region and devoted to improving the living conditions of small holder producers and their families in the Andean Altiplano regions of Bolivia and Peru. As the letter of participation by PNUD indicates this institution is currently working in a project to strengthen the Bolivian National System to mitigate and manage disasters, and are at present conducting an assessment of the damages of El Niño phenomenon is the region. The International Potato Center is part of the Consortium for the Development of the Andean Region (CONDESAN),which is a network of institutions working on the development of this region. CIP is currently developing drought and frost models for different potato varieties (Hijmans et al.,1997) in the Andes, and the Department that R. Quiroz leads is working on integrating biological models to study land use management and sustainability in this eco-region. We are working with the International Potato Center. Researchers from CIP have submitted another proposal AIntegrated Assessment of ENSO and Climate Change Impacts on the Andean Agriculture@ (Charles Crissman, Principal Investigator, Roberto Quiroz co-investigator). Our research on the household approach, decisions and strategies, will inform the research at CIP, while our project will benefit by diffusion of the results of our research through the networks they would be strengthening in the region, and the work on climate models. Both PROINPA and CIRNMA are institutions that are committed to the development of their regions. Our collaborative research activities would strengthen both their and our research capacity. CIP has collaborative relations with both institutions. We have established collaboration with CIRNMA (see letter of collaboration) and are pursuing a similar relationship with PROINPA, as they are the institution that will be working at Patacamaya, site where the Instituto Boliviano de Tecnología Agropecuaria worked. The latter is going through reforms and will collaborate with PROINPA.

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