This project builds on the work of Adapta Sertao, a coalition of research institutions and NGOs that helps smallholder farmers become more resilient to climate change through an adapted agricultural system. Adapta Sertao has been testing and monitoring different arrangements of this system, which combines irrigation with drought-resistant crops, with smallholders over the past two years to understand its adaptive and food security potential. Building on this experience, this project aims to test and monitor more of those arrangements, and to systemise the results from a climate adaptation perspective through specific scientific dataset analyses.

The Brazilian semi-arid region of north-eastern Brazil, which is among the poorest areas of Latin America, is the target area. About thirty million people are affected annually by prolonged dry periods that are expected to intensify due to climate change. Smallholders are likely to suffer the greatest impacts because of their lack of resources for adaptation.

The project aims to promote integration between existing national socio-economic policies in order to address climate change adaptation in the semi-arid region of Brazil. This integration will be proposed during five multi-stakeholder dialogues with policy-makers at national and state levels, and using the systematised results of the Adapta Sertao pilot projects as a scientific basis for discussion.

Expected outcomes of this project include:

• A systematised climate change adaptation model for smallholders living in dry areas that can be replicated in other dry regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
• The development of an approach for multi-stakeholder dialogues that foster national climate change adaptation policies.
• Creation of links between existing development policies to climate change.

Fuente:  www.cdkn.org. T