Socioeconomic benefits of weather and climate services in Pakistan

Organizer: ICIMOD, Met Office, Pakistan Meteorological Department, and University of Leeds

About the workshop

In collaboration with the Met Office – the UK’s national meteorological agency, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), and the University of Leeds (UoL), we are organising knowledge sharing workshops on the socio-economic benefits of weather and climate information services (WCIS) in Islamabad and Multan in Pakistan.

In March 2021, PMD, UoL and ICIMOD initiated a joint study under the UK Aid-funded Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC) programme to understand the use and evaluate the socio-economic benefits of the agro-met advisories provided by PMD, particularly focusing on cotton and wheat farmers in the Punjab and Sindh provinces where rising temperatures, more frequent flooding and prolonged droughts threaten productivity. The study team will be sharing the key findings of this study with national stakeholders. This will be followed by an interaction workshop for farmers.

Objectives

• Share key findings of the study with stakeholders and obtain feedback
• Receive recommendations for enhancing current and designing future agromet advisories from PMD
• Discuss the study and its policy relevance
• Discuss future research needs and implementation

Expected outcomes

The workshop will share the findings of the study, solicit feedback, stimulate discussions on how to design the agromet advisories offered by PMD to be more effective, and identify areas where farmers need support to adopt the advisories. The recommendations of the workshop are expected to influence decision-makers in developing suitable policies at various levels to support farmers in adopting the advisories and benefitting from them.

Participants

Participants include key stakeholders of WCISs from government agencies and ministries related to agriculture and the environment including weather and climate information providers, users, research organisations, and progressive farmers from Punjab and Sindh provinces.

Resource persons

PMD: Mahr Sahibzad Khan, Muhammad Amjad and PMD officers from National Agromet Centre

ICIMOD: Mandira Singh Shrestha, Mani Nepal, Vijay Khadgi, Ganesh Bhattarai, Muhammad Ismail, Haris Ayub

UoL: Marta Bruno Soares

Met Office: Daniel Ryan

MNS University of Agriculture, Multan (MNSUAM): Muhammad Ashfaq

Background

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) provides comprehensive agricultural meteorological (agromet) advisories at various time scales to farming communities, which covers the general forecast for the coming week, month, and season along with crop-specific suggestions. In 2021, PMD, UoL and ICIMOD initiated a joint study under the UK Aid-funded ARRCC programme. The study aimed at identifying areas where the agromet advisories produced and disseminated by PMD could be improved to increase the uptake and use by those who are most vulnerable to climate hazards and changing conditions. Underpinning this aim is the concept of equity i.e. to produce a useful and usable WCIS considering the different information needed by men and women. To achieve this aim, the research was split into four objectives:

1. Understand the user landscape i.e. who use PMD services and who do not
2. Examine farmers’ perceptions of the services provided by PMD in terms of how useful and usable they are
3. Explore the conditions that enable or constrain the use of WCIS
4. Determine the impacts, including socio-economic benefits and costs of the services provided

In consultation with PMD, we jointly conducted the study in the Punjab and Sindh provinces, where wheat is grown as a staple food crop and cotton as a cash crop. The study also gathered information on how farmers use WCIS to manage risk-related and other aspects of farming. A total of 612 households were surveyed and 19 focus groups discussions were conducted to understand the use/non-use of the WCIS by households.

Tentative agenda