Climate Adaptation in Colombia

Colombia, a country in Central America, has recently come to the forefront of making advances in the ability to adapt to climate change issues, especially as they relate to agriculture.  Climate change has caused problems mainly in the variability of weather and new extremes such as years of intense rain and flooding followed by years of drought.  Colombia has had a lot of recent experience with these issues and has begun to rise to the challenge.  From these problematic climate events, many countries, including Colombia have been pushed to make changes in their responses.

The catalytic event for Colombia was the La Nina in 2010-2011 which caused severe flooding.  Since then, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR) has invested in holistic, multi-crop, and regionally focused efforts for adaptation to climate.  They have also partnered with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

These changes have allowed approaches to problems to be fine-tuned for different areas depending on varying risks.  Additionally, farmers have been included in the process which makes solutions better suited to the needs of farmers and what conditions are actually like for them.  Farmer involvement also leads to an increase in awareness of climate change which will be necessary to begin to make changes to combat climate issues.

Technological advances are also being used to make great strides in adaption to climate change.  A recent technological development, a decision making tool that takes climate, annual rice surveys, experiments on rice planting dates, and specific location into account, saved rice farmers in Colombia great economic losses.  The climate modeling used by CIAT showed that there would be a drought during the first growing season of the year and urged farmers not to plant their crops.  Farmers who listened were saved from large economic loss and will still be able to grow their crops later this year.  Advances like this are obviously not a panacea to climate change, but can certainly be helpful in the meantime, reducing losses due to variability in climate.

Sources: Short articles that are interesting to read if you have time :)
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/sep/30/colombia-rice-growers-climate-change
http://www.ciatnews.cgiar.org/2014/02/28/can-colombia-lead-the-way-to-the-agriculture-of-the-future/