On 23 June 2022, PARM hosted a panel within the IFAD 2022 “Jobs, Innovation and Value Chains in the age of Climate Change”, and gathered several online and in-person attendees.

The session has been enriched by the interventions of the PARM technical team (including the gender expert, an expert from CIRAD (Agricultural Research Centre for International Development), an expert from Africa that addressed the role of Information and Communication Technology for women, and INSURED programme. The exchange focused on (i) the key pillars of Agricultural Risk Management (ARM) according to the PARM process, (ii) gender in ARM, (iii) information management in ARM and (iv) INSURED programme (Insurance for rural resilience and economic development) managed by PARM.

The speakers brought out key dimensions of ARM, feeding an interesting and informative exchange during the session, and contributing to demonstrating how crucial the role of PARM and its risks assessment studies are, in helping governments to identify each type of Agricultural risks, their impact on farmers’ income and how institutions and farmers can handle them.

“Agricultural Risk is context-specific and Capacity Development assists stakeholders to kickstart their own ARM process. Transferring capacity on how to do it allows local actors to be able to apply the practices in their own jurisdictions“, stated Carlos Arce, Lead Technical Advisor of PARM, underlining the importance of transferring knowledge and enhancing the development of capacities at local level.

Moussa Cissé, Agricultural Expert at Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) highlighted: “The harmonization of information on all agricultural insurance products existing in Senegal is equally important”, alongside the accessibility to the information on climate, production, market and governance risk, to ensure real-time decisions and the effectiveness of Risk Management”.

Special attention has been drawn to the gender dimension which is increasingly important in the ARM and specifically for PARM strategy. In its holistic approach, PARM addresses multiple risks at different levels (farmers, producers’ organisations, governments, etc.). In this framework, the PARM Gender specialist, Desiree Zwanck, analyzed the ARM through a gender lens and pointed out the need of integrating gender and youth at every stage of the ARM cycle.

The event closed by focusing on the insurance pillar and how this fits into Agricultural risk Management. “The first step is to prioritize the risks faced by the rural target groups of interest, and then to identify the appropriate ARM tools related to risk mitigation, risk transfer, and/or risk coping”, stated Tara James, Climate Risk and Agricultural Insurance expert at INSURED Programme.