Preliminary mission to Senegal and World Bank Workshop

PARM organized a preliminary mission to Senegal to learn and build synergies in occasion of the Agricultural Risk Management (ARM) workshop of the World Bank. In particular, PARM mission aimed at introducing the PARM process to the Ministry of Agriculture to ensure synergies with the country on-going activities, in view of the PARM setting-up mission in April.

Given that the World Bank is undertaking agricultural risk management processes in three of PARM selected countries, such as Niger, Senegal and Mozambique, it is a priority to ensure complementarity and synergies with the on-going work of the World Bank.

Workshop Objectives

The World Bank’s Agriculture Risk Management Team, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Equipment, the Ministry of Livestock and Animal Production, and the Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research, conducted a joint field mission in Feb-March 2015 to identify optimal pathways to improved climate resilience for agricultural sector. At the end of the field mission, a consultative stakeholders’ workshop was organized to present and discuss priority interventions, solicit feedback, and outline a strategic framework for improved risk mitigation.

The workshop on “Mitigating Agriculture Risks and Strengthening Climate Resilience in Senegal“, gathered together national stakeholders and experts to discuss the findings of three studies on three agricultural risk management (ARM) topics that were identified during its risk assessment phase in Senegal.

Workshop outcomes

Workshop discussions identified three broad interventions areas with strong potential to strengthen the resiliency of agricultural production and marketing systems against seasonal weather variability and to facilitate adaptation over time to changing climate conditions. The three target interventions areas are:

Strengthening national and regional Early Warning Systems (EWS) and local response mechanisms;
Promoting practices, technologies and approaches that optimize the management of soil, water and land at farm and community levels; diversify production, revenues and nutrition; and improve productivity;
Promoting community-driven development approaches to pastureland management to reverse degradation of water, soil and vegetation cover and safeguard the long-term viability of rangeland ecosystems

As for Niger, PARM risk assessment work in Senegal will have to focus on complementing the study of the World Bank with an in depth analysis of specific aspect, for instance risk at smallholder level, or specific sectors. The horizontal topic of information systems has often come into the discussions with interesting insights on a second generation of information systems linked to services.