SHARP: integrating a traditional survey with participatory self-evaluation and learning for climate change resilience assessment

Abstract

2016): SHARP: integrating a traditional survey with participatory self-evaluation and learning for climate change resilience assessment, Climate and Development, Climate change, population growth and social conflict have left many farmers and pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa at near constant crisis conditions. Participatory climate resilience assessments can help farmer and pastoralist communities to identify, measure and prioritize actions to improve the climate resilience of their agricultural systems. Self-evaluation and Holistic Assessment of climate change Resilience of farmers and Pastoralists (SHARP) has been developed as a dualpurpose tool, employing participatory methods to help farmers and pastoralists to discuss and understand threats and opportunities, and to prioritize individual and collective actions aimed at improving overall resilience. Additionally, SHARP provides government and programme management with qualitative and quantitative information on a wide variety of important economic and development factors. The development of SHARP faces many challenges inherent to assessing resilience in terms of the complex nature and wide-reaching impacts of climate change. SHARP presents a unique assessment that combines resilience literature and indicators with a participatory self-assessment from the farmers and pastoralists.

¿Son las fincas agroecológicas resilientes? Algunos resultados utilizando la herramienta SHARP-FAO en Costa Rica

“…En la práctica esto implica que, frente a una perturbación de su sistema productivo, el productor recurre a los recursos que tiene a mano para tomar una acción de adaptación, tanto recursos propios (percepción, conocimiento, ubicación, experiencia) como externos (clima, suelo, estatus de las plagas, políticas gubernamentales y mercado); por consiguiente, la disponibilidad de estos recursos define su capacidad adaptativa local (29). Entonces, la resiliencia es una capacidad de recuperación que se puede fomentar por medio del aprendizaje, la flexibilidad, la participación y el empoderamiento (8,20,27). Así pues, diversificar recursos y estrategias para cubrir las necesidades y los fines en cada uno de los indicadores permitiría potenciar la capacidad de recuperación ante eventos climáticos extremos y fomentar el empoderamiento del productor, generando una mayor resiliencia.…”

“…Fue probada en cerca de 450 fincas en nueve países africanos, en consulta en línea con académicos y desarrolladores de proyectos (20). De acuerdo con FAO (21), esta herramienta responde a la necesidad de comprender las circunstancias, preocupaciones e intereses con respecto a la resiliencia climática, a la vez que contribuye a la planificación y monitoreo de proyectos, mediante la identificación de áreas de baja resiliencia y del establecimiento de líneas de base sobre las cuales se pueden evaluar los cambios.…”

The potential of agroecology to build climate-resilient livelihoods and food systems

“…SHARP focuses on identifying the areas of vulnerability and strength of the farm systems and agriculture-based households, while building on flexibility, learning and knowledge of farmers (Choptiany et al, 2017). It considers resilience as an intrinsic aspect of the system and farmers themselves.…”

Testing the Proposed Municipality Resilience Index to Climate Change Shocks and Stresses in Mbale Municipality in Eastern Uganda

“…Subjective based methods are important because a person's resilience does not only constitute his tangible objective livelihood assets but also psychological, such as social networks, sense of place, beliefs and cultural identity [22] [34]. They also help in identifying improvements in resilience over time using consistent assessors, measuring the marginal effect of a resilience enhancement strategy and promoting the use of local knowledge in climate change risks assessment [33] [35]. On the other hand, using objective based measurements is faster due to their use of robust socio-economic and bio-physical secondary data.…”