Increasing the resilience of farming families to climate change is now an unavoidable issue in rural areas. SOCODEVI’s expertise in this area has been recognized in securing a new applied research project for climate change adaptation of cocoa cooperatives in Côte d’Ivoire.
Called AdaptCoop, this new project aims to sustainably increase the resilience to climate change of Ivorian cocoa cooperatives and member families. In Côte d’Ivoire, cooperatives play an important role in the production and marketing of cocoa but have little information about climate that is transposable and useful in their environment. This makes it difficult in making medium- and long-term decisions for their operations and for their members.
“The AdaptCoop team will work, in particular, on establishing climate scenarios for the cocoa production zone in Côte d’Ivoire. Using a participatory approach, these climate scenarios will be interpreted in order to better understand the implications for the cocoa value chain,”
says Renée Brunelle, SOCODEVI program officer and environmental advisor.
Inclusive innovation for the benefit of producer families
An analysis of the agroecological adaptation practices by women farmers, farmers and cooperatives, will also be carried out through this new project. In addition, AdaptCoop will put in place a program to build the capacity of co-ops and families to plan, access, adopt and apply innovative climate change adaptation solutions.
“A very important objective is to develop and operationalize a gender-sensitive decision-making support tool for cocoa cooperatives, which can be a lever for adaptation to climate change. Women need to be part of the solutions and the decision-making processes related to climate issues,”
says Brunelle.
Supported financially by Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC),AdaptCoop is an initiative implemented by SOCODEVI, Ouranos and the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), and more precisely through its Ivorian cluster, CEA-CCBAD (Centre d’Excellence Africain sur le Changement Climatique, la Biodiversité et l’Agriculture Durable de l’Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny). All are working in collaboration with the Agence Nationale d’Appui au Développement Rural (ANADER) and the Centre National de Recherche Agronomique (CNRA).