Applying Climate Services to Transformative Adaptation in Agriculture

The paper argues that while current climate services effectively support daily and seasonal farming decisions, they are underutilized for transformative adaptation—long-term, systemic changes to agricultural production. A review of 253 climate-related policy documents (NDCs, NAPs, and KJWA submissions) revealed that only 2.7% describe the use of climate services for transformative planning. To address this, the author suggests that CS must shift focus toward decadal and long-term projections (up to 2050), integrate non-agricultural data (such as economic and social factors), and be tailored to the needs of policymakers and funders to identify viability thresholds for existing systems. The paper emphasizes that high-quality, tailored CS are essential to prevent developing-country governments from falling behind and to mitigate widening climate-induced inequalities.

• There is a significant gap in the integration of climate services (CS) into transformative adaptation planning within official national commitments. Out of 253 analyzed documents—including 196 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), 9 National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and 48 submissions to the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA)—only 7 (2.7%) describe CS applications for adaptation planning that could be considered transformative, such as the use of long-term climate projections.
• Current climate services for agriculture primarily focus on short-term needs, but transformative adaptation requires a shift toward decadal and long-term analysis. While existing CS have shown cost-benefit ratios between 1:2 and 1:10 for national meteorological services and have increased yields or income by up to 66%, they have largely focused on daily and seasonal forecasts. To guide long-term resilience, CS must provide insights out to approximately 2050, combining temperature and precipitation projections with crop models to identify productivity shifts.
• To enable systemic change, climate services must move beyond agricultural data to include biological, environmental, economic, market, and social factors. This cross-sectoral approach is necessary because transformative actions—such as relocating agricultural systems or shifting from cropping to aquaculture—impact water supply and demand, potentially creating competition with other sectors. This requires new investments in downscaled, long-term geospatial data and coordination across government agencies.
• Climate services need to be specifically tailored for high-level decision-makers, such as policymakers and funders, to identify 'viability thresholds' where current agricultural systems become unfeasible. While global agribusinesses (e.g., coffee and cacao producers) already use long-term data to guide investment and divestment, national-level planners in developing countries lack similar tailored tools, which risks increasing climate-induced inequalities.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Applying Climate Services to Transformative Adaptation in Agriculture. https://www.wri.org/research/applying-climate-services-transformative-adaptation-agriculture

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Applying Climate Services to Transformative Adaptation in Agriculture. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/applying-climate-services-transformative-adaptation-agriculture.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Applying Climate Services to Transformative Adaptation in Agriculture |url=https://www.wri.org/research/applying-climate-services-transformative-adaptation-agriculture |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendapplying, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Applying Climate Services to Transformative Adaptation in Agriculture}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/applying-climate-services-transformative-adaptation-agriculture}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }