Applying Climate Services to Transformative Adaptation in Agriculture

This research paper examines how climate services (CS)—systems that provide climate information to users—can be enhanced to support 'transformative adaptation' in agriculture. Transformative adaptation involves long-term, systemic changes to agricultural production systems to maintain resilience against severe climate impacts. The author argues that while current CS effectively support daily and seasonal farming decisions, there is a critical gap in providing the decadal and long-term projections (up to 2050) necessary for high-level policymakers and planners to design systemic shifts.

• There is a significant lack of transformative adaptation strategies in official climate planning documents. A review of 253 documents—including 196 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), 9 National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and 48 submissions to the UNFCCC Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA) platform—revealed that only 7 (2.7 percent) described applications of climate services for adaptation planning that could be considered transformative, such as the explicit use of long-term climate projections.
• Current climate services (CS) primarily focus on short-term needs, such as daily weather and seasonal forecasts, which have shown benefits including yield or income gains of up to 66 percent and cost-benefit ratios for national meteorological service investments between 1:2 and 1:10. However, to support transformative adaptation, CS must shift focus toward decadal and longer-term climate-impact analysis with planning horizons extending to approximately 2050.
• To enable systemic change, climate services must integrate non-agricultural data—including economic, social, biological, environmental, and market factors—to manage inter-sectoral competition for resources like land and water. For instance, shifting from cropping to aquaculture or implementing large-scale irrigation impacts water supply and demand across multiple economic sectors.
• There is a disparity in the adoption of long-term climate information between the private sector and public planning. Agribusinesses, specifically coffee and cacao producers, are already using long-term data to map favorable areas and guide investment or divestment. Conversely, national-level planners and policymakers struggle with the complexity of analytical systems, risk aversion, and the difficulty of justifying investments based on projected risks.

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} }