AgriAdapt: Strategies for Participatory Design and Development of a Climate Risk Tool

The document describes the co-creation of AgriAdapt, a digital tool designed to assess climate risks in agricultural supply chains, specifically targeting post-production stages like processing and distribution. Developed over a 19-month grant from the Walmart Foundation, the project utilized a participatory approach guided by the Principles for Digital Development. The tool was piloted for rice and cotton value chains in India and coffee in Colombia. The paper identifies five critical success factors for participatory development: deep contextual understanding, an iterative learning ethos, the use of local subgrantees for in-country support, a structured stakeholder engagement strategy, and effective cross-team communication. It highlights the challenge of reaching the most vulnerable beneficiaries due to funding constraints and COVID-19 restrictions, leading the team to target high-influence users who can amplify information to vulnerable groups.

• Existing climate risk tools often overlook vulnerabilities in post-production stages of the agricultural supply chain, such as processing, packaging, storage, transport, and distribution, focusing instead primarily on the production level.
• The development of AgriAdapt was piloted across three specific agricultural value chains: coffee in Colombia, and rice and cotton in India.
• The project identified five essential components for successful participatory tool development: a deep understanding of the local context to avoid duplicating existing efforts, an iterative learning ethos to adjust user preferences, the use of local subgrantees for on-the-ground knowledge, a formal stakeholder engagement strategy for gathering feedback, and transparent communication across diverse teams.
• Due to short-term funding constraints and COVID-19 travel restrictions, the team could not easily access the most vulnerable beneficiaries; consequently, they targeted high-influence users, such as public policy planners and extension agents, who could share the tool's information with vulnerable groups.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). AgriAdapt: Strategies for Participatory Design and Development of a Climate Risk Tool. https://www.wri.org/research/agriadapt-strategies-participatory-design-and-development-climate-risk-tool

Chicago

World Resources Institute. AgriAdapt: Strategies for Participatory Design and Development of a Climate Risk Tool. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/agriadapt-strategies-participatory-design-and-development-climate-risk-tool.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=AgriAdapt: Strategies for Participatory Design and Development of a Climate Risk Tool |url=https://www.wri.org/research/agriadapt-strategies-participatory-design-and-development-climate-risk-tool |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendagriadapt, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{AgriAdapt: Strategies for Participatory Design and Development of a Climate Risk Tool}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/agriadapt-strategies-participatory-design-and-development-climate-risk-tool}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }