Ouagadougou: The Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), through the Sahel Institute, organized a training workshop for its partners on Monday in the Burkinabe capital on the Climate-Smart Villages approach to strengthen food security. To improve resilience and food security in the Sahel region, the CILSS Sahel Institute is using the climate-smart villages approach, a concept designed to make climate action in agriculture more concrete.
According to Burkina Information Agency, the Director General of the Sahel Institute (INSA), Dr. Hubert N’Djafa Ouaga, stated that the workshop aims to enable participants to appropriate the approach in order to replicate it in their national projects, particularly within the framework of Project 2 of the Program for Strengthening Resilience to Food and Nutritional Insecurity in the Sahel (P2-P2RS). He emphasized the role of participants as relays to create a critical mass in their countries, while disseminating new scientific advances through this approach.
“There’s a lot of talk about combating climate change, but often stakeholders don’t have the tools to take effective action on the ground. The climate-smart village approach fills this gap,” explained Robert Zougmore, director of the AICCRA (Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa) program. This approach brings together multiple stakeholders including researchers, extension services, local communities, and institutions to test and adapt best agricultural practices for climate mitigation and adaptation, while ensuring greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, he said.
“In the Sahel region, one of the most affected in the world by the effects of climate change while contributing the least to emissions, this method aims to sustainably improve agricultural productivity, create income, provide jobs for young people, and strengthen the autonomy of communities,” he continued. Founded in 1973 by six countries, CILSS’s mission is to provide innovative solutions to climate variability. The climate-smart villages approach is part of this vision of making the organization a lever for endogenous development in member countries.