In June, the fifth international climate change adaptation conference, Adaptation Futures, was held in Africa – a first for the conference series. Around 1,200 people attended Adaptation Futures in Cape Town with a program which reflected the growing emphasis on climate information services (CIS) in the adaptation community.
Ahead of the conference, the USAID-funded Learning Agenda on Climate Services in sub-Saharan Africa hosted a full-day workshop with partners from the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) at the University of Cape Town. The Learning Agenda, consisting of the Mercy Corps-led Climate Information Services Research Initiative (CISRI) and the Winrock-led Sustainable CIS program, convened 65 participants to examine and discuss recent research on the generation and delivery of CIS. Throughout the day the participants–including researchers, donors, members of NMHSs and implementing partners—explored the needs of CIS end users, how to quantitatively assess the capacity of NMHSs, the role of public-private partnerships, financial revenue generation models for NMHSs, and the challenges of social and sector inclusion of CIS.