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Even during lockdown time, government officials working within the FAO project “Strengthening Agro-climatic Monitoring and Information Systems (SAMIS) to improve adaptation to climate change and food security in Lao PDR” continue to work from home to increase the resilience of farmers during the next cropping seasons. All officers have been provided with laptop computers and web connection that enable them to continue their activities remotely. Meetings between Departments and Ministries are held in the most commonly used platforms such as Skype, Zoom or Facebook. Daily interchanges within the teams are guaranteed by using WhatsApp groups. Most importantly, additional trainings for advanced modeling held by International Consultants are also continuing by using Zoom or Skype. This is key to continue the long journey of the government officials to become a senior expert in agro-climatology and agro-meteorology.

The staff of the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) is continuing to produce the Laos Climate Services for Agriculture (LaCSA) climate advisory every week and have recently updated the seasonal forecast for the next six months. These information’s, available by province at the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/samisdmh, is very important for the initial rice season planning by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Also, these bulletins are important for farmers too, as they can start planning for the best varieties for the next planting season based on the conditions forecasted in the bulletins. An improved version of LaCSA containing advanced features and improved farmers recommendations should be online by the end of May 2020.

The staff of the Department of Agricultural Land Management (DALAM) is also busy finalizing different SAMIS mapping products that will enable the Lao farmers to become more resilient. The DALAM staff is working on the development of the participatory maps on climate risk and farmers livelihood. The maps have been developed at the local level with the contribution of nearly 200 government officials during the month of February in collaboration with CIAT, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, and the digitalization is being finalized.

The two departments are also busy working to prepare the first Climate Atlas of Lao PDR. DMH is working on the preparation of the finalized observation dataset that will be later used for modeling calibration, while DALAM is developing and harmonizing the modeling routines with the support of the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok.

All these activities have the objective to improve farmers’ food security, bring innovation and change in the agricultural practices to respond to climate change, and increase farmers’ existing capacity to adapt to climate change in time for the next cropping season. At the same time, with the lockdown the government officials are also tackling innovative ways of working and collaborating together remotely, by gaining training time, working experience and independent technical judgment even in these complex moments.