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The first SAMIS Steering Comitee meeting was held in the 19th March 2018 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Vientiane and the areas of intervention of the project has been expanded.

The first reasons for this meeting was the preparation of the budget revisio. The Inception Workshop required significant modifications of the Component 2 work plan. As a consequence, a budget revision was required and it has been endorsed by the PSC.

In addition, SAMIS team has visited the FAO CAWA project in Savannakhet Province. CAWA Farmers Field School (FFS) are foreseen to be used for the future activities of SAMIS to test the agro-meteo advisory that will be produced in 2019. The visit has found that local livelihood improvement strategy and the future FFS of CAWA project will be mainly based on the environmental aspects and ecotourism activities such as wetland conservation, water storage capacity, preservation of aquatic species, establishment of tourist site around the wetlands and small scale handicraft.

At the contrary, the SAMIS forecast, in will be mainly focused on the agriculture crop climate services such as rice, coffee, cassava, soybean and so on.  Moreover, the target area of the CAWA is located in quite remote zone to be functional a pilot case of SAMIS projects. Furthermore, authorities are surprised that SAMIS is getting in the CAWA area without installing any weather station. Indeed, it would be extremely complex to work in Districts with no station and only sharing farmers’ advice, especially when there is no new weather station available.  The mission therefore express doubts about testing the climate services on the CAWA project areas only as foreseen in the project document. Instead, the opportunity of choosing other testing areas should be discussed at the higher project level, such as the Steering Committee.

For this, the PSC decide that the project can extend its area of work. First, the number of FFS in the Savannakhet and Champasakh will be reduced. Secondly, work in additional locations such as Laongam district in Saravan, Feuang district in Vientiane (potentially working in Napheng  & Nalongkhoun) and one location in mountain areas to be defined between Oudomxai or Luangnamthg. The decision will be taken through a join mission to be held between DMH and DALAM immediately after the PSC.