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The Department of Agricultural Land Management (DALAM) is composed by various Divisions and Centres. All Divisions and Centres, in different ways, are connected to climate change through various projects, including the FAO GEF project “Strengthening Agro-climatic Monitoring and Information Systems (SAMIS) to improve adaptation to climate change and food security in Lao PDR”. The staff of the DALAM has gathered today for learning and discussing about the status of activities related to the climate change adaptation studies in the sector of agriculture in Lao PDR. The meeting was opened by Dr Nivong Sipaseuth, Director General of DALAM, and by Mr Viengxai Manivong, Deputy Director General of the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) and National Project Director of SAMIS. In addition, the meeting saw the participation of Dr Thavone Inthavong from NAFRI and of various experts from FAO, including Dr Monica Petri, SAMIS Project Coordinator. 

The main objective of the meeting was to present the main results obtained by DALAM in the framework of SAMIS. This include the Laos Climate Services for Agriculture (LaCSA). This tool is produced by the Department of Meteorology (DMH) and is available at the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/samisdmh, but include many other data and inputs by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. This include inputs from DALAM, that contribute with crop calendars and soil map information. In addition, LaCSA include data from National Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI) including the soil water model and the crop technologies reccomandation that are also used for the dynamic crop calendars. Finally, the Plant Protection Centre (PPC) provide the real time monitoring of the pest and disease outbreak.

In addition, DALAM is developing the Land Resources Management Information System (LRIMS), a web enabled geo-spatial database system aimed at storing all most relevant nationally produced climate change, agricultural and natural resources data in order define agricultural scenarios for the future. This tool will support policy options designing, land management planning, and policy making. In this context, DALAM is producing innovative GIS maps including the agricultural cover map, the crop calendars by district, and the livelihood maps. The last one is beeing produced in collaboration with the international research center CIAT in Hanoi. DALAM is also working with DMH, under the guidance of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Bangkok, to develop the downscaling of historical climate data and the development of future climate scenarios to produce maps of the historical climate in Lao PDR at a resolution of 5km for last 30 years, from 1990 until today. The climate for 20 and 50 years in the future from now is also developed by modelling. All these data will be collected into an Atlas of Climate of Lao PDR which will be produced by the end of 2020.

Finally, through this meeting management and staff of DALAM become knowledgeable of the work at national level. Also, through this report DALAM will be able to bring the discussion about climate change within the discussion in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and also outside in other Ministries such as the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Social Welfare.