Future based policy making under the SAMIS2 project
Under the SAMIS analyses, policy recommendations containing proposed actions and strategies were elaborated in the form of a pathway action plans for future of crops and value chains. This was done to ensure an effective implementation of the Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS) 2025 and the vision of the agriculture sector to the year 2030.
A workshop was organized in the framework of the preparation of the SAMIS follow up project, also known as SAMIS2. The project, that will be financed from the GCF and should start in 2024, is titled Scaling-up local and national level decision making for climate resilience in the agricultural sector of Lao PDR.
The workshop, titled “From SAMIS1 to SAMIS2, Exploring future activities and foresight planning outputs” was opened by Dr. Nivong Sipaseuth, DG of Department of Agricultural Land Management, and was managed by Dr. Rathana Peou Norbert- Munns, Climate Foresight and Scenarios development Expert at the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and at the University of Utrecht.
Under the SAMIS2 a multiplicity of crops will be assessed and new activities on foresight planning capacity building will be undertaken. The workshop aimed at introducing the scope of work and key components of the project, based on the key agricultural systems that will be targeted by the project. The workshop allowed evaluating knowledge gaps and foresight planning capacity building.
One of the main targets of the SAMIS2 will be to develop MAF protocols for use of LRMIS and alternative futures scenarios in the real case of agriculture planning. This could mean to work at the national level with foresight scenario when preparing a policy or a plan, or validate the intended results of a plan. Another example is using foresight could be in the development of provincial agricultural plans, where the planning of agricultural activities could be based on a long term scenario. So, from the point of view of the SAMIS sustainability and the SAMIS2 preparation, elements of this workshop with help DALAM and international colleagues to plan and set a budget for these processes.