Group Photo of CSA Workshop

Myanmar is highly vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather conditions. According to the Global Climate Risk Index, Myanmar ranks among the top three countries most affected by weather related events, which has led to massive displacement of people and the destruction of livelihoods, crops and other food sources. In the recent years, the change in the climate has been impacting agricultural production negatively, which potentially can lead to food insecurity.

In order to build the capacity of farming and forestry stakeholders at various levels to mitigate climate change and improve land conditions, a project entitled “Sustainable Cropland and Forest Management in Priority Agro-ecosystems of Myanmar” was commenced by FAO Myanmar in July 2016.  The five-year project (2016-2021) is funded by Global Environment Facility (GEF) and being jointly coordinated and implemented by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MoNREC) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation (MoALI), and FAO-Myanmar (FAO-MM). The project is supporting the adoption of policies and practices for sustainable land management (SLM), climate smart agriculture (CSA), and sustainable forest management (SFM).

With the aim to coordinate development, packaging and promotion of best practices for CSA systems and to conduct advocacy activities related to CSA/SLM, the project has established a National CSA at Yezin Agriculture University. One of the key activities of the National CSA Center is to organize annual workshop/conference to share ideas, opportunities and challenges with regards to CSA and SLM and to discuss on the way forwards. Such workshops will focus on different themes of CSA and SLM every year. Accordingly, the first workshop was organized by the CSA Center at YAU on 14^th Sep 2018 and the theme of this workshop was “Promoting Climate Smart Agriculture in Myanmar”.

As part of the organizing of workshop, a call for papers to be presented at the workshop was advertised in newspapers and social media. A total of 16 papers received from YAU, Department of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture Research, State Agriculture Institute, Forest Department and FAO were grouped into three broader topics – Concept of Climate Change and CSA, Resistance to Climatic Stress and Forestry/Agro-Forestry, Pest and Nutrients Management as the presentation topics of the workshop. The presentation and discussions were followed by a Group Work on “how to promote CSA in Myanmar (issues/challenges, opportunities and recommendations)” and on “how to make CSA Center effective and sustainable.” The recommendations from this session were presented in the plenary session and feedbacks were received.

The workshop was able to successfully share ideas, experiences, research findings and extension tools/models on the topics related to promoting CSA in Myanmar.